The account that had uploaded it belonged to somebody called Cabin Justice. The profile picture showed a plane about to land in front of a giant setting sun. All the stories in the feed had the same shape. A mean person did something; later a rich person made them pay. Nobody with a low bank balance in the Cabin Justice universe was capable of resolving an argument. June sent a message asking for the correction and the removal of the footage. An automated reply offered her a discount code for a neck pillow.
“Are you going to say something?” Daniel asked.
“To who?”
“Reporters, I mean.”
“Have the reporters eaten?”
He looked at her.
“Because if anybody else starts asking me questions before I've had a decent meal I'm going to bite them.”
The old woman behind them handed a packet of crackers over the seat. “June, dear, these have peanut butter. If you're allergic, I also have a boiled egg.”
June accepted the crackers. “I know you didn't bring a boiled egg into a pressurized airplane full of strangers.”
“Husband number two said the same thing. I ate two of them at his funeral. My name's Ruth.”
“Were those especially hard days on the hens, Ruth?”
“I require considerable looking after. They do their best.”
Ruth had been a secretary in a public school for thirty-seven years. The crackers were the thick square kind she used to put away for children who had missed the breakfast bus. Even after retiring she never left the house without them. Above her lap was a large brown tote with two rolled sweaters and a library copy of a western that had been repaired so often with tape it would probably survive to tell the story of the end of civilization.
She had been traveling alone, too, going home after visiting a sister who had reached the age at which one ought to replace a bathtub with a shower. They had accomplished nothing on the subject of the bathtub. They had accomplished a great deal on a blueberry cake. June found herself telling Ruth about the ceremony.
“Did she choose to be adopted?” Ruth asked.
“She did. People keep asking us if she knows what it means. I think probably she's the only one in the room who does.”
Ada had been five when she came to Tess and Noreen for a short stay. At first her shoes had always been on. She even slept in them. When she finally began kicking them off under the little kitchen bench, everybody understood they had arrived somewhere important. The first time Tess had dared say the word adoption out loud, Ada had considered it for a full week before asking who got to keep her old last name. She had wanted to make sure it didn't disappear like a shop after the building is sold. Her biological mother had loved her, and had lived a long stretch of years with an addiction that made love impossible to organize into a safe place for a child to sleep. Two things could be true. Ada was well acquainted with the inconvenience of this.
Eventually she had decided on Ada Bell Ellis, putting her old last name in the middle, “where it can't fall out at either end.” There had been papers and visits and another set of papers. This was the third court date. Noreen's sister had come on the first date and couldn't get away for the other two. Ada pretended this was fine. She was terribly good at being agreeable to things nobody should have expected her to agree to.
“Her mother going to be there?” Ruth asked.
“She wrote a letter. Ada gets to decide whether to open it.”
“Sounds like a child who ought to get to decide a thing or two.”
“That's the theory. She once decided to wash a library book in the dishwasher, so we reserve some veto power.”
Ruth laughed, and the laugh did June more good than the crackers. She called Tess. It went to voicemail. Then she did something she had almost never done, which was call Noreen when she could have just left word with her sister. The family came in twos. June and Tess had lost their parents young and tended to speak as a delegation on most subjects. Noreen was a quiet person who took a long time answering a question and occasionally solved it with a single word nobody else had thought of. June worried about stepping on something delicate between her and Tess. Consequently Noreen was always getting things secondhand.
She answered before the second ring. “I hoped that was you.”
“Can the clerk give you any space at the other end?”
“We've got until three-ten to be in the building. Apparently there's a wedding after us, and the judge has a dentist at four. The tooth has been waiting longer than we have, according to the clerk.”
“How's Ada?”
“She's changed her clothes four times. At present the outfit includes silver roller skates. I have a fair chance of negotiating down to the sparkly socks.”
“Can I speak to her?”
A door clicked. When Noreen spoke again her voice was lower. “June, somebody at Tess's work sent that video to the office group. Ada was looking at pictures on her phone when it happened. She saw your face. She thinks you were put off the plane.”
“Oh, honey.”
“I told her you'd call. A voice call, please. We don't need her seeing a plane sitting still on the ground.”
The terrible and ordinary thing about the world now was that an event in a first-class cabin over Nebraska could be waiting in a child's hand in Oregon before a tomato stain had dried. June heard Tess in the background say that no, a courthouse wouldn't have a rolling surface smooth enough for tricks. Then Ada said, very loudly and confidently, “They have marble.”