Landline(82)

The other woman’s face softened for the first time since Georgie had stepped up to the counter. She handed Georgie her boarding passes. “Well, I hope you get there sooner than later. Hurry up. You’ve got twenty minutes to get to your gate.”



For the next twenty minutes, Georgie felt like the heroine of a romantic comedy.

She even decided what song would be playing on her soundtrack—Kenny Loggins doing a big, triumphant, live version of “Celebrate Me Home.” (Slow and gentle at the beginning, building up to an irresistible crescendo. Excessive amounts of blue-eyed soul.) She ran through the airport. No luggage to drag, no kids to hang on to.

She ran by other people’s families. By loving elderly couples. By volunteer carolers wearing red and green sweaters.

With every step, Georgie felt more sure of herself.

This was what she should have done ten minutes after Neal left last week. Flying across the country to reunite with your true love was always the right move. (Always.) (In every case.) Everything would be all right if Georgie could just get to Neal. If she could hear his voice. If she could feel his arms around her.

Just like everything had been all right when he’d showed up on her doorstep fifteen years ago. (Tomorrow morning.) As soon as she’d seen his face that day, she’d forgiven him.

Her plane was already boarding when Georgie—flushed and breathless—arrived at the gate. A pretty blond flight attendant took her ticket and smiled. “Have a great flight—and Merry Christmas.”





CHAPTER 32


The plane didn’t take off.

Everyone got buckled up. They turned off their electronic devices. The pretty flight attendant told them which exit to head for in case of catastrophe or near-certain death. Then the plane taxied for a few minutes.

Then a few minutes more.

There was twenty minutes, probably, of taxiing.

Georgie was sitting between an extremely polished and sanded woman who tensed every time Georgie bumped her thigh and a boy about Alice’s age wearing a THIS SUUUUUUUCKS T-shirt. (He was way too young to watch Jeff’d Up, in Georgie’s opinion.)

“So, you like Trev?” she asked him.

“Who?”

“Your T-shirt.”

The kid shrugged and turned on his phone. A minute later, the flight attendant came by and asked him to turn it off.

After forty minutes of taxiing, Georgie realized the boy was the up-tight woman’s son. She kept leaning over Georgie to talk to him.

“Would you like to trade seats?” Georgie asked her.

“I always leave an empty seat between us,” the woman said. “Usually that means we end up with extra space because nobody wants to sit by themselves in the middle.”

“Did you want to sit together?” Georgie asked. “I don’t mind moving.”

“No,” the woman answered. “Better stay where we are. They use the seat assignments to identify bodies.”

The captain came on the intercom to apologize because he couldn’t turn the air-conditioning on—and to tell them to just “hang in there, we’re fifth in line to take off.”

Then he came back to say they weren’t in line anymore. They were waiting for news from Denver.

“What’s happening in Denver?” Georgie asked the flight attendant the next time she stopped to tell the boy to turn off his phone.

“Snowpocalypse,” the flight attendant said cheerfully.

“It’s snowing?” Georgie asked. “Doesn’t it always snow in Denver?”

“It’s a blizzard. From Denver to Indianapolis.”

“But we’re still leaving?”

“The storm is shifting,” the flight attendant said. “We’re just waiting for confirmation, then we’ll take off.”

“Oh,” Georgie said. “Thanks.”



The plane returned to the gate. Then taxied out again. Georgie watched the boy play a video game until his phone died.

All the tension and adrenaline she’d felt in the airport drained out through her feet. She was hungry. And sad. She slumped forward in her seat, so she wouldn’t brush against the woman next to her.

Georgie kept thinking about her last phone conversation with Neal, their last fight. Then she started wondering if it might actually be their last fight. If she’d scared him away from proposing, wouldn’t it erase all the fights they’d had since?

By the time the captain came back with good news—“We’ve got a window”—Georgie’d run out of urgency. This is purgatory, she thought. Between places. Between times. Completely out of touch.

Everyone around her cheered.



Georgie wasn’t a good flier. Neal always held her hand during takeoff and turbulence.

Now that there were too many people in their family to sit in one row, they’d sit across from each other two and two—Georgie and Neal in both aisle seats, so he could take her hand if he needed to.

Sometimes he didn’t even look up from his crossword, just reached out for her when the plane started to shake. Georgie always tried not to look scared, for the girls’ sake. But she always was scared. If she made a noise or took too sharp of a breath, Neal would squeeze her hand and look up at her. “Hey. Sunshine. This is nothing. Look at the stewardess over there—she’s dozing. We’ll be fine.”