My Lucky Stars (2 page)

“May I help you?”

“Where are the exits?” Tara asked.

The woman gave her a sickly sweet smile. She pointed toward the front. “The closest one to you is row fifteen. There’s also one at the rear of the plane.”

Fifteen.
Tara felt like there was a weight pressing on her lungs.
And I’m all the way back at twenty-seven.
“Do you have
any
other seats available?” she asked. “Any aisle—or even any windows closer to an exit, closer to the front—”

“I’m sorry,” the woman said. “But this flight is full. Holiday travel, you know.” Her smile widened. “If you’ll sit down, we’ll show you a short safety presentation. I’m sure that will ease your mind.”

“A drink would ease my mind,” Tara muttered under her breath. She sat down again, gripping the armrest as the plane started to move. She was stuck now. There was no getting off until they reached Denver. Even worse, she was about as far from the exits as possible.
The
woman at the ticket counter lied
, Tara decided.
Her hair color was so obviously fake. Shoulda been a clue.

“Yeah. Got it!” The kid beside her jerked his arm, smashing his elbow into hers.

Tara glared at him then continued to grip the armrests and watched the safety video on the screen in front of her. She paid close attention to the segment discussing emergency landings and exit procedures. And though she was very familiar with how the oxygen masks worked, she watched that presentation too.
No problem
, Tara thought when the video instructed adults to take care of their own needs before assisting children seated beside them.

But when the film moved on to using the cushions as flotation devices, she tuned out. Unless they made an emergency landing in the Colorado River, she wasn’t going to need to do anything with her seat except manage to stay in it without having a total panic attack.

Ignoring the flight attendant’s instructions regarding the use of electronic devices—as her seat mate was so obviously doing—Tara took her purse from the floor and got out her iPod, as well as the soothing eye mask she’d taken out of the fridge this morning. After putting her purse away again, she stuck her earbuds in and turned up the volume, so her
Meditative Melodies
would drown out the sounds of the plane. She carefully adjusted the elastic strap of her eye mask over the back of her teased hair. The last thing she wanted was to arrive in Denver looking bad. Of course, she’d have time to freshen up before catching the shuttle to the spa in Boulder and meeting up with her friends. But she didn’t like to be out in public for even a second, looking less than her best.

The mask in place, Tara reclined in her seat. She felt the plane taxi down the runway, felt it lift into the air, and she tried to mimic that same rising with her spirit as her meditation instructor had recommended the day before. The gentle tones filtered through her ears into her mind; the mask was cool and dark. Tara strived to engage her soul, restore inner balance, and refresh her spirit. But all she could think about was her need for air and the feeling of suffocation growing more intense by the second.

The plane had almost leveled out when she pushed the button to call the flight attendant and reached toward oxygen overhead.

* * *

Tara flinched, waking suddenly as something sharp jabbed her side and one of the earbuds jerked from her ear.

“
Sweet.
It’s snowing in Denver!” The kid again.

She lifted her eye mask in time to see him leaning over her, his elbow digging into her side, while his other arm was outstretched, lifting the window shade.

“Don’t touch that.” She slapped his hand away and gave him a withering look as she lowered the shade. But the damage was done. The glimpse outside had already elevated her heart rate again. “I offered you this seat, and you didn’t want it.”

“But we’re being rerouted to Salt Lake City,” he said. “I might be able to see the salt flats from the plane. The third
Pirates
was filmed there. My dad was part of the tech crew.”

“We’re being rerouted?” Tara straightened her seat back, pulled the other bud from her ear, and turned off her iPod.

“They announced it a couple minutes ago.” He turned away from her, muttering under his breath, “If you didn’t have that lame music up so loud, you woulda heard too.”

Too upset by the news to bother responding to the kid’s continued rudeness, Tara unbuckled her belt and started to rise from her seat. The matron flight attendant chose that minute to reappear, collecting cups and napkins from the earlier beverage service.

“I’ll need you to remain seated with your belt fastened.” She pointed to the red letters overhead, lit once more.

“Is it true?” Tara asked. “Are we being rerouted?”

The woman confirmed Tara’s fears. “Yes, the Denver airport has just been closed.”

“
Bliz-zard
,” the kid said, grinning as though that were great news.

Dismayed, Tara sank into her seat. “Now what am I going to do?”

“I know what I’m gonna do,” the boy said. “I’m going to get a hotel room all by myself. No parents to bug me.”

“You
want
to be alone at Christmastime?” Tara asked.

He shrugged. “Yeah. If you had my parents, you’d want it too.”

Mine probably aren’t that far off
, Tara thought.
But I still don’t want to be by myself. Weird family is better than no family.
But even that hadn’t worked out, so she’d risked life and limb on this plane to be with people she barely considered friends anymore.

The pilot’s voice came over the speaker, announcing their impending arrival in Salt Lake City. An inversion and a balmy thirty-two degrees awaited. It wasn’t known when the Denver airport would reopen, but airline employees were ready to assist in any way possible. Tara sighed. After extra oxygen, a martini, and an hour of meditation, she’d barely begun to relax, thinking she might actually make it through the flight without losing her mind. Now she was faced with an immediate return flight, or a night alone in a hotel in the-middle-of-nowhere Utah.

Her chest tightened, and a wave of nausea washed over her. Cold sweat sprang up on her forehead as she opened her mouth and took short, panting breaths, trying to fill her lungs with oxygen while staving off the impending eruption.

Her seat companion looked over at her, seeming to notice for the first time that she wasn’t well. “You look kinda green. Wanna change seats?”

Tara shook her head. “Too late.” She leaned forward, digging through the seat back for the little paper bag she’d seen there earlier. The martini churned in her stomach as the plane bounced with turbulence. Tara imagined that if she opened the shade now, they’d be in the middle of a cloud. The image only intensified the feeling of suffocation.

The flight attendant returned, garbage bag still in hand.

“Can I move?” the kid asked. He inclined his head toward Tara. “’Cause I think she’s gonna barf.”

“Oh dear.” The attendant took one look at Tara then leaned over the boy, holding out the plastic garbage bag just in time.

Tara bent over it, gagging as she emptied the contents of her stomach.

“
Gross
.” The kid leaned as far away as possible.

When her spasms finally subsided, Tara squeezed her eyes shut, mortified and miserable. A single tear tracked down the side of her face.
There goes my mascara.

“Are you all right now?” the attendant asked.

“I won’t be all right until I’m off this thing.” Tara groaned as she reached for her purse. Once she’d located a tissue and a breath mint, she leaned her head back against the seat.

The flight attendant left; the boy shrank away from her.
Good
, Tara thought with the tiniest bit of satisfaction as she took over the armrest. It was only fair that he’d be as miserable as she was.
Selfish, seat-hogging kid.

Across the aisle a woman wrinkled her nose and turned aside. Tara’s face heated with embarrassment, but she still felt too sick to care much. She reached up, twisting the knobs, turning both fans on high and directing a blast of cool air directly toward her. Her carefully teased and perfected hairstyle blew out of place, but that didn’t really matter now. She wasn’t going to be seeing her friends in Boulder today—wasn’t going to be seeing anyone she knew.

The important thing was surviving until she could get off this plane and then finding someplace to go and some way to travel so she wouldn’t have to get right back on another one.

Two

Benjamin Whitmore pulled his duffel from the luggage carousel.

“Uncle Ben, Uncle Ben!”

He turned in time to hold his hands out for the six-year-old girl running straight for him.

“Cadie.” Ben leaned over, allowing her to throw her arms around his neck, so he could lift her. “Umph.” He staggered backward exaggeratedly. “Wow. You’ve grown a foot or two at least.”

“You should visit more,” his sister Ellen chided.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Ben set Cadie down.

“You are.”

He noticed the moisture in Ellen’s eyes and stepped forward to give her a hug. “Hey, Sis.”

Her arms tightened around him. “I’ve missed you, Benji.”

“I know.” He stepped back, a sheepish look on his face. “At least you’re moving a little closer.”

Ellen rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Denver is
so
much closer to Ohio. You’re the one who needs to move.”

“Nah. When your kids are older, you’ll be glad I live in the middle of nowhere. You can send them to me for the summer so they get that whole outdoor, farm-type experience.”

A wistful look crossed Ellen’s face. “Like we did.”

“I want to go to the farm,” Cadie said. She tugged on Ben’s hand. “How many horses do you have?”

Ben looked down at her. “None. I’ve got something even better.”

Her eyes grew wide. “
Unicorns
?”

“Uh—no. I’ve got—”

Someone bumped him from behind, and Ben lurched forward, nearly stepping on Cadie’s foot.

“Sorry,” he said, glancing over his shoulder toward the offender—a woman pushing her way toward the baggage claim, with a man wearing a shirt with an airline logo not far behind.

“I waited here over forty minutes,” she said, pointing a long, polished nail toward the belt where luggage emerged. “I stood here right in front, and my suitcase never arrived.”

“If you’ll go to that office over there—” The man pointed to a window on the far side of the carousels. “They can help you locate—”

“I already did,” the woman said. “And they wanted me to fill out a form. Paperwork isn’t going to do any good. What I need is someone to actually
do something
to find my suitcase. It’s got to be here somewhere. It didn’t just vanish.”

“I don’t really—” The airline employee broke off as the woman’s expression grew fierce. He ran his fingers through thinning hair. “What flight did you say?”

“Seven-sixty-nine from Los Angeles.”

“Looks like you’ve got the wrong carousel, ma’am.” He nodded toward the board listing flights. “There aren’t any arrivals from California on this one.”

“Of course not,” she huffed. “My plane landed over an hour ago. Haven’t you heard anything I’ve said?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “I need my suitcase. And I expect a night’s hotel to be covered, since I’m supposed to be in Denver instead of stuck in—”

“Well, that’s where it is.” The man smiled. “Your luggage must have gone on to Denver. Happens all the time when people miss their connecting flights.”

“I—didn’t—miss—my—flight,” the woman said, clearly enunciating each word.

Ben turned his body slightly so he had a better view of the unfolding drama. The redhead’s face was brighter than her hair, and her hazel eyes flashed angrily. He was glad he wasn’t the recipient of her wrath.

“The Denver airport is
closed
,” she said, drawing even more attention to the scene. “I’m stuck here, and I need my luggage!”

The employee stepped away from her, hands held out, palms toward the woman, as if to hold her back. “Lady, I haven’t heard that. I just barely started my shift when you caught me, but I’ll check it out. Yelling isn’t going to help anyone, though. It’s Christmastime. We all gotta be patient. And there’s a lot of kids around—” His gaze slid sideways toward Cadie, eyes large as she stared at the woman. “So let’s be nice.”

“It would be
nice
to have my belongings.” Her voice was like acid, and Ben noticed her flexing her fingers with those dagger nails.

Yikes. Weirdos all over—even here in good old Utah.
He felt a sudden longing to get on the next plane and head back home to the peace he’d found on his own green acres in the rolling hills of Ohio.

“Let’s see what we can find out.” Without inviting her to come along or waiting to see if she did, the employee turned and walked away, flashing an apologetic look toward Ben as he passed by.

“Do you have any other suitcases?” Ellen asked, eyeing the duffel near Ben’s feet.

“Nope.” He took a step back as the woman strode past once more. He watched a second longer than he should have, noticing she wore one of the tightest, ugliest skirts—a fuchsia leopard print—he’d ever seen in his life.

Ellen noticed too—or at least where his gaze ended up. “Thought you’d sworn off women,” she said, a slight smirk on her face.

“I did. And
that
is exactly why.”

* * *

Twenty minutes later they finally made their way toward the central elevator. Cadie had needed to use the bathroom. Then she’d wanted a drink. Ben bought her an orange soda and was sorry three minutes later when she spilled it all down the front of her dress—the
new
dress, Ellen informed him, that she’d worn especially to greet him. It had taken another five minutes for Ellen to clean Cadie up in the bathroom and dry her tears.

“I left the difficult kids at home,” Ellen reminded him as they skirted the large floor map beneath the security entrance. Cadie lagged behind, dodging beneath the ropes into the mostly vacant lanes, hopping from country to country.