moved past the flight attendant and headed for seat 1B. ‘Excuse me,’ she said to the startled passenger. ‘May I look at your coat?’
The purser was there immediately. ‘I’m sorry, sir. This lady is in distress. Her husband missed the flight.’ He turned to Margo. ‘If you don’t take your seat …’
The man in 1B smiled. ‘I’d be glad to oblige,’ he drawled in a Texas accent. ‘But the flight attendant’s checked it.’
‘Where did you get that coat?’ Margo’s voice was getting shrill.
‘Well, I don’t rightly know,’ he said, sounding a little embarrassed. ‘My wife buys all my clothes. They just show up and I put ’em on.’
‘I don’t buy that for a minute,’ Margo said. ‘Let’s have the flight attendant get it, so that I can have a look at it.’
The purser was annoyed, businesslike. ‘I have to insist that you take your seat and stay put until we arrive at our destination. Any further outbursts will be considered interference with a flight crew. There are federal penalties for that.’
Margo started to protest but the purser was adamant. ‘This subject is not open for discussion. I’m sure your husband will be on the next plane. In the meantime, you are to keep your seat until we have landed in Puerto Vallarta.’
Margo took a deep breath, understanding she would make no headway here. Finally she did as the purser asked.
‘If she makes a move to leave this seat, I want to be notified,’ the purser instructed the flight attendant.
Margo turned to the flight attendant who was watching her warily. ‘I’m sorry. I just … I’m sorry.’
The woman smiled kindly. ‘I understand, I really do. It’ll be all right, I’m sure of it. Just stay in your seat and try to relax.’
Margo turned toward the window so she could think, and typed out a quick message to Jack on her phone. But there was no signal, and no wifi on the plane. She stared out at the winter sky as though she would find answers in the wisps of clouds floating past. She went over every moment of the morning, every word Jack had uttered. There was nothing. No hint that something like this was about to happen.
But that was Jack’s trench coat. She knew it. She was no seamstress, but she had mended the belt loop herself when he had caught it on a door handle. She didn’t have the right thread colour so she had used what she had. It was a bright orange that had come with a sweater she had never worn. She had planned to have the tailor fix it properly the next day. But Jack refused to have it changed.
‘It tells the world that my wife is not only brilliant and beautiful, but a domestic goddess as well,’ he had remarked at the time.
How they had laughed. Margo was many things, but domestic goddess was not one of them. The tears she had been fighting slid down her cheeks. Where was he? He did not miss this flight of his own free will. That much she knew.
The coat the man in 1B was wearing when he got on the plane had a belt loop sewn with orange thread. It was Jack’s trench coat and nothing would change that.
There were no answers for Margo in the clouds. Panic had begun to well up inside her once again. How could Jack not have been in the waiting area or at the newspaper stand? His was not a face you forgot. And how in hell did his raincoat get on that man sitting in 1B?
Did Jack put his coat down in the waiting area? Or in the men’s room? But if that was all it was, a forgotten coat, why didn’t Jack get on the plane?
Was he injured? Ill? Kidnapped, for God’s sake? Every kind of scenario swirled in her head, each worse than the one before. Maybe he was dead.
‘Get it together!’ she said out loud to herself. She did not have the luxury of panicking. She would force herself to breathe slowly, clear her mind. When she got right down to it, she could not fathom what had happened to her husband, and that was the truth. Speculation, she knew, was a wasted enterprise.
The breathing was helping. Years of work experience in handling potentially incendiary issues for Senator Wainwright had schooled her to think clearly under duress. She knew if she pursued the matter further on board they would land the plane and have her arrested. She’d be stuck in some jail and would never find Jack.
The important thing now was to conserve her strength for what lay ahead. On the campaign trail she had become an expert at falling asleep on command.
She checked her watch. Three hours and they’d be on the ground in Puerto Vallarta. She pulled the quilt the airline provided over her shoulders, took a sleeping mask from her bag and pressed the buttons that converted her seat to a bed. She was asleep almost instantly and dreaming about the cruise last year.
The sun on her body was like therapy. Back in Chicago, election night had offered arctic temperatures and winds that could cut through wood. When the last vote had been counted, and her man had won again in a landslide, Margo became obsessed with the idea of sea and sun and warmth. It had taken two weeks to work out and make a plan. But here she was, right where she needed to be. On board a ship heading for warmer climes.
With the help of an accommodating steward, Margo had carved out a secluded spot for herself on the leeward side of the cruise ship. She could not be seen there. More importantly, the sounds of the sea drowned out the chatter of her fellow passengers and the squeals of their children.
She had told the impressionable young steward that she was recovering from a broken heart and couldn’t bear to be disturbed. His romantic nature, plus an overly generous tip, assured her privacy.
It was a fantasy, of course, this broken heart. At this point Margo Dalton wasn’t even sure she had a heart. She had had little time for romance. For the past seven years her sole focus had been getting Kyle Wainwright into the US Senate and keeping him there. She had been campaign manager, press secretary, enforcer, and mother confessor to him.
From the first moment she had heard Kyle speak when he was a fledgling politician, just back from his third tour of duty in Iraq, Margo was a believer. He had intelligence, integrity, and insight.
Those qualities, coupled with that rare ability to see both sides of an issue, made it seem worthwhile to put her life on hold to get him elected to Congress.
Margo had done her part. Kyle Wainwright was now a second-term Senator from the state of Illinois and on his way to becoming a force in government.
She had refused his offer to come to Washington again. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with the rest of her life, but she knew she did not want to be in politics.
The sad thing was she hadn’t even had time to process the death of her father, Will Dalton, the famous international financier and advisor to three presidents. He had been the only family Margo had, except for her childhood friend Billy Berlind.
A largely absentee parent, her father had travelled extensively for business and for his country. Or, perhaps, as Margo had come to believe, he had kept moving to escape the memory of his beloved wife who had died giving birth to their only child. Will had loved Margo, of that she was certain. But he had never quite found a way
