flashing the Cone of Shame bandage across her palm.* Hannah’s two favorite movies were UP and the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi. “I can’t be blamed if you make it so easy to guess your password.”
“My password this week is follicle,” he protested.
“See? Easy. You shaved your head earlier this week, you’ve been reminding me I’m overdue for a trim, and you’ve mentioned Ava’s curly hair twice. I can only assume you wanted me to hack your phone.”
His late sister’s teasing came back to him
(“Why has God punished me by making my kiddo exactly like you, big brother? Shouldn’t he have made your kid exactly like you?”
Dead four months eight days seven hours later.)
and he only just managed to avoid smiling. Instead, he thought of dead puppies. An unbreakable cell phone contract. Ava murdering Danielle Monahan. When he was sure he had affected an appropriately stern mien, he said, “You know perfectly well I would not want you looking at files pertaining to my work.”
“Also, you seemed tense when you came home and I wanted to find out why,” she added in a small voice.
“Oh.” He sat there, at a loss, until Abe cleared his throat.
“There were other ways to get to the bottom of that, Hannah. I know your intentions were good, but that doesn’t make it okay to snoop.”
“I wasn’t—”
“Definition of ‘snoop,’ please.”
She sighed and brushed her bangs out of her eyes. “It’s a verb. It means to pry or sneak.”
“I know when you get curious about something, it won’t let go of your brain ’til you’re satisfied,” Abe continued, “and I know you’ve been smarter than me for two years. But some things I know more than you, even so, and snooping on someone you love is not okay.”
Another sigh, this one sounding more than a little put-upon, and Hannah turned back to him. “I apologize for hacking your phone. I was concerned, but that’s no excuse.”
“Thank you.”
“Is it Ava? Is that why you were worried?”
“… partly.” Anyone else would have just assumed he was in a quiet mood, or tired. Leave it to Hannah to suss out the emotion behind the fatigue. “But it’s nothing either of us need concern ourselves with.”
“We’ll see,” was the mysterious reply, and not for the first time, Tom realized he was in over his head.
Before he could comment further, he heard the brief chime that preceded an announcement. And then an unmistakable voice came over the intercom: “Good morning! This is Captain Capp chiming in to welcome you to flight 420 on Northeastern Southwest—we fly everywhere! We’re departing on time, but don’t worry; we’ll do everything we can to unnecessarily delay you and then refuse to explain why.
“The weather in Boston is partly cloudy and seventy-five degrees, and also I hope you’re okay with going to Boston. If not, speak up now, since it’ll be a lot harder to deplane once the wheels are up. In a minute, the cabin crew will get into the safety speech fully three quarters of you will ignore, and to that I’d like to suggest you be very, very nice to them since they’re CPR-certified and also experts in how best to evacuate the aircraft. I’m not saying they’re vindictive, but don’t make them throw away half-full cans of soda and don’t treat them like truck-stop waitresses. And I say that as a former truck-stop waitress.
“I also want to add that in case the oxygen masks drop, put yours on first, then the kid’s. I know that seems like something out of The Hunger Games, but there’s a method to that madness. Anyway, sit back, relax, take the miracle of flight for granted, and we’ll be taking off shortly.”
His face hurt, and he realized he was grinning like a fool. Which Hannah, who was the polar opposite of a fool, picked up on.
“You liiiiiiiike her,” she sang, which got Abe chuckling. Tom knew perfectly well denial was a waste of time, so he said and did nothing … including wiping the smile off his face.
Twenty-Nine
Flight deck
27,000 miles over Lake Michigan
“You’re out of your mind.”
“Saw it with my own two eyeballs.”
“There is no way a tarantula defeated a rat in spider-to-rodent combat behind the New York Public Library.”
“I saw the whole thing!”
“Why were you even behind the library in the first place? Did they try to lock you out? Were you sneaking in? Were you ambushing people who were late returning books? Tell me if you were ambushing people who had late fees, Ava. You