Page 14 of You Know Why

Young families are the hardest for me. I must emit some sort of “don’t get near me” pheromone, because instead of being afraid and wary of a stranger, children are attracted to me like bees to honey. They’re like cats who always choose the one person who doesn’t like them to rub up against. Isn’t that why the witches in the fairy tales managed to capture and eat the little children? Because they were too curious? The young ones sought out the darkness, searched willingly for the house in the forest. They got what they deserved, right? The witch just wanted to be left alone, not reminded of what she didn’t have.

“Do you have any . . . sevens?” Four asks.

I have two, but I’m not going to tell him that. I don’t want the game to end too quickly.

“Go fish.”

The beautiful woman seated in front of me on the flight from BNA to ATL seemed perfectly nice. The suburban book club type, a little lush, well groomed, shiny hair, in current jeans and a white button-down with a gray cashmere sweater tied around her neck. She was sweet with the kids—a good mom. Her two children were admittedly adorable and quite well behaved. They weren’t bothering me at all. I only noticed them because they were the last to board the plane, coming in harried and hurried. I saw a mom and two kids and buried my nose in my book.

And then the husband started being a jerk. He snapped at her first. His wife finally tired of his griping and snapped back. Their whispered argument wasn’t as quiet as they thought, and I set down my book, furious. I wanted to hit them, slap them, make them see how good they have it. A beautiful family of means—nice clothes, healthy, enough money to travel—bound for Italy. They have everything. They have it all. And what are they doing? Arguing in public like ungrateful cretins.

I was about to say something, just to point out that they were not being as discreet as they thought, when the husband said something in a low growl, and all the hair on my body stood on end.

I knew that voice. With it, a rush of memories, full of sensory details I wouldn’t wish on anyone, enemy or otherwise. Wet copper and evergreen candle in my nose. Heart thundering. Her legs twitching, spasms moving through her flesh as the cells died, one after another. The damn record caught in its loop, and the pool of crimson surrounding the body. You don’t die right away; it takes your brain a few minutes to catch up to the reality of your body’s demise.

Assailed by memories, I craned my neck to see his face, but I was at too great an angle. He was looking straight ahead, fury bleeding off of him, and his wife was placating, cajoling, trying so hard.

It reminded me of my sister, trying to make her husband happy and getting rebuffed time and again. My sister, before she was killed. Before her husband murdered her.

This man’s temper, his demeanor, even the line of his shoulders . . . no.

It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be him.

I had to stop myself from hyperventilating.

There was no way. And yet . . .

I had to see him. I had to see his face.

The flight was incredibly bumpy, and the seat belt sign was on. I’m well versed in turbulence; traveling as much as I do, the percentages dictate a bumpy flight on at least a quarter of the legs. So I unbuckled and stood up, walked three rows forward toward the aft lav, then turned back like I was afraid of the bumps and returned to my seat, heart thudding so hard anyone paying attention could hear. A flight attendant made an announcement about the seat belt sign remaining on and for everyone to stay in their seats, but I didn’t care that I was being scolded.

His face was different. Aged. Something about the nose was off, like it had been broken at some point. His hair was much longer, darker than I remembered, and he had a well-groomed beard.

Those eyes, though. There was no question in my mind. It was him.

My sister’s murderer, on my plane, with his new family.

So what are the odds?

Actually, the odds of boarding a plane and being seated behind the man who got away with murdering his first wife eleven years after that fact depended on any number of variables. How often do I fly? (Regularly.) How often does he fly? (Unknown.) How many flights does the airline have on a given day between the two cities? (Let’s go with five.) How many people are on those flights? (One hundred eighty, on average.) Do they have a shared geography? (Turns out, we do. How about that?)

Similar travel patterns could increase the likelihood, as would holiday travel, and about a million other undeterminable factors.

I could keep laying it out for you, but let’s say . . . annually, there’s a 1/121 chance. As a percentage, 0.826 percent.

Small. Not infinitesimal, but small.

When you extrapolate over a decade, because the cumulative probability increases, that turns into a roughly 8.26 percent chance.

Not knowing where he is, what he does for a living now, what his home airport could be, where he travels . . . The man has been a ghost, so if you want to layer in the probabilities that—

Stop.

I forced myself to focus.

The point is, the odds of seeing him on a flight aren’t zero, but they aren’t good, either. Flying around the country hoping to bump into him is not a reasonable course of action. I didn’t take the job with the airline with that in mind. Not really. Not that I don’t look for him every time I board a flight. Every time I walk into a store. Every time I enter a bar, restaurant, or concert. Every time I go home, I drive by his parents’ house, thinking maybe he’ll be there visiting.

Eleven years of nothing. My sister, dead in the ground, and Andrew Locke out in the world, living, loving, enjoying his life. His freedom.