Slowly.
Deliberately.
The pen moved like every word required permission before it could exist.
Catherine noticed. She noticed everything. Her eyes flicked back, and she watched him for a moment as if trying to solve a puzzle.
The aircraft rolled, then accelerated. That brief, stomach-lightening stretch when the world turns into speed and sound and you’re committed whether you like it or not.
Michael barely blinked. His attention stayed on the notebook.
Once the seatbelt sign turned off, the cabin softened into that odd floating community strangers form at cruising altitude. People opened snacks. Someone asked for ginger ale. A baby finally fell asleep. The lights dimmed slightly. Conversations turned into murmurs.
The beverage cart rattled down the aisle.
Catherine shifted again, restless. She glanced back at Michael, then leaned toward her seatmate with the air of someone forced to tolerate something beneath her.
“My grandfather served,” she said louder this time, not quite addressing anyone but letting the words carry. “He knew what real service was. Not like today. Everyone in a uniform expects applause.”
Across the aisle, a woman in her forties lifted her head from her book. Her expression was sharp, disbelief and disgust braided together.
“Are you serious?” the woman said.
Catherine’s chin lifted. “I’m allowed to speak. Freedom of speech still exists, last I checked.”
“So does basic respect,” the woman replied. “You should try it.”
Catherine flushed, a deep color rising into her cheeks. She opened her mouth, ready to defend her position, but the woman had already dropped her gaze back to her pages, dismissing her with the finality of someone who refused to entertain nonsense.
A pocket of silence spread outward.
People went back to pretending they weren’t listening, though everyone was. The businessman Catherine had spoken to stared straight ahead now, book forgotten in his hands, his face fixed in the expression of a man praying to arrive at the gate without being dragged into conversation.
Michael kept writing.
If Catherine expected him to respond, to get angry, to defend himself, she didn’t get what she wanted. His attention remained on the page, shoulders steady, breathing controlled.
The teenage girl beside him pulled out one earbud, glanced at him, then at Catherine, then put it back in with a quiet shake of her head.
A few rows ahead, a little boy turned around in his seat and stared openly at Michael, unafraid in the way children are when they haven’t yet been trained to perform politeness.
The boy’s mother didn’t notice at first. She was flipping through a magazine, half asleep.
The boy leaned over the seatback and asked in a voice loud enough to cut through the cabin murmur.
“Are you a real soldier?”
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