Alexander looked at the passenger service dashboard on his second monitor. It displayed percentages, satisfaction scores, and neatly colored trend lines that had always reassured him. For the first time, he noticed how much the screen could not show. He shut it off and asked Denise to bring the original complaint narratives to the morning meeting.
Olivia returned to her hotel and laid out the same tracksuit she had worn on the aircraft. She considered choosing a dark suit instead, the sort people associated with authority, then decided against it. She would walk into the conference room looking exactly as she had looked when Caroline questioned her. Nobody there would be allowed to tell themselves that the lesson applied only to women who arrived properly dressed for the boardroom.
Before sleeping, she took off the silver bracelet and set it beside Samuel's photograph on the nightstand. "You always said the difficult conversations were the ones worth having," she whispered to him. "Well, tomorrow I'm going to have one."
The conference room at Summit Airlines headquarters occupied the top floor of a building overlooking downtown Boston. Its windows stretched from polished stone flooring to a ceiling high enough to make conversation sound slightly distant. A long walnut table stood beneath recessed lights, surrounded by chairs expensive enough that nobody had ever asked the price. On ordinary mornings, the room hosted route negotiations, financial presentations, and discussions about aircraft acquisition plans that could alter the company's future for years.
That morning, nobody seemed interested in route expansion. Denise had placed folders at every seat, along with a copy of the company's passenger dignity policy and a timeline of flight 782. The security video from the boarding gate was available on a screen at the far end of the room. The head of customer relations sat beside the compliance director, both looking exhausted after their late-night review.
Alexander arrived without the usual entourage of assistants. He wore a dark suit and carried nothing but a notebook with a worn leather cover. The cover was a gift from Olivia, given to him the year he bought Summit Airlines, and inside it he kept reminders of why he wanted to own an airline rather than simply invest in one. He had written on the first page that transportation could bring people closer together only if they were treated like people along the way.
Caroline entered with Richard and Diane several minutes before the scheduled start. She seemed reassured to see senior executives around the table and gave them the composed smile she reserved for important passengers. Richard had hardly slept and kept tugging at his shirt collar. Diane found a seat near the end and folded her hands together, hoping nobody would ask her to describe the moment she saw the boarding pass confirmed.