Pearl looked toward the back of the aircraft. "Was Grandma Pearl mean, too?"
"No," Daniel said, and despite everything he smiled. "Grandma Pearl was my dad's mother. She disagreed with what he did. She kept loving us when the rest of that family stopped calling. She met Mommy and thought she was wonderful."
"Is that why I'm Pearl?"
"Exactly. She was a very important person in my life. Those earrings you're wearing came from her. She sent them to me when you were small, with a note saying she hoped the pieces of the set might someday come together again."
Pearl touched the little gold flower. "The lady had the other part," she said. "Her necklace has exactly the same flowers. She asked about my earrings before you got on."
Daniel remembered Celeste's face when he said the girls' names. He wondered how much his grandmother had known, and whether she had tried to warn Richard that there was still time to fix what he had broken. The thought hurt more than he expected, because Grandma Pearl was no longer alive to tell him what she had hoped would happen.
"Daddy," Ruby asked, "does Grandpa know we're his grandchildren now?"
"Yes," he answered. "He knows."
"Then why didn't he say sorry to us?"
Daniel had no answer he could give honestly without pretending to know his father's thoughts. "I don't know," he said. "Sometimes adults spend so long believing they're right that they don't know what to do when they discover they were wrong. That's their problem to solve, not yours."
Ruby thought about it, then pressed her lips together. "I wish he'd solve it faster."
Daniel laughed quietly. "So do I, sweetheart. So do I."
Across the aisle, his phone connected to the aircraft's Wi-Fi, and a message from Grace appeared. The plane had taken off late, and she wanted to know whether everything was finally settled. Daniel typed with one hand while keeping the other near Pearl's. He told her the girls were back in their seats, that the captain had intervened, and that he had explained the existence of his parents.
Grace responded after a short pause. How are they taking it?
Daniel looked at the two small faces turned toward him. Ruby was still glaring toward the curtain, and Pearl had begun examining the gold flowers on her earrings as if they were the keys to a secret. He typed: Ruby is angry. Pearl is thinking.
The answer came almost immediately: That sounds exactly like our girls. Tell them I love them. We'll talk at home.
He put the phone away and showed them the message. Ruby announced that she was going to help her mother decorate the rest of the cake when they landed, because Mommy shouldn't have to do everything by herself. Pearl said she wanted to see whether their paternal grandmother had pictures of Daddy as a child, but quickly added that she did not want anyone forcing them to talk to people they didn't know. Daniel assured her that asking questions did not mean making promises.