"No. I was helping board the families farther back."
Nessa crouched beside the dessert cups but did not touch them. The clear lids were intact, and both labels indicated they had been prepared without dairy. She had a genuine allergy, not a preference, and she had learned to read packaging with the seriousness Zire's grandfather had taught him. Her aunt always carried approved snacks, but a rushed seat change had left the larger food bag in a checked suitcase by mistake. The special meal was supposed to carry her through the nearly seven-hour journey.
"Could I just have mine back?" she asked quietly.
Merrick examined the cups. "We need to have catering confirm they were stored safely before we serve them, especially because of your allergy. I don't want to tell you something is safe if I can't be sure."
Nessa nodded, though disappointment flickered across her face. Zire felt an unexpected surge of frustration on her behalf. He was hungry and had been excited about reviewing the salmon, but he did not have an allergy that could make an ordinary snack dangerous. The crew's suggestion that both children accept crackers had never been an equal substitute.
"Did you ask us because we weren't sitting with adults?" he asked Bria.
Bria looked at him coldly. "I didn't ask you anything."
"You checked my supervision record. Nessa says you checked her assistance tag. Then you gave our food to someone you thought would help your career."
"You're inventing a motive," Lenora said. "Children see plots everywhere."
Zire touched the charm at his backpack zipper. "I don't know what she was thinking. I'm asking why the same thing happened to both of us."
His restraint made Merrick look at him differently. The boy was not simply accusing people; he was identifying what remained unexplained. Merrick opened the catering inventory on his own tablet and counted the loaded premium items against the number of paid orders. Eleven premium trays had been registered for a cabin with ten passenger pre-orders. There should have been one additional tray available for operational use, but when Merrick opened the reserved section of the galley cart, it was empty.
He checked the adjacent shelves. Nothing. He checked again with Sela watching. Still nothing. Merrick went back to the tablet and compared the handoff quantity one more time.
"The records say we loaded eleven," he said. "I'm looking at fewer than that."
Bria shook her head. "Catering miscounted. That's the entire explanation."
"Then why were two passenger orders marked accepted?"
"Because my device was malfunctioning."