Imani called Evelyn again during a short break and told her only that the morning had been difficult. Evelyn immediately asked whether the airline had treated her badly. "A gate supervisor moved me from 2A into the back of the plane so he could give my seat to somebody he liked," Imani admitted. There was silence on the other end, then a quiet breath. "Your daddy would have understood exactly what that felt like," Evelyn said. "You know that, don't you?"
"Yes, Mama," Imani replied. Evelyn's tone sharpened. "And he would have told you not to make the whole thing about getting your own seat back. The next person might not be able to call anybody at headquarters."
Imani closed her eyes. That was what she had been thinking since she opened the first complaint file. "I know. That's why I didn't tell them who I was."
Evelyn softened. "Then do your work, baby. I don't have to tell you how."
Imani heard the click of a spoon against her mother's cup, a sound from a kitchen she had visited thousands of times. "And when you're finished, eat something. Your father believed an empty stomach made everybody a worse negotiator." Imani laughed, thanked her, and promised to call after the vote.
At one, Tasha brought a simple sandwich and a final schedule. Doug would take the stage first to introduce the employee awards, followed by Margaret's remarks about the leadership transition. The formal director vote would follow at the board table in an adjoining area, with the result announced to the assembled employees. Most staff members expected a routine ceremony ending with congratulatory photographs and a reception.
"What about Preston Hale?" Tasha asked. "His loyalty account is flagged in the transaction history as the recipient of the new 2A assignment." Imani thought about the man asking for champagne.
"We should ask him later what he knew. He may have believed the seat was unoccupied, and that matters. I don't want to turn a customer into a villain because an employee misused a system. We establish his knowledge before deciding what follows."
A second compliance analyst arrived with the list of manual overrides from Gary's gate during the past twenty-four months. It was longer than Marcus had expected, but length alone did not prove misconduct; airports routinely needed seat changes for aircraft swaps, accessibility accommodations, family seating, and safety requirements. The analyst had separated changes with documented operational reasons from those that lacked them. Fourteen complaint dates appeared among the unexplained changes, and several entries were made shortly before elite passengers boarded.
"Correlation, not conclusion," Imani said. "We still need the complete files and the people involved." The analyst nodded and marked the cases for independent review. Margaret watched from the end of the table, her expression growing less like that of a woman preparing to hand over a ceremonial title and more like that of a director who understood she had permitted a serious governance weakness to develop.