Ashley looked at him sharply.
"Valerie?"
Ryan ignored her.
"Can we talk for one minute?"
"Not while I'm working. Drink selection?"
He lowered his voice.
"This isn't what it looks like."
The sentence was so predictable that I nearly felt embarrassed for him.
Ashley turned toward him fully.
"Are you serious?"
A passenger in 1A glanced backward.
I kept my expression neutral.
"Mr. Carter, I need your drink selection or I need to continue service."
He swallowed.
"Whiskey."
"We do not have your preferred brand. Bourbon or blended Scotch?"
His face tightened because he understood the hidden cruelty of that sentence even though nobody else did.
I knew his preferred brand.
Of course I did.
I had stocked it at home for years.
"Bourbon," he said.
I poured one measured serving.
Then I turned to Ashley.
"Ms. Monroe?"
She stared at me.
"Water."
"Still or sparkling?"
"Still."
I poured it, set down both drinks, and moved to row three.
Behind me, Ashley whispered, "You said she knew about the separation."
Ryan whispered something too low to hear.
"You said papers were already filed."
I kept walking.
My hand did not shake once.
But inside, another piece of the marriage broke cleanly into fact.
There had been no vague misunderstanding.
He had constructed an entire alternate version of our life for her.
And apparently, in that version, I had already agreed to disappear.
The next two hours were the longest professional duty of my life.
I discovered that heartbreak is strangely physical when you have nowhere private to put it. It sat beneath my breastbone like a weight. It climbed my throat whenever I heard Ryan laugh too loudly or saw his hand move toward Ashley before he remembered where he was. It made the cabin lights seem brighter and the aisle narrower, yet none of it changed what had to be done.
Passengers needed meals. A child in row fourteen became airsick. A woman in row twenty-two could not find her reading glasses and was convinced she had dropped them during boarding. A man near the back complained that the Wi-Fi was too slow to stream a basketball game, as if I were personally controlling a satellite from the galley.