Lisa glanced down at the disposable slippers still in her hand and gave a startled laugh. "I offered the owner of the airline a pair of emergency slippers." Arthur smiled for the first time in hours. "They were probably the most useful thing anyone offered me today," he said. "I should have taken them sooner."
The laughter faded, and Lisa asked a harder question. "Why didn't you tell me? I lost a day's work defending someone who could have ended the whole thing by saying one sentence." Arthur could hear the hurt beneath the question and did not try to talk his way around it. He said that independent investigators had asked him to avoid revealing his identity before certain evidence was preserved, but that he also had wanted to see whether a passenger without visible influence would be treated fairly, and that this choice had placed a burden on her she had not agreed to carry.
"You deserved the truth sooner," he told her. "I'm sorry about that." Lisa considered the apology while the cleaning crew passed nearby with a trolley of supplies. She said she had not helped him because she thought he was secretly important, and she would not change her decision if she could go back, but that she wanted him to understand how much was at stake when an employee confronted a manager. Arthur promised not simply to understand but to make certain those risks were part of the reform review.
Anna asked whether the company's computers could now be trusted. Arthur answered that they would be trusted only to the extent people could examine their decisions and challenge the people who used them. He pointed to the ticket in his hand, whose seat assignment had been valid until somebody made it disappear. "A record is useful," he said, "but it isn't a substitute for the truth, and it certainly isn't an excuse to stop listening."
They sat without speaking for several minutes. Arthur was tired enough that the words on the departure board began to blur, and Lisa offered to find him a quiet room where he could rest. He thanked her but asked first whether she and Anna had somewhere safe to go after the interviews. Anna said she would stay with her sister that night, and Lisa said Teresa Bell had offered to drive her home. Arthur felt relief that did not depend on owning an airline, only on knowing that people who had stood beside him had someone beside them in turn.
The first public statement from Cole Air was issued late that night after counsel confirmed what the company could responsibly disclose. It acknowledged a serious investigation into alleged reservation manipulation and financial irregularities, the suspension of implicated managers, the independent audit, and the company's cooperation with investigators. It did not name passengers who had not consented or imply that charges were convictions. Arthur asked that the statement include a plain apology to customers whose travel had been disrupted and a description of how they could request a review without dealing with the station under investigation.