The Broken String by Diane Chamberlain

“What happens if lightning hits the plane?” The little girl turned from the window to look at her brother, who sat between us. I recognized the expression in her worried brown eyes. She thought her big brother, who was at most nine or ten, had all the answers. The two of them reminded me of Danny and myself when we were kids, although they looked nothing at all like we did. They were both redheads, while Danny had been—and still was—blue-eyed and flaxen-haired, and I was a brown-eyed brunette. Still, the way the girl turned to her brother, the way she looked up at him as though he was the smartest boy in the world … that had been me and Danny.
    The truth was, right now nearly everything I saw or heard or felt reminded me of my brother.
    “It’s not going to hit the plane,” the boy said. “At least it better not.” He turned to look at me as though I might know the answer, but I’d been wondering the same thing. Here we were, suspended thirty-five thousand feet above the Atlantic on a pitch-black night, while lightning pierced the sky like knife blades outside our small window.
    “I’m not sure what happens,” I said. I was only seventeen. This was my first flight ever and I’d had no time to prepare myself for the experience, nor did I really care. The flight wasn’t important. It was getting to the hospital in Germany that mattered. “But the one thing I
do
know,” I said to the children, “is that the pilot’s had lots of training and has probably flown through hundreds of storms. He’ll know what he’s doing.”
    “Right.” The boy looked at his sister with a grown-up sort of confidence that touched me, because surely he was afraid, too. Their mother was in front of us with two younger children, one of whom had not stopped crying since we took off a little more than an hour ago. “The pilot’s had tons of training for storms and stuff,” the boy said to the wide-eyed little girl. “He’s probably been through lots worse than this.”
    The plane suddenly dipped like a roller coaster and the little girl let out a cry. Her brother took her hand. I wished I had someone to hold mine. While I considered myself an adult in all other matters, tonight I felt like a child.
    I shut my eyes and rested my head against the back of the seat. It was going to be a very long night.
    ***
    “Excuse me, miss?”
    I opened my eyes to see one of the flight attendants standing next to my seat. The pin on her collar said J ULIANNE , but she looked too old for the name. Her chin-length brown hair was dusted with wisps of white. “Yes?” I said.
    The plane gave a toss to the left and Julianne held onto the back of the seat in front of me to stay upright. “Is your name Riley MacPherson?” she asked.
    Oh, God
. I wanted to tell her “no” to stop whatever words she was about to say next. Her smile was warm, though. She wouldn’t be smiling if she had terrible news. Besides, how could she possibly know anything?
    “Yes.” I spoke so quietly I was sure she couldn’t hear me over the sound of the engine and the wailing toddler in the seat in front of me.
    “Please get your carry-on and come with me,” she said. “We’re moving you.” Her smile was wide now, but my heart nearly stopped beating. Why would they move me? Could they have gotten word in the cockpit that Danny had died and they wanted to tell me in private?
    The plane took a nauseating tumble as I got to my feet, and Julianne had to help me pull my small, hastily packed suitcase out of the overhead bin. I waved good-bye to the little girl and her brother. I tried to smile at them, but I knew by the flat expressions they gave me in return that I had failed. I followed Julianne up the long aisle of the plane, my eyes already filling with tears.
    We reached the curtain that separated the economy cabin from first class, and she pulled it aside. I followed her into the dim and far quieter atmosphere of first class.
    Julianne suddenly stopped