Chapter Sixteen

Lake Michigan curved across the lower horizon, with a flatter arc of distant horizon both darker and brighter with sunset approaching.

Hazel's flight swung out over the lake, and looped back towards land, the city, and the airport. The surface of the lake was less liquid than simply featureless, while the grid of Chicago was slowly lighting up below and to the north and south, rigid lines crossing and recrossing, extending out from the cluster of towers and pinnacles along the shore.

How other passengers could stay wedded to their phones, their tablets, the seat backs in front of them, during a landing, she didn't understand. If it was fear and a desire to avoid looking at the circumstances of one's demise, she could make sense of that, but it wasn't anxiety that seemed to keep most of the others seated near her from looking out of the windows. They just weren't interested. Hazel couldn't get enough of it -- the perspective, the occasional surprises of rooftop pools and hidden green patches, the unfamiliar angles on well-known architecture, all of the thrill of being in the air.

She had spent some time, both before they finally took off, back at the Port Columbus terminal, and during the relatively brief flight, communicating with her staff back at Cyrus College and at St. Fiacre's. For her to be gone for a week wasn't unprecedented, but it was normally something provided for well in advance, and usually tied in with funding and development calls, visits to donors (or prospective ones).

But the amount of vacation she had piled up, unused, was not small, and while St. Fiacre's could operate indefinitely without her presence, the college was a different proposition. It should, but it would work hard at not doing so. But after a dozen lengthy e-mails and a few well chosen cell calls, Hazel had opened up for herself a week's respite.

She also considered a phone call to Nicholas. In part because they had hit it off so well, in part because she didn't want him misinterpreting an extended silence after last weekend, and mostly because she had a nagging concern for his daughter. There was something Susie hadn't told her, and Hazel believed that given time, she would. On the other hand, would it seem forward, somewhat pushy for her to call and announce "oh, I'm leaving town for a few days." She decided it was a call she could make later, if then.

Plus, who knew how long this would take. She might fly to London, have a single conversation with Abigail, and fly back.

Which would still take at least three days after her day and a half here, which meant... well, she might be back by next Sunday's service, which she suddenly realized she had already been assuming she'd attend. With that realization, the announcement to shut off electronic devices and fasten seat belts changed the thoughts of everyone on board to a focus on those last few minutes of descent, and landing, and the scramble for the exits. Hazel shifted her thoughts in those same direction herself, even as she kept glancing out the window to watch the nearing rooftops and streetscapes flash past below.