The thing about Denver International Airport at six in the morning was that it had exactly the right quality of light for pretending things weren't happening.

Pale, low, bounced off too much glass. Everyone in transit. No one quite arrived anywhere yet. The perfect liminal space for two people who had no particular business being on the same flight to stand at the same gate holding coffees they'd bought from the same kiosk and agree, with great politeness, that this was a coincidence.

Kara Merritt set her carry-on down next to the row of seats at Gate B7 and checked her phone out of habit. Seven-twelve. Flight boarded at eight. She'd been up since four-thirty, which meant she was running on approximately three hours of sleep and two cups of coffee and the specific anxiety of a woman whose house had not, in seven years of marriage, ever been left entirely alone for five days.

She'd left Ryan a list. Three pages. He'd kissed her on the forehead and told her he'd be fine.

She had written a fourth page and put it on the kitchen counter.

The Hawaii trip had been her sister's idea—Lexi's idea, to be precise, Lexi who planned things two years in advance and sent color-coded itineraries and had, this time, managed to wrangle not just Kara but Kara's parents, their mother's sister Diane, and Diane's two teenage kids into the same hotel in Maui for the first week of March.

Lexi and the kids had left Monday. Today was Wednesday. The delay had been unavoidable—Kara's youngest had been sick, and then Kara herself had been sick, and Ryan had a work event he couldn't miss, and the plan had always been for Kara to travel independently if needed. She'd booked the later flight. Denver to LAX, connection to Kahului.

What she hadn't known until Sunday night was that Scott had booked the same flight.

Scott Callaway. Her brother-in-law. Lexi's husband of nine years, father of their two daughters, owner of an architectural firm that apparently required his physical presence in Denver until Tuesday evening, which explained why he hadn't gone with the family on Monday.

It did not explain why he was now standing six feet away at Gate B7 with his own coffee, looking at his own phone, apparently trying to decide whether to acknowledge her first or wait to be acknowledged.

She made the decision for both of them.

"Scott."

He looked up. He was forty, had the kind of face that had improved considerably with age—the jaw sharpened up, the boyishness redistributed into something more considered. Brown hair with the first suggestions of grey at the temples. He was wearing jeans and a dark jacket and he had the carry-on she'd bought Lexi for their anniversary last year, which made her smile despite herself.

"Hey." His expression did the thing she'd always found vaguely amusing about Scott—it cycled through approximately four emotional states in less than two seconds. Surprise, then relief, then something that might have been wariness, then the easy, familiar smile he'd had since the first time Lexi brought him home for Christmas.

"You're on this flight," she said.

"I'm on this flight," he confirmed. "Lexi didn't tell you?"

"Did Lexi know?"

"I told her Monday. Maybe she forgot." He crossed to the row of seats and put his bag down two seats away from hers—not next to her, not across the aisle, but within the radius of people who had made a decision to be loosely together. "I booked it before I knew you were on it," he added. "For the record."

"Why for the record?"

"Because—" He stopped. Looked at his coffee. "Because I didn't want you to think I was—following you, or something."

Kara laughed. It came out genuine, which surprised her. "Scott. You're my brother-in-law. Why would you be following me?"

He looked up and smiled. "Right. Why would I be." He sat. "How's Ryan?"

"Good. Probably panicking slightly. I left him a list."

"Lexi leaves me lists too."

"Lexi leaves you color-coded documents with tabs."

"Yes." He said it with the tone of a man who had learned, over nine years, to experience this as affection. "That's accurate."

They sat in the particular comfortable semi-silence of people who know each other well enough to not need filler conversation, and Kara drank her coffee and watched the gate agents set up for boarding, and tried not to think about the fact that she and Scott were now going to spend the next three hours side by side on a plane in the middle seats of a row, which she knew because she'd checked the seat map when she'd booked and noticed his name in 24C and she was in 24D.

She had not mentioned this.

He would find out at boarding.

It would be fine. It was completely fine.