If they crashed, Matt realized, few people would really care. Jane would make a show of how upset she was, and sure, the gang from Rubin Hall would get together, tell a few stories, give some toasts to Matt Pine. But he’d soon become an afterthought. Talked about in the larger context of bad luck or family curses or famous tragedies. One Pine wrongfully locked up for murder, four Pines killed in a freak accident while on vacation, and the other one—what was his name?—dead in a car wreck on the way to the airport to claim the bodies of his deceased family members. They’d say seize the day lest you suffer the fate of the Pines.

Not today, he thought as the cab yanked to a stop outside the airport terminal. Inside, he gave the dour-faced airline worker the confirmation number the FBI agent had given him, and retrieved his ticket. He then found an ATM and breathed a sigh of relief when, after several tries, he remembered the PIN for the emergency credit card: 1010. His parents’ default passcode, October 10, the month and day they’d met in college. Another surge of grief consumed him. Pocketing the five hundred dollars, he then submitted to the torture of modern air travel—long lines, shoes off, no liquids—and soon he was at his gate, the duffel draped over his shoulder.

Matt sat in the chair of molded plastic for a long while, staring blankly out the large windows onto the tarmac. The planes lifted off and landed in the morning sun. Thousands and thousands of strangers who would never cross paths again, intersecting at this one point in time. Grains of sand at the beach. Ants on a hill. He needed to shake the morbid thoughts.

By nine thirty, the gate was getting crowded. It was then Matt had the feeling that someone was watching him. He scanned the crowd—the businessmen yacking on cell phones, the college kids with neck pillows, the rare traveler dressed to the nines amid the sloppy masses—but he didn’t see the culprit. But he had no doubt he was being watched. He knew the feeling.

He’d refused to participate in the documentary, but he couldn’t escape the family photos and old news footage sprinkled over ten dramatic episodes set against a haunting score heavy on cello and violin. After it aired, people would often give him the Do I know you from somewhere? look. The true believers, the Danny Pine faithful, made the connection, and Matt would have to turn down selfies or apologize that he wasn’t really a hugger. He’d unwillingly become part of a national mystery, a game of Clue where journalists—and internet detectives—came up with elaborate theories and spent an unbelievable amount of time trying to prove whodunit.