The plane leveled off, settled smoothly into its flight path; the attendants got busy with their infernal beverage cart; I detached the receiver of the phone on the back of the seat in front of me. Sliding my credit card through the slot (given what damage I was about to do when we landed, what difference could an outrageously expensive air-phone call make?), I dialed our home number. In seconds, through the static, I heard Donald pick up.

“Adrienne?”

My stomach dropped.

“Donald?”

“Adrienne?” he said again.

“No. It’s Elise.”

There was silence.

“Remember me?” I was crushed.

He laughed, or tried to anyway. “Oh! It’s you! Adrienne just called me from her cell phone. We got disconnected and she said she was going to call right back. That’s why I thought it was her.”

“Well, it’s not Adrienne. It’s me. Sorry to disappoint you.”

“I’m not disappointed.”

Silence.

“How’s the flight? Did you find a good seat?”

“It’s fine.” I wasn’t in the mood for small talk or fear-of-death-induced niceties anymore. I rooted around in my bag and located, then swallowed, the other half of that Xanax with the bottle of water the flight attendant handed me. Papers were rattling on his end of the phone—or was that just static?

“Are you excited about the trip? Finding a dress? I’m sure Fran is going to help you find one that makes you look extremely tall. Not that I think you need to look tall, of course—I mean, any taller than you already are. . . .”

I was silent; my mind was racing. What was he doing talking to her so early in the morning? Especially on the one morning when I was on a plane leaving town? But since there was no way for me to know anything from twenty thousand feet up in the air, I decided to just end the call and endure the panic attack that was sure to follow.

“I have to hang up now,” I said flatly.

“Wait,” he said, his voice so low I could barely hear him now. “Was there something you wanted to tell me? A reason you called?”

Before I could think of the perfect comeback, there was a rush of static, then the connection was lost.

I turned and peered again back through the seat openings. There was Gayle, stuffing two fistfuls of (free) pretzel packets into her bag. I begged her to sit next to me immediately.

“What is it?” she asked, alarmed, in mid-packet, buckling herself into the aisle seat to my right.

“You’re not going to believe this,” I said. Then I told her about the phone call I’d just made and what Donald had said.

She chewed, swallowed, blinked wildly.

“Well?” I said.

“Well what?”

“What do you make of it?”