Eileen bit both her lips between her teeth. She hadn’t meant to say anything at all, and now had zero confidence in her ability to execute a whole new sentence, especially since her last one had just tumbled from her loose and drunken mouth. She shook her head, her hand haphazardly waving in front of her, as if this could somehow wipe away what was now clear to this woman with her Oh, oh I see expression.

“She’sss my siiiisster,” Eileen explained.

The woman took half a step back. “Well, I hope you enjoy it.” She pointed her index finger to Eileen’s copy, took another step away, then turned and left.

Eileen watched the woman retreat. “Bissch,” she breathed. It was not like Eileen was the one bothering strangers in airports.

She had sipped glass after glass of cabernet from Denver all the way to San Francisco, never waving off the generosity of the first-class flight attendants, who were always ready with the bottle when she needed a refill. As she cut a weavy, uneven path for the escalators, it became embarrassingly obvious that drinking large quantities of wine while trying to process soul-crushing life events was a huge mistake. Especially since once the flow stopped, it wasn’t like she could simply climb the familiar staircase in her own home and pass out on top of her bed. No, she actually needed her brain to be working here. It needed to function and navigate her through this airport, find a taxi willing to transport an obviously inebriated passenger, and somehow communicate her sister’s address without slurring and drooling all down the front of her shirt.

Why on earth had those flight attendants allowed her to drink so much?

How could she have been so stupid?

As she stepped onto the descending escalator, she nearly lost her rolling case behind her when it got hung up on something and refused to follow her. Thankfully, she was saved by the irritable man boarding the stairs behind her with reflexes quick enough to shove her bag into alignment with his foot.

“Thank…you,” she said to him, raising her hand in apology before turning back to face the ride down. Everything about her, words, gestures, facial expressions, moved in a painful and obvious slow motion. This is how people went missing, their bodies discovered weeks later dead in a back alley or beheaded and floating in with the tide. Drunk beyond belief, one stupid choice after another, accepting the kindness of a serial killer who knew an easy target when it came along.