She turned and walked away from me. My reactions kicked in, and with my wet hands I grabbed at her. “Who are you? What do you mean?”

She pulled free, staggered out of the women’s room. A couple of entering teenage girls glanced at us, curious, surprised.

“Hey! Hey!” I yelled. “Who are you?”

A female security guard headed toward us, stern look. The woman said to her, “This woman accosted me in the bathroom. I don’t know her.”

“She told me to go home!” I yelled, because no one was going to tell me I couldn’t come get you, Grant, and I wanted to know what was happening. The security guard interposed herself between me (crazy yelling person) and the woman (quiet now and acting frightened).

So you can imagine how it went.

They talked to her, she lied and said she’d said nothing to me, but she thought I was drunk or high in the bathroom, as I seemed confused and clumsy. (Note, baby, my hands are still wet, so well done her for that bit of improvisation that made me look bad.) For me, yelling had not helped. Because a normal person would not be this upset at some weird random comment and I was.

I told them we were heading to Moscow for an international adoption, and suddenly Kyle and Danielle were both there. Then they escorted me back to our gate, the Russian air crew and the Russian passengers watching the proceedings with interest—there’s not much else to do at a gate if you’re bored with your phone. People watched me. The warning woman (I don’t know what else to call her, so that’s her name now) was gone.

And I realized, repeating this story for the fourth time, I sounded like an idiot. A fool. She said my name, but she denied knowing who I was. I had no way to prove it. Why would this harmless-looking woman, who was quite good at acting frightened, say something like this to me? I saw, when they asked her for ID, that she had a Russian passport, but I couldn’t see her name.

Kyle was trying to calm me and was looking at me like maybe he was not the one hesitating about the adoption, that I was, and it had somehow manifested itself in me hearing this woman say these words to me. Danielle reassured them that I was fine, reassured the gate agent who came over to inquire what was the matter. I realized with a shock: I needed to act sane to board the flight. Would she be on our flight? I was suddenly scared she was and that I wouldn’t be allowed to board.

And then what? Danielle would have to say to the Volkov Infants Home, “Oh, sorry, the mother-to-be freaked out in the airport in London.” And maybe they would give Sasha to someone else.