My pilot husband always went to her first after landing. The divorced flight attendant. Her son. Their family videos. Then my first-grade daughter started disappearing into the airport Lost and Found. A Lost and Found employee called, apologetic and awkward. "Mrs. Holloway, I'm sorry to bother you, but your daughter is here again. She wants to register a lost item." When I arrived, she was on tiptoe at the counter. "Can you help me find my daddy? I lost him." "He flies planes. He always says he'll pick me up from school. But I can never find him." Something snapped. A wire pulled tight for six years. It just broke. I stood behind her, unable to speak. The school had them fill out emergency contact forms. Every other kid wrote Mom and Dad. My daughter erased and erased the father line. Then she pressed down hard with her pencil and wrote in crooked letters: No father. Then someone uploaded the video. My daughter at the airport Lost and Found, registering a missing dad. A comment appeared. "Captain Beckett, what about your real daughter?" That was the first time he panicked. He drove to the airport in the middle of the night. The staff member flipped through records for a long time before handing him a freshly canceled slip. In the cancellation reason box, written in letters my daughter had only just learned to form: He belongs to someone else now. I've stopped looking. *** I lifted my daughter into my arms. Her face pressed against my shoulder, she stared at the big screen in the terminal. On it, Beckett stood in his crisp captain's uniform, grinning as he hoisted a little boy onto his shoulders. The boy's name was Finn. He was the son of Brianna. The divorced flight attendant. Brianna's eyes glistened. "All these years, Captain Beckett has taken such good care of us." Finn wrapped his arms around Beckett's neck and chirped, in that milk-sweet voice kids have: "Daddy Beckett, I'm gonn......
