The crowds were sparse after the holiday rush. Bedraggled travelers surrounded him, dead-eyed and weary, trying to get home, or at least to somewhere they could rest. He blended in easily with them.He fell asleep the moment the plane left the ground, its anti-gravitational force pulling away the thoughts that plagued him like hornets from the disturbed nest of his mind. He dreamed of his father walking toward him across a great plain of snow. There was nothing but the white cut of it against more accumulation that fell in twirling curtains around them. As his father neared, he saw that his feet were bare and that they didn’t touch the new powder beneath them.He was shaken awake by a stewardess ten years his senior, looking as disheveled as some of the passengers he’d seen boarding the red-eye flight, as tired as he looked, he supposed.“Sir, we’re deboarding,” she said, rousting him on the shoulder with only fingertips. He wiped his mouth, which wasn’t wet but too dry, and blinked, taking in the vacant interior of the 737.“Thank you,”
