In seat 1A sat Charles Winthrop, an aging financier with a face permanently arranged around disappointment. Every few minutes he sighed loudly, checked his watch, and shifted in a manner designed to be noticed.
“This is why infants don’t belong in first class,” he muttered to his wife, deliberately not quiet enough.
Across the aisle, socialite Vanessa Hale typed furiously into her phone and whispered to the assistant traveling with her, “If you can’t manage a child, don’t bring one onto an international flight.”
Andrew heard every word.
Under ordinary circumstances, these were the sort of people who would greet him warmly at charity galas, compliment his wife, ask after his portfolio, and laugh a little too eagerly at things that were barely funny. Now, stripped of context and convenience, they looked at him the way wealthy people often look at discomfort: as if it were a personal failing.
And underneath his embarrassment was something worse.
He was beginning to realize he did not know how to comfort his own daughter.