The Girl in Seat B-12
Chapter 04 - The Girl in Seat B-12
The earring back was small enough to be dismissed, which made it dangerous.
Nora had spent a life watching small things overthrow loud ones: a child’s missing homework tucked in the wrong folder, a thermometer left in sunlight, a moon phase drawn backward because a student copied a diagram instead of looking up.
Fiona understood large rooms. Nora understood details.
“That could belong to anyone,” Fiona said.
“No one said it belonged to you,” Nora answered.
Fiona’s hand dropped from her ear.
Harold Voss had followed them inside with Marcus, Carlene, Jamie, and a handful of donors who pretended they had been invited into the investigation by curiosity rather than appetite. The children gathered at the aisle, half-frightened, half-thrilled, as if the planetarium had finally become what they always suspected it might be: a place where the ceiling could reveal secrets.
The old projector hummed unevenly.
Nora did not like the rhythm. It had a stutter near the lamp housing, a catch in the fan belt. Cal would have heard it from the lobby and muttered, “Nope,” before shutting everything down.
She moved toward the console.
Fiona blocked her. “Do not touch it.”
“If that lamp overheats, the glass star plate can crack.”
“Now you’re concerned about equipment?”
“I always was.”
“You were concerned about keeping your husband’s ghost employed.”
The words struck harder than Fiona intended. Nora saw it in Fiona’s eyes as soon as she said them. Not regret. Alarm. She had gone too far in front of people she still needed.
For one moment Nora was back in the hospital hallway two years earlier, holding Cal’s sweater in a plastic bag, listening to a young doctor explain infection as if naming it kindly could make it less final. Fiona had come that night too. She had brought coffee. She had cried against Nora’s shoulder. She had said, “He was the first person who made science feel like a place I could belong.”
That girl was still somewhere inside Fiona.
But not near the surface.
Nora looked at the projector instead of Fiona. “Cal does not need employment. The children need a sky that tells the truth.”
Jamie whispered, “Can she turn it off?”
Marcus said, “Let her.”
Fiona’s head snapped toward him. “You do not have authority over district equipment.”
“No,” Marcus said. “But I have authority over a room full of kids if there’s a safety issue.”
Harold added, “And I have authority over grant compliance. Mrs. Ellis, shut it down if necessary.”
Fiona stepped aside because refusing would look worse.
Nora approached the console slowly. She did not want anyone to say she lunged. The old machine seemed to recognize her, though she knew machines did no such thing. Still, when she placed her hand near the emergency stop, the uneven hum steadied for one breath.
She pressed the red mushroom switch.
The stars blinked out.
The dome darkened.
Several children made disappointed sounds.
Then, in the sudden quiet, another sound remained.
A faint ticking from inside the lamp housing.
Nora closed her eyes.
“Not the lamp,” she said.
“What?” Harold asked.
“That ticking is not the lamp cooling. It’s the timing motor.”
Fiona said, “Impossible. The old timing motor was disconnected.”
Again, she knew too much.
Nora opened her eyes and looked at her former student.
“When?”
Fiona blinked. “When what?”
“When was it disconnected?”
Fiona’s mouth opened, then closed.
Harold’s pen came out of his portfolio.
Nora hated the satisfaction that moved through her. She did not want revenge. Revenge made people sloppy. She wanted the machine safe and the children unafraid and Cal’s name unhandled by people who loved stories of generosity more than the labor behind them.
Marcus crouched near the access panel. “There’s something tied under here.”
Fiona said, “Do not remove anything.”
But Marcus had already lifted a narrow plastic strip from inside the panel, looped around a bundle of wires. It was transparent, heat-warped at one edge, and smelled faintly scorched.
Nora recognized it.
A cable tie from the new digital projector installation.
Not old equipment.
New.
“That shouldn’t be in there,” she said.
Fiona turned toward the aisle. “Everyone out. Now. This is a technical matter.”
The donors hesitated. They wanted to obey authority but also did not want to leave before the story ripened.
Then a woman in the back row stood.
She was thin, gray-haired, wearing a purple coat too warm for the room. Nora knew her face but needed a second to place it.
Lydia Sloane.
Cal’s last assistant before the program lost funding.
Lydia had disappeared from Brant Lake after a school board fight nobody fully explained. Rumor said she had stolen petty cash. Rumor said she had run off to take care of a sister. Rumor said many things when people were too lazy to ask why a woman stopped coming to work.
Lydia walked down the aisle with one gloved hand on the seatbacks.
Fiona went rigid.
Nora saw it and forgot to breathe.
“Lydia,” Fiona said, every syllable cautious.
Lydia did not look at her. She looked at Nora.
“I’m sorry,” Lydia said. “I should have come back sooner.”
Nora’s throat tightened. “For what?”
Lydia opened her gloved hand.
May you like
In her palm lay a small metal gear with three teeth filed down smooth.
“I kept this,” Lydia said, “because Cal told me someone would try to blame the wrong woman someday.”
