We landed at 3:22 PM in San Diego. During deplaning, the man in 31E was, unsurprisingly, the very last person off the plane. I was off in row 14's normal order. The woman in 14D walked with me up the jet bridge. She said her name was Cass. She thanked me, properly, in the terminal. She cried again — properly, this time, not silently into a book — and I stood there and let her cry and I told her I was sorry that had happened to her, and she said she was used to it, and I said that was not an answer I was going to let her give me, and we exchanged numbers. I have stayed in loose touch with Cass for the eight months

since. She works in pharma sales. She has two grown daughters. She had been flying home from her mother's funeral on the day the man in 14E decided to tell her she shouldn't be flying. She had not told me that on the plane because, she said later, she did not have any words left for the day. I think about that sometimes. I think about how the worst things that happen to us are often, from the outside, invisible. I think about the man in 14E, whose name I never learned, probably going to whatever meeting he flew to and not telling a single person in his life what he had said at 36,000 feet.