Victoria recognized the coat first.
Camel cashmere. A narrow stitched seam beneath the collar. The lining she had repaired after catching it on a restaurant chair the previous winter.
It lay across another woman’s lap.
Victoria stopped in the business-class aisle, her taupe handbag slipping slightly down her wrist.
Ethan sat beside the window in his midnight-navy suit.
The woman beside him wore black silk and an expression that changed the moment Victoria appeared.
“That’s my coat. Get up.”
Ethan turned toward her.
“Stop making a scene.”
“She’s in my seat.”
“I changed your ticket.”
Victoria stared at him.
“To where?”
“You’re not coming.”
The words were quiet.
That made them worse.
Around them, passengers continued boarding. Someone lifted a suitcase into an overhead compartment. A flight attendant waited several rows away.
Victoria looked from her husband to the woman holding her coat.
“You replaced me?”
Ethan leaned forward.
“We’re not doing this here.”
“Apparently we are.”
The woman lifted the coat from her lap.
“I didn’t know it was yours.”
Victoria took it.
Inside the collar, her initials remained stitched in pale thread.
She looked back at Ethan.
“Who is she?”
“Sloane.”
The name meant something.
A communications consultant. Someone Ethan had mentioned twice, always casually, always in connection with work.
Now she sat where Victoria expected to sit, beside the man Victoria had been married to for eight years.
The flight attendant approached.
“May I help with the seating?”
Victoria handed over her boarding pass.
The attendant checked it.
“You’re assigned to eighteen A.”
Ethan nodded as though that settled everything.
“There you go.”
Victoria did not move.
“You said I wasn’t coming.”
“I meant the trip.”
The attendant glanced between them.
Victoria felt her face burn.
Her husband had moved her away from him and brought another woman in her place.
He had expected her to find out here, with strangers waiting behind her and nowhere private to fall apart.
