“Good afternoon. Welcome aboard.”
I said it with the same calm smile I had used thousands of times before.
It was the smile of a flight attendant—warm, polite, professional, perfectly trained.
The kind of smile that revealed absolutely nothing, even when your heart was breaking beneath the surface.
I stood at the entrance of the aircraft in my neatly pressed uniform, my hair pinned perfectly in place, my shoulders straight, and my voice steady. One passenger after another stepped aboard, offering polite smiles as they passed.
Then one man suddenly stopped.
His sunglasses slipped from his hand.
The younger woman holding tightly to his arm froze beside him.
Because the flight attendant welcoming them wasn't a stranger.
It was me.
My husband boarded a flight to Cancun with his mistress, never imagining that the wife he had underestimated for years would be the one standing at the aircraft door to welcome him.
