She held onto him for too long. That's the part I keep coming back to. The line behind them was moving, the gate agent had already scanned twelve people, and this woman would not let go of what looked like her adult son, both of them past the point where either had anything left to say. His backpack strap was digging a red line into her arm. She didn't fix it.
I've watched people do this and thought, get on with it, the plane won't wait. I don't think that anymore.
Here is the thing they don't tell you before you go up. The air you're breathing, the whole blue rind of it, everything that lets a human body work, is thinner than the shell of an egg wrapped around the planet. You can see the exact edge of it from orbit, a bright fragile line, and below that line is every person who has ever lived and above it is nothing that wants you alive.
That's the whole inventory. Two people at a gate, on the warm side of that line, close enough to hold on.
He finally pulled back and did the thing men do, the two-pat on the shoulder, already turning. She watched him walk the jet bridge until the wall took him.
I wanted to tell her she'd done it right. That the too-long hug was the correct amount of time, the only sane response to how much dark there is and how little keeps it out. But I don't say things like that to strangers.
I just stood there with my coffee, on the warm side of the line, and let her have it.