A stranger seated beside me asked me to pretend I had fallen asleep on his shoulder during our flight from Chicago to New York.
I almost laughed because it was such an odd request.
Then I noticed the man across the aisle holding his phone a little too carefully, and the two young women three rows ahead who kept turning around to look at us.
“All right,” I whispered. “For a minute.”
So I leaned my head against the stranger’s shoulder and closed my eyes.
I thought I was doing a small favor for a tired businessman who wanted some privacy.
Instead, I actually fell asleep.
Almost two hours later, I woke up beside one of the wealthiest and most recognizable men in America.
Before I could make sense of that, his security chief sent him a photograph from LaGuardia.
My husband was waiting inside the terminal.
So were two private investigators.
And according to the message on the screen, David had spent the hours I was in the air telling people I had disappeared with our daughter.
Three days earlier, he had been the one who changed the locks on our house.
I had boarded that flight carrying two suitcases, a folded stroller, a diaper bag that no longer contained diapers, and my five-year-old daughter, Fiona, asleep against my chest.
