Mason treated it like a top-secret military mission.
He made me promise ten times a day not to tell Dad.
He practiced his “surprised face” in the bathroom mirror. Then he practiced Dad’s surprised face.
He packed his own backpack a full week early. His blue headphones. A bag of gummy bears. A coloring book. And a drawing he worked on for three nights at the kitchen table.
It was a blue airplane in the sky. Under it were three stick figures. A tall one in a pilot hat. A medium one with long hair. And a little one with a giant smile.
Across the top, in big red letters: BEST PILOT EVER.
“I’m going to give it to him right when he opens the door,” Mason told me.
The morning of the flight, Tyler kissed us both goodbye at six-thirty.
“See you tonight, guys. I’ll bring you something from O’Hare, bud.”
Mason nodded. His face was bright red from trying not to smile.
“Have a good flight, Dad.”
“What’s with the face, kid?”
“Nothing!” Mason squeaked.
Tyler laughed and left.
The flight didn’t leave until five that afternoon. Tyler had a turn to Nashville first. We had all day to get ready.
Getting through the airport without Tyler seeing us was a lot harder than I expected.
We were walking through Concourse B toward our gate when Mason suddenly grabbed my sleeve.
“Mom. MOM.”
Tyler was walking across the terminal. Less than thirty feet away. Pulling his black rolling bag. Laughing at something on his phone.
I grabbed Mason by the hood of his jacket and yanked him into a Hudson News.
We suddenly became extremely interested in refrigerator magnets.
Mason pressed his face against a rack of shot glasses that said CHARLOTTE: THE QUEEN CITY. His shoulders were shaking so hard trying not to laugh that I thought he was going to knock the whole display over.
Tyler walked right past the store window and disappeared around the corner toward the cockpit crew room.
“That was so close,” Mason gasped.
“So close,” I said.
We waited fifteen minutes. Then we went to the gate.
We boarded with Group 7. Last ones on. We kept our heads down all the way down the aisle.
We made it.
Adrian Hawthorne is a celebrated author and dedicated archivist who finds inspiration in the hidden stories of the past. Educated at Oxford, he now works at the National Archives, where preserving history fuels his evocative writing. Balancing archival precision with creative storytelling, Adrian founded the Hawthorne Institute of Literary Arts to mentor emerging writers and honor the timeless art of narrative.