Victoria came to my row about an hour into the flight.
The cabin lights were dimmed. Most of First Class was asleep or pretending to be. The engines droned steadily over somewhere in Nebraska.
She knelt beside my seat in the aisle. She’d taken off her purser’s scarf, and her makeup was smudged under her eyes.
“Ms. Vance,” she said quietly. “May I speak to you?”
“Sit down, Victoria.” I nodded at the empty seat across the aisle. The older man in 1C had moved to the back of First Class so we could talk.
She sat down carefully.
“I want you to know something,” she said. “When I started at Apex eight years ago, Richard was the one who trained me. He was my mentor. He told me I had what it took to be a purser, then a supervisor. He told me that in this job, the people who get ahead are the ones who do what they’re told and don’t ask questions.” She looked down at her hands. “I believed him. I’ve been doing what I’m told for eight years.”
“I believed him too,” I said. “Twelve years ago.”
She looked up at me.
“He trained you too?”
“He trained me,” I said. “He taught me how to pour coffee in turbulence without spilling a drop. He taught me how to calm a scared passenger by holding their hand during takeoff. And then he stood in a galley and lied to the police about me so he could keep a watch he’d found on an armrest.”
Victoria put her hand over her mouth.
“I’ve done the same thing to other people,” she whispered. “Not like Richard. But I’ve decided who belonged in First Class by how they looked. I’ve called security on people before. I told myself it was just my job.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I’m going to lose my job anyway,” she said. “And I want you to know before I do. I don’t want to be the person who only tells the truth after she gets caught.”
I studied her face for a long time.
Twelve years earlier, there had been four other flight attendants on Flight 1188. Three of them backed Richard’s story. They signed statements saying they’d seen me near seat 2A, or that I’d been acting strangely, or that they “had concerns” about me. They did it because Richard was the purser, and he could make their lives miserable, and because I was the new girl from Gary, Indiana, with no one to stand up for me.
The fourth flight attendant, a woman named Denise Okafor, refused to sign anything. She told the investigators she hadn’t seen me touch any watch, and that Richard had been in the forward galley alone for at least five minutes while Caldwell was in the lavatory.
Nobody listened to her. But she said it.
I’d never forgotten that.
“Victoria,” I said. “Tomorrow, you’re going to give a full statement about the call you got from Richard tonight. Every word he said. Every promise he made.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And then,” I said, “we’ll see what kind of flight attendant you decide to be.”
Sophia Rivers is an experienced News Content Editor with a sharp eye for detail and a passion for delivering accurate and engaging news stories. At TheArchivists, she specializes in curating, editing, and presenting news content that informs and resonates with a global audience.
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