He tried to hire a travel nanny. The agency sent someone excellent on paper. She called in sick the morning of departure with food poisoning. There was no time to replace her.
So Andrew boarded a transatlantic flight with a six-month-old daughter, no practical childcare experience, and a calendar full of meetings that could affect thousands of employees.
For the first hour, he thought perhaps it might be manageable. Lily slept in the first-class bassinet while he reviewed legal summaries and financial forecasts. He had even allowed himself a small, private moment of smug relief. Maybe Claire had been right.
Then Lily woke up screaming.
He offered the bottle Claire had prepared. Lily arched away from it, sobbing harder. He changed her diaper in the cramped airplane bathroom, sweating and clumsy and strangely ashamed of how hard something so basic felt. He walked the aisles, bounced her, shushed her, tried white noise, soft singing, firm pats, gentle rocking. Nothing worked.
As the hours dragged on, the mood in the cabin curdled.
In seat 1A sat Charles Winthrop, an aging financier with a face permanently arranged around disappointment. Every few minutes he sighed loudly, checked his watch, and shifted in a manner designed to be noticed.
“This is why infants don’t belong in first class,” he muttered to his wife, deliberately not quiet enough.
Across the aisle, socialite Vanessa Hale typed furiously into her phone and whispered to the assistant traveling with her, “If you can’t manage a child, don’t bring one onto an international flight.”
Andrew heard every word.
Under ordinary circumstances, these were the sort of people who would greet him warmly at charity galas, compliment his wife, ask after his portfolio, and laugh a little too eagerly at things that were barely funny. Now, stripped of context and convenience, they looked at him the way wealthy people often look at discomfort: as if it were a personal failing.
And underneath his embarrassment was something worse.
He was beginning to realize he did not know how to comfort his own daughter.
He could read acquisition maps, manage investor expectations, and negotiate nine-figure partnerships across three continents. Yet here he was, unable to ease the pain of the one small person in the world who should have been able to depend on him completely.
Meanwhile, three rows back in economy, Noah Bennett had been listening.