Blood Rules by John Trenhaile Page B

up at her, wanting her to know he thought her pretty, but instead his eyes first crossed, then locked onto those of his father, standing a few yards away up the aisle with an unreadable expression on his face.
    “Oh-oh,” he muttered. Then, “Is the captain of this plane called Spock?” “No.”
    Robbie heaved a sigh. “Then am I in deep shit.”
    Long before Colin reached Robbie’s seat he realized that he had no reason to worry and yet he ought to be worried to death.
    A flight attendant stood in the aisle; something about her posture let Colin know that she’d been there a long time and was happy to stay. This puzzled him. Then, as he approached and the angle of his vision expanded, just for a moment he saw the boy through her eyes. In that second, before paternal mechanisms of self-preservation swung into play, what he saw was a stocky adolescent well past puberty, looking far older than his fourteen years, with all his equipment in full working order. Your son will go away soon, he seemed to hear a voice say. He’ll find your ideas stale and you boring and he’ll have better things to do. Like her, for example.
    In the final instant before they became aware of him he saw the plastic tumbler on the tray and knew that orange juice wasn’t that color. Robbie had persuaded the girl to give him a scotch.
    Because he envied his son at that moment, and suffered the pain of knowing all he had lost, Colin would inevitably have said the wrong thing. So it was as well that the landing announcement came over the intercom just seconds after Robbie raised his eyes to catch sight of his father and blush. Colin raised a hand, smiled, and beat a retreat before the unsettling mixture of pain and pride inside him could show on his face.
    He regained his seat just in time for final approach to Bahrain. Looking out, he caught a glimpse of ubiquitous whiteness ribboned by black roads, drifts of sand partly obscuring their tarmac. Then the plane was floating over the airport perimeter, for a breathless moment they seemed to hover, the back wheels touched down, and they had landed.
    Leila Hanif did not go to the Dilmun lounge, although her first class ticket entitled her to do so. Instead she took the stairs to the coffeeshop on the terminal’s mezzanine floor, whence she could look down on the crowded concourse milling with shoppers in search of duty-free bargains. She rested against the rail and kept her eyes fixed on gate number five.
    She was, she thought, inured to tension. But when the TriStar nosed in to dock and came to a shuddering halt her heart shuddered with it, filling her with wonder. He was there, mere feet away from her. Robbie. Her son.
    Leila wore a striking deep-purple ensemble: long skirt, jacket buttoned almost to the neck, and a silk scarf of like hue wrapped around her face in a compelling version of Islamic “lawful dress.” Not only did this protect her from the importunate lusts of men, it provided a wholly effective disguise, so when passengers began to stream through the gate she did not withdraw.
    Robbie was almost the last to come through the gate. He took a green transit card, smiling at the girl who gave it to him, and were it not for that smile Leila would have failed to recognize him, he’d changed so much. Forcing each breath into her lungs became a battle. Her mouth was dry; her tongue seemed to have swollen to twice its normal size.
    He was so grown up—that was her first conscious thought. Already half a man; and she had not been able to imprint herself upon that man, how terrifying! How mortifying….
    Colin had not left the plane, it seemed. He trusted
    Robbie alone. Leila’s lips formed the faintest of smiles. If
    only he knew….
    She came to herself to find that she had unconsciously begun to descend the stairway to the concourse, and froze. For the first time that day she knew a moment of uncertainty. What did she think she was doing? But then she continued down, rationalizing it as a