THE SADNESS OF HALF A HOUSE

Ladarat carried her tom yum goong down the back steps of her small house, balancing the khanon krok on top, and a napkin and fork. Safely down the steps, she followed the path onto the small stone patio that was surrounded by dense bushes on all sides. It was a little oasis in this suburban neighborhood of Chiang Mai. Mostly young professionals and small families lived around her, so it tended to be very quiet, and the dense foliage had an insulating effect, too. When she was out here, it was easy for Ladarat to imagine that she was entirely alone.

And she loved that. It wasn’t that she was antisocial. Wiriya teased her, but it wasn’t true. Not really. It was just that in her daily work she got an adequate dose of people. When she came home, she was happy not to see anyone.

More than that, she liked time alone to … recuperate. It was as if every hour spent during the day with people demanded an equal amount of time alone, in her own head, as an antidote, of sorts.

Ladarat selected what had become, in the last month or so, “her” chair, the one closest to the house and facing the hedges that lined the rear of the small plot. The other matching chair, facing the house, had become Wiriya’s. There hadn’t been a formal discussion; they had simply settled into their own chairs in a way that felt comfortable and entirely natural.

Ladarat couldn’t say for certain why that thought made her happy, but it did. It was nice to know that an empty chair was just temporarily empty. It wasn’t really empty at all. It was simply … unoccupied.

The evening was chilly, but Ladarat had bravely decided to eat her solitary dinner on her little patio despite the cold. Her small iron table and matching chairs were calling to her. Even in northern Thailand, the weather rarely became cold enough for a winter coat.

But tonight was a reminder that her favorite little city was one of the few places in Thailand where she could put on her thick blue cardigan that she bought at Filene’s Basement during her year in Chicago. And that, in turn, reminded her how far she had come since that cold and lonely winter in a strange city, learning the ethics customs of a foreign country, and suffering what was easily the worst, most tasteless food ever imagined.

Her loyal cat Maewfawbaahn had ventured out onto the patio ahead of her, flying out the back door as soon as she’d let him out. Now he’d circled back and was crouched at her feet, no doubt pondering an evening of hunting. He scanned the bushes around the patio’s borders, as alert as any sentry. At the faintest rustling in the foliage—a sleepy bird, a marauding gecko—his tail twitched and he slunk silently over the still-warm stone and disappeared.

Ladarat watched him do just this, moving silently but with an unswerving sense of purpose. With no more noise than a feather falling, he glided across the stones and vanished into the shadows.

Demonstrating remarkable restraint that she wished someone besides a cat were there to witness, Ladarat set the khanon krok aside and instead unwrapped the still steaming tom yum goong. A gratifying cloud blossomed in the cool, still air, redolent of lime and ginger and cardamom.

As she inhaled the scent of spices and tangy lime, Ladarat admitted to herself that there was another reason she had wanted to eat outside tonight. Some of her fondest memories of this little garden—her little garden—were on nights like this when she could just … think. And now with Wiriya in her life, she found that she didn’t have as much time to think as she used to.

She enjoyed his company, of course. And, truth be told, he could be a better thinker than she was, and so he was often very helpful in the thinking line. At the very least, he was a different sort of thinker. So in their conversations over tom yum goong or gang jued or hearty kao niew moo yang (grilled pork skewers on sticky rice) he would often have something to add. And he was a good question-asker.

But still, it was nice to let one’s thoughts … wander where they wanted to, like Maewfawbaahn, free to sit still or wander or slink into the hedges. One’s thoughts should be allowed to roam like that, once in a while, to keep them healthy.

Ladarat felt a faint flutter of air on her toes and looked down to find her cat had reappeared silently and was again crouched at her feet. In the faint light from the back door, she also noticed faint scratches on the smooth stone where the chairs had been rearranged. Those scratches made her happy, because she knew that they’d been made by two people.

Not long ago, she used to rotate her use of both chairs, ensuring that they would become equally worn, just as she tried to use all of her silverware and plates and glasses. There was nothing, she thought, that was so sad as a house that was only half inhabited. It became half a house.

But now her own house had the feel of one that was fully inhabited. It was a whole house again—or at least on its way to becoming one—for the first time since her husband, Somboon, had died thirteen years ago.

Ahh, that seems longer ago now. Longer ago than it did six months ago, if that made any sense. So much had changed.

That was perhaps inevitable. Like most Thais, Ladarat thought of life in twelve-year cycles. Each period came with changes and new expectations. So it was only right, and even predictable, that at the start of a new twelve-year cycle things would feel so very different.

Ladarat closed the Styrofoam box and set her fork balancing on top. There would be enough for a quick breakfast tomorrow, perhaps, or a late snack. She found that any leftovers vanished when Wiriya was around. He was like a good-natured dog that way. He would simply vacuum up anything edible, preferably three days old and encased in Styrofoam. He said it was because of his years as a bachelor, that it was what he was used to. But Ladarat guessed that he found some sort of satisfaction in cleaning the refrigerator out.

In his police work, too, Wiriya liked things to be neat and tidy, cases cleaned up and locked down. He was still bothered, she knew, by the last case they had solved together.

That had been the case of the woman who became known as the Peaflower murderer (because that was her name: Anchan, or peaflower). It’s true, she had killed many men, many more, probably, than they would ever know. Certainly more people than was really right and proper.

She was a bad person—there was no question about that. Yet there had been mitigating circumstances, including her own history. And those men … well … they were not the finest specimens of gentlemen. That was safe to say.

So although Wiriya was convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt that Peaflower was guilty of those murders, he couldn’t bring himself to be fully in favor of her prosecution. He did his duty, of course. Yet those circumstances nagged at him.

Perhaps this case of the disappearing farang would be another of those ethically ambiguous cases. But what could that be? These people were coming to Thailand and … disappearing. A straightforward vanishing act, was it not?

For the past few minutes, the khanon krok had been calling to her softly. She’d resisted well. Admirably well. So there would be no shame in having some now, would there? There wouldn’t.

Inside the container, two coconut dumplings nestled together. Light and fluffy perhaps in a previous life, in this incarnation they were soaked in a delicate syrup that was tooth-achingly sweet and flavored with just a hint of ginger.

In just a few bites, one of the dumplings disappeared. Ladarat felt an overwhelming temptation to finish the second one, too. She realized that her fork was poised to attack before she had given it permission. Hurriedly, she closed the container, nestling it under the half-eaten tom yum goong, and placed the fork on top to dissuade her from another attack. One had to remain alert and vigilant, because desserts had a way of just … disappearing.

That was another aspect of this vanishing act that made no sense. Disappearing could be very simple. And surely there were simpler ways to do it. Why go to Thailand and travel to Chiang Mai and then vanish? Why not simply … vanish? Or find an alternative identity and then leave the country? Why so much trouble?

In fact, the more Ladarat thought about it, this method of escape was wrong. Not morally wrong, but incorrect. If someone like that woman from San Francisco went to Bangkok and then flew to Chiang Mai, she was leaving a very clear trail. Her family would know where she went. If she had wanted to disappear, that would have been a very bad way to do it.

Then did she want to be found? But that made no sense, either. Because why, then, do such a good job of disappearing?

Perhaps that woman had simply not thought through the implications of what she was doing. Perhaps it was a spur-of-the-moment decision? The trip to Chiang Mai—did the missing farang plan it in advance or at the last minute?

She could find out.

Scooping up the Styrofoam containers in one hand and the fork in the other, Ladarat pushed her chair back, adding four new faint white lines to the network of tiny scratches on the weathered stone. Maewfawbaahn, apparently tired of hunting, followed her into the small kitchen, where she’d left her phone, and watched expectantly as she dialed Wiriya’s number.

There was a long pause until Wiriya answered. She thought it was probably him, but it was difficult to tell because there was so much noise in the background. She could barely hear his voice, but another voice, that of a male singer, was overwhelming in the background.

The sound was garbled and distorted, but she caught snatches of a song and the phrase “. . . still live in Texas.”

“Hello? Hello?”

Then the call ended.

Perhaps he would call back. He often did when she caught him at a bad time. But tonight, he might not. He was certainly not in a place where he could talk about a case. And besides, there would be time enough for that later. She waited a minute, then two, as she put the leftover tom yum goong and lone khanon krok in the refrigerator and washed her single fork. Still her cell phone was silent.

So she whistled to Maewfawbaahn, who followed her up the narrow stairs to her bedroom, thinking about the romantic inclinations of people who live in Texas.