(highlighted excerpt)
She needed to forget that awful day. To forget him. Her life had moved on. And yet his absence continued to shape the contours of her days. The echo of his laughter lingered in the hallway of her Manhattan apartment. She flipped off the light, rolled her suitcase out the door, locked it behind her. She took a cab to the airport. She said goodbye to the life she had known.
Twenty-four hours and six martinis later, Philipia Bay stepped outside into the steamy Thailand night. The automatic airport doors closed behind her. The air smelled like sea salt, fried fish, the exhaust from a million cars. All around her, Bangkok clamored.
She felt fresh, exuberant, wide-awake despite the mere hour of sleep she’d managed on the plane. No one would ever find her here. His ghost would never find her.
She stepped up to the curb and waved for a cab.
“Philipia?”
Somewhere behind, someone called out her name.
But that hadn’t really happened, had it? She had bought her ticket and packed her bag just hours before her flight. No one knew she had come here.
“Philipia!”
Philipia Bay turned around. Her jaw dropped. There he was, staring straight at her. Like a ghost, or a dream. The last person she ever expected to see.