Chapter 12

Part II

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.

—Pablo Neruda, Love Sonnet 17

***

About a month later, I found myself touching down in Charles de Gaulle Airport at a little past ten in the morning. The wheels of the airplane hit tarmac, jolting everyone, and almost simultaneously the passengers started to clap.

A sense of palpable relief was evident in everyone as it struck home that we’d arrived safely, alive. Or maybe only I felt this way, and I was projecting. It hardly mattered either way, as I joined in.

The few days prior to the trip had been a terror to live through as I’d spent hours in front of my laptop obsessively googling plane crash statistics and their fatality rates. It was a wonder that I’d managed to get any work done, seeing as I worked myself into a frenzy imagining various scenarios that all ended in disaster.

But I was unharmed (groggy from the cocktail of meds I’d swallowed to put myself to sleep over th