Abby thinks the accident caused my behavior change, but the accident was in January. She knows this all started happening a good month before that. Besides, the accident barely hurt me, just a bloody nose from the impact of the airbag. It was my little girl who took the brunt of the damage.

She shouldn’t have been in the front seat, Jake.

I know. I know.

What were you thinking? What’s wrong with you?

I don’t know.

She could be dead, Jake. Dead.

Goddamn it, don’t you think I know that?

No, the accident isn’t the cause of the things happening to me.

I look down, aware that I’m doing it again, sliding my wedding band back and forth along my finger. What’ll happen if there’s no longer a ring there? Maybe it will be like a phantom limb, something I’ve lost but can still feel. An itch of regret.

A woman standing in the aisle is talking to me. I lift the left cup of my headphones.

“Hi, that’s me,” she says.

My seatmate. 2A. She smiles and points to the open seat. She seems nervous.

“Of course.”

I stand and let her in, and as she passes within inches of me, I catch her scent, thin traces of flowers layered within something I cannot at first identify. It’s distinct, and it takes me a moment to place the other smell, and while I’m not positive, I think it smells like mosquito repellent. But it’s not the actual smell that jolts me. It’s the memory of the smell, fleeting but visceral, a déjà vu so powerful, I could be in a waking dream. I try to hold on to it, explore it until I can pinpoint the memory, but it washes away within seconds.

Isn’t that something they say? Smell triggers memory more than any other sense?

As she sits, I try to look at her without staring. About my age, I’m guessing, midthirties. Perhaps younger. Kinked red-brown hair, which falls well past her shoulders. Slim and rather pale. She seems out of time, as if her looks would be better suited for a character in Les Misérables.

I return to my seat, buckle in, then edge up the volume on my headphones. The rumbling thunderstorms drown out the safety demonstration and the roar of the engines as we take off, but my attention is focused on 2A the entire time. I don’t talk to her; she doesn’t talk to me. I order whiskey; she gets water.

I reach for my drink as I remove my headphones, no longer wanting to hear the rain or anything else. The cabin lights are dimmed. My seatmate and I both have our reading lights on.

She’s writing in a journal. Left-handed. I steal sideways glances from two feet away. She seems unaware of her audience.

The sense of memory slams into me a second time, more powerfully than before. This is especially jolting because memories have been sliding away rather than appearing lately.