“Yes, you can. But you won’t.” She smiled. “Have a good time but don’t go riding horses. It’s not good for your uterus.”

The trip to Baguio took three and a half hours. Inchoy had fallen asleep as we’d left Manila, then revived for the traditional stop on the outskirts of Angeles. The driver pulled in beside a vulcanizing shop displaying racks of worn tires. Inside, a man in a Ned Kelly mask was welding, and sparks shot out, flashing in the dim interior. A wiry Filipino Vulcan was banging out the dent of a disembodied car door by the entrance. We walked past a vendor, who was working a grill made from a repurposed oilcan. A cheerful cardboard sign announced chicken ass, a skewer with this part of the bird lined up along it, basted lovingly. The cooking meat sent a smell of sugar, fat, and salt wafting in clouds along the road. I would have eaten one right there, but I had to use the bathroom and convinced Inchoy we needed a restaurant, my treat.

I sat before my plate of pancit palabok and Inchoy before his binagongan. The tables were ramshackle and there was an odor wafting from somewhere that we were both too polite to acknowledge. Inchoy took a spoonful of rice and meat, chewed thoughtfully, then raised his eyebrows in an approving way. “Not bad,” he said. “Yours?”

I tried the noodles. “A bit salty, but other than that . . .”

He set his spoon down and looked at me with seriousness. “Ting,” he said. “Have you looked at Laird’s computer?”

“I did. There’s not much there, although he does have some photos taken at Jim and Cha Cha’s house. The documents are mostly academic papers.”

“So nothing of interest?”

“Well, there’s this one document, ‘Personal Directives,’ that is all disjointed sentences. The one phrase I remember is: ‘There is an immeasurable distance between late and too late.’ Another is something like: ‘Always seek out the seed of triumph in every adversity.’ He must have been working on some sort of inspirational book.”

“Was another: ‘Tomorrow is only found in the calendar of fools’?”

“Yes. How do you know that?”

“It’s not Laird’s writing,” said Inchoy. “It’s Og Mandino.”

“Og Mandino?”

“Yeah, you know, the inspirational writer. He wrote The Greatest Salesman in the World. Didn’t you read him? We were all reading him in the eighties.”

“My tita Dom has all his books. Maybe Rikki was reading him in high school.” Og Mandino had been unbelievably popular. “Why was everyone into Og Mandino?”