Chapter 155

Cole landed in Boston at around 7 a.m. Or rather at 2 a.m. EST. Which was instant jet lag, her body insisting that there should be morningness, when it was still the middle of the night. She had set an alarm for an hour before landing, which had given her time to shower and de-rumple, but she still stumbled off the plane like a zombie who had partied too hard.

She couldn’t tell if it was her brain being porridged or the inherent sameness of airports, but it didn’t really feel as if she had flown across the world or that she was in another country. At least not until she had to talk to people who sounded like they had left their r’s in seventeenth-century England. And then the realness of it all became almost uncopeable-with.

Once her passport had been checked, luggage retrieved, and she had been welcomed to the USA, she was whisked along gleaming concourses, past travelers and lingerers and an honest-to-goodness Dunkin’ Donuts stand, and finally bundled