The Pull of Gravity

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I couldn’t help feeling a sense of failure. On the surface, I’d accomplished what I’d come back to the Philippines to do. The sale of my stake in a bar in Angeles City had been finalized three days ago. Sure, the money wasn’t exactly what I’d hoped, but when is it ever? I was just glad to get it over with. With the bar sold, presumably my last tie to the Philippines was gone.

But Nicky Valenti, one of my ex-pat friends who still lived there, said something the night before I was supposed to leave Angeles and the islands forever that changed my plans. “I hear Isabel’s on Boracay,” he told me. That was it. One small nugget dropped into a larger conversation about nothing. I didn’t ask who he heard this from, or even if the information was reliable.

The truth was, in the few days I’d been back in Angeles, I’d found myself glancing into the faces of the girls as they passed me on the street, wondering if I might spot Isabel Reyes. When I didn’t, I felt a sense of relief. Three years earlier, she’d returned to her home province. Maybe, just maybe, she’d stayed. It would have been the best thing for her. But if Nicky was right, she hadn’t stayed. Instead, she’d come back to the life.

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