It starts in a subway car on my way uptown to catch the train home. A robust woman with a voice like an outboard motor berates a shameless public masturbator until we stop at Fulton Street and he’s chased out the door. Onlookers snap, tweet, and post their videos of the incident while an oblivious stream of new passengers file inside. Among them is a Grandpa Joe type in a light trench coat and herringbone trilby. Water beads off his shoulders and collects in a pool around my feet. A few stops later, he’s with me when we exit at Thirty-Fourth Street and take the underground pass to Penn Station. At Hudson News, where I grab a snack before making my way to the Amtrak terminal, he’s in line ahead of me counting out exact change for the clerk in nickels and pennies.

That’s when I spot it: Ethan’s book sitting on a rack below the gum and mints and other impulse buys that rim the checkout counter. Next to James Patterson’s latest and Stephen King’s fourth this week, The Cult of Silence is too loud to ignore. It’s been out for more than a year, long since dropped from the featured-release displays and constant marketing push, but someone’s resurrected it from the discount graveyard and left it slotted in front of the most recent page-to-screen adaptation with the new movie-poster cover art.

I consider hiding it. Tucking it behind Patterson or the copies of Cosmo and People. But as I reach for it, the trilby man grabs it with thick, wrinkled fingers and drops it on the counter. It takes him another two minutes to forage $9.99 plus tax out of his many coat pockets.

I should take the opportunity to ditch him and thus interrupt the emerging synchronicity, but I’m weak and can’t part with the KitKat and grape soda in my hands. So I wait, pay, and take as long as time will allow to arrive at the platform for my train. When I do, boarding has already begun.

In the economy-class car, I squeeze down the aisle in search of an open row. The car’s crowded, but not full, so when I eye some free territory toward the back, I dodge and parry between passengers to claim it. A broken voice crackles through the scratchy intercom as I fall into my seat next to the window. The train rolls forward then back, and with a final announcement through the intercom, musters up a great force of determination to surge forward on its seven-hour haul to Syracuse.

That’s when my shadow, Trilby, old-man-shuffling right for me, wedges himself past Mother Goose corralling a gaggle of children to drop himself in the window seat opposite me. He pulls down the seatback tray and, from another coat pocket, unwraps a pastrami on rye.

He’s like an ex I can’t shake. I don’t even know his name, but we’re trapped in an unhealthy relationship. I could move, but now it’s a matter of autonomy. I was here first, and a girl’s got to stand her ground. So I put on my headphones and pull out a magazine while I eat my snack, determined to let Trilby have no greater effect on my life than I’ve had on his.

But my eyes wander, and once he’s dusted the sandwich crumbs from his chest, crumpled the wax paper wrapping into a ball, and stuffed it into one of the cavernous coat pockets, Trilby sits three seats away licking his arthritic index finger to flip the pages of Ethan’s book.

What did I ever do to deserve this man?

We’ve all experienced it. The pattern of coincidence known as the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, otherwise referred to as frequency illusion. It’s when you learn a new piece of information—a phrase like frequency illusion, for example—then repeatedly encounter it within a short span of time. Or a song you haven’t heard in years makes a conspicuous comeback, following you from the coffee shop to the mall to a busker playing guitar in the park. You’ve been going about your life, oblivious to this thing, then suddenly it’s stalking your every step. In my case, it’s an elderly man with a book.

Everywhere I turn, Ethan is there.

Hours later, the windows are dark when the train jostles and slugs, slowing on its approach to the Walsh train station in Syracuse. I must have drifted off sometime before sundown. Now while impatient passengers unfold from their seats and relieve their travel cramps, stretching in the aisles and gathering suitcases and small luggage from the overhead racks, I steal a glance at the stark white cover and blurry title font on the seat beside Trilby. The train grunts to a halt, and he catches me. We share a long moment of awkward eye contact.

Does he see her? The version of me created in Ethan’s words. The image extrapolated from the hours Ethan spent absorbing a sociopath’s reminiscence. Is it obvious?

Passengers move toward the exits and the aisle clears. I’m not sure why, but I don’t want to be the first of us to stand. I wrench my eyes from Trilby and his liver-spotted jowls to yank my messenger bag from the floor and pretend to fish through it for my phone. He heaves himself to his feet, grabbing the seat back in front of him for support as he squeezes out from the row. Before his frame disappears from my peripheral vision, something lands on the seat cushion next to me.

He’s left me the book.