Two weeks before commercial air travel ends, Miranda Carroll flies from New York to Toronto for Neptune Logistics meetings, reflecting on how the city and her own past selves feel like layered ghosts. After a day of work, she prepares to see Arthur Leander again for the first time since their divorce, changing her look to avoid being recognized.

Outside the Elgin Theatre, paparazzi identify Miranda and barrage her with flashes, but she slips in through the stage door. In Arthur’s dressing-room suite, Miranda notices Arthur looks worn and unhappy despite the prestige of starring in King Lear, and they awkwardly reconcile who they’ve become.

Arthur explains why he called: his father has died, and he is shaken enough that Miranda is the person he wanted to reach. He then warns her that his childhood friend Victoria has published his private letters in an upcoming book, and Miranda will appear in it; Arthur says he never wrote cruelly about her, but feels he deserves the exposure because he treated Victoria like a diary.

A child actor, Kirsten (“Kiki”), arrives to hide from her wrangler and color in Arthur’s room; Arthur’s affection for her reveals how much he misses his son, Tyler. Miranda gives Arthur printed copies of her Dr. Eleven comics (Station Eleven and The Pursuit), and they talk quietly while Kirsten complains about another girl, Matilda, and her own need for perfection.

Miranda leaves, later remembering the calm warmth of the room during a future delirium on a beach in Malaysia. Back at her hotel, she finds a glass paperweight Clark once brought to a dinner party—an item she had taken from Arthur years ago—and arranges to courier it to the theatre, an attempt at belated restitution.