Page 43 of Meet Me in Another Life

Everything ends here. Santi gets to his feet like a man in a dream. He stumbles down the steps from the platform to the busy concourse. He planned to get a taxi to his hotel, have a shower and rest, ready to start the job that is the reason he moved here. Instead, he lingers, scanning the faces in the crowd. He knows no one in this city. Why does it feel like someone should be here to greet him?

He walks in the opposite direction from the taxi rank, out into the cathedral square. The day is mild; rain has just started to fall. He doesn’t know why it seems to him that the air should be cold, the ground slippery with frost. The smell of damp cobblestones,the pungent waft of currywurst, follow him up the steps to the cathedral. Santi stands in the spitting rain and feels the city rush through him, a river of meaning he can grasp if he only gives himself up to the current. “I’m listening,” he says under his breath.

He was looking forward to visiting the cathedral. Now, the Gothic walls seem transparent to his eye, no mysteries left within. He continues into the old town. As he walks, he sings to himself, a melody that was in his head when he awoke. The rain stops. The clouds let through pale shafts of sun, fingers pointing to everything at once. Santi walks the squares and alleys of the old town like a blind man walking a maze he was born in. The buildings are a façade, paper-thin, veiling something greater. He stops under the ruined tower, looks up to see the clock still stopped at midnight.Still.He doesn’t know where that knowledge comes from, or why it seems wrong, as wrong as the season. As wrong as being alone here, when someone should be standing by his side. His eyes drift down to a message written in bold black paint. LOOK BEHIND YOU.

Santi turns. Across the square, under the sign of a centaur raising his bow to the stars, a teenage girl waves at him from an outside table. She’s younger than he remembers. The thought comes before he can make sense of it. How can he remember her older than she is? Her hair is a bright, shocking red, the color of arterial blood.

His hand goes to his throat. Dying in Thora’s arms, as the fireworks burst across the sky like exploding stars. The last time they were here. The first time they remembered.

He stumbles toward her in the kaleidoscopic sunshine. She stands, knocking her chair onto the cobbles. Laughing, they collide. Santi pulls back, gazes at her in half-terrified amazement. “How—”

“I have no fucking idea!” she yells. The other customers stare, but Santi barely notices; he’s focused on Thora, impossible Thora, sad wonder in her eyes like she’s seeing a ghost. She rubs his arm. “Shit, it’s so good to see you.”

You watched me die.Santi remembers her face staring down at him, the last thing his old self saw. His words come haltingly. “How much longer did you—after I...”

“Made it to fifty-five. Breast cancer. Again.” Thora rights her chair and drops back into it, glaring at him. “You left me alone.”

“I didn’t intend to.” Her expression doesn’t soften. Santi almost laughs as he sits down opposite her. “Thora, you can’t blame me for getting stabbed.”

“Can’t I?” she says under her breath, as if he’s set her a challenge. How can she be simultaneously so ageless and so teenage? “Glad you finally turned up, anyway,” she continues, waving to get Brigitta’s attention. “I’ve been waiting for someone to order me a wine.”

Santi, still half-absorbed in the life that brought him here, tries to focus. “How old are you?”

“Fifteen.” She looks him up and down. “What are you, fifty?”

“Forty-five.” He blinks at her in confusion. “Why am I older again?”

“That’syour question?” She throws her head back in a laugh. “Shit, we have a lot to talk about. Where have you been?”

Brigitta comes to take their order. Santi asks for a glass of red wine and a Kölsch. “Spain,” he says. “Then France. I was...’ He closes his eyes, trying to reconcile the version of him that awoke on the train and the myriad others that are waking now at the sound of Thora’s voice. “I—wasn’t happy with what I was doing. Consultancy. It felt—hollow. I wanted to do something real. Make the world better.” He shakes his head in dismay. “Imoved here to take a job with a nonprofit helping refugee kids. I was so sure I’d finally found what I was meant to be doing.” The certainty already seems quaint, the lost dream of a dead man.

“So far, so Santi.” Thora accepts her wine from Brigitta and takes a gulp. “Couldn’t you have had your epiphany a little sooner? I’ve been here for years.”

He shakes his head. “I only remembered when I got here.”

“Convenient. Meanwhile, of course, I’ve known since I was ten.” She swirls the wine around her glass. “That led to some interesting conversations with my parents. My mum basically improvised an entire treatise about Western ideas of the immortal soul in relation to Eastern ideas of reincarnation.”

Santi frowns. “I thought the idea of reincarnation was that you don’t come back as the same person.”

Thora stares at him. “We don’t.” She lowers her voice, looking around at the other tables. “Santi, we weremarried. Don’t take this the wrong way, but even if we were the same age, the person I am now would never.” She sits back, regards him critically. “And I don’t think you would either. Not as you are.”

He shrugs. “Details.”

She looks at him in disbelief. Then she laughs.

“What?”

“I feel like I’ve had this argument with you before.”

“We’ve probably had them all before.”

“We’ve never argued about whether we’ve had this argument before,” Thora points out.

Santi smiles. “I guess not.”

“One thing never changes. I always win,” says Thora with satisfaction.

Santi presses his hands to his temples, trying to marshal his thoughts. “So your parents don’t remember.”

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