Page 53 of Meet Me in Another Life

Of course. If she was hiding from him, the first thing she would have done was change her name. “Can I—can I see some pictures? I’d know her if I saw her, I would—”

The receptionist looked him up and down: his old clothes, his foreign accent, his shaking hands. “I’m sorry. Are you an alumnus of the university?” Santi shook his head.Not this time.“Then I’m afraid I can’t help you. We have to protect the privacy of our alumni. I’m sure you understand.”

And so he left, and came back at night through the window he had already noted as a possible point of entry. The habits of a criminal lifetime are hard to break. Now he sits down at the computer, bringing up the login screen. In another life, he worked here: a summer job when he was an engineering student. He longs for the focus, the quickness of that self. Why can’t he will himself to change, even when he remembers being otherwise? Those first few weeks after he arrived, it was almost a relief to remember. He had been so lost, this life: ten years out of prison, haunted by all the ways he had failed. To know he hadn’t always been this way felt like a gift. Now, it feels more like a curse, his memory crowded with better versions of himself he can never be.

He thinks back to the decisions that led him here. A youthful theft to impress a girl, falling in with the wrong crowd, riskingbigger and bigger scores until the one that landed him in prison. Decisions made blindly, without the conviction that has been taking root in him for lifetimes, that the way he and Thora live their lives matters. He can’t help resenting the unfairness of it. How can he seek the right path, when the life he lived before his memories returned has molded him into a shape he can’t alter?

Santi. Focus.He imagines Thora’s voice, her steadying hand on his shoulder. The login screen glows, awaiting his input. The password used to beheimweh. It still works. Shaking his head, he brings up the records of alumni who were students sixty years ago. He pages through, eyes flicking to the glass of the office door, checking for light and movement. He almost skips over her before he goes back. There she is: a low-res photo in the top right corner of the screen.

“Jane Smith,” he reads. He can’t help himself: he laughs aloud. The name she joked about using to introduce herself. The name he guessed, in the life where he married her. She could have chosen anything else. It confirms his first thought on seeing her message. Part of her wants to be found.

He looks through her record. He remembers when he could scan this kind of information effortlessly, but now his mind judders, skipping from place to place. Courses she took in undergrad, none of them familiar: literature, economics, theater. An address, recently updated, with a phone number and a note saying,Regular donor—stay in touch!

His hands tremble as he takes out his memory book. He writes down the phone number and the address: in Rodenkirchen, a rich southern neighborhood beside the river. Santi has never known a Thora who lived there. He hears her voice again, low and sarcastic.Maybe I’ll get rich and buy a mansion in Rodenkirchen.Anotherclue she left for him. He stares down at her address in the midst of his drawings and has to stop himself from laughing at the miracle: the inexplicable solidified, imagination made flesh.

A light shines through the office door. He swears. By the time he has shoved his memory book into his jacket, the security guard is already unlocking the door. It’s too late to go for the window. Santi prays wordlessly for a miracle. He runs straight at the guard, hoping to knock him off his feet. Instead, the guard dodges. Before Santi can change direction, he’s running into the wall: no,throughthe wall, passing cleanly from existence to non-existence and back.

He finds himself outside, grass under his feet, trees and night sky above his head. He gasps in wonder and terror as he looks up: the same stars again, bright and constant, letting in the light.

He calls the number the next morning, from his damp apartment in Kalk on the other side of the river. The gray curtains, the stained carpet, all blur to unreality as he listens to the electronic pulse.

“Hello?” A brisk voice, not hers.

He clears his throat. “I—I’m looking for Jane Smith.”

“This is her daughter,” says the voice. “I’m afraid my mother’s very ill. I’m sorry, who’s calling?”

A daughter. He imagines a grown-up Estela he never got to see. The heart-shock makes him forget his own name. “I—Santiago López,” he says. “Would you tell her I called? Just—say Santi. She’ll know.”

A pause. “All right,” she says, clipped, and she’s gone.

He doesn’t expect her to call back. He’s halfway out of thedoor, on his way to the address in Rodenkirchen, when his phone rings less than a minute later.

“She doesn’t want to see you.” Thora’s daughter sounds upset. “She says she thought she’d made that clear.”

Santi hesitates. How can he explain that he doesn’t care about a dying woman’s wishes, that he will see Thora even if he has to break every window in the city to find her? But the daughter isn’t finished. With a ghost-familiar dryness, she continues, “She also told me to tell you she’s in the central hospital, and that visiting hours are until six.”

Santi laughs into her silence. “Which ward?”

“Oncology,” she says, and hangs up.

Cancer. He wishes God could have more imagination. At least she made it to eighty this time. He still remembers visiting his young physiotherapist in the same ward, the crack it made in his old, tired heart.

He catches a bus to the hospital. As it crawls across the river, he twitches in his seat, wishing he’d walked. He gets off a stop early and runs, the spring wind tugging at his jacket. At reception, he gives his name and takes a seat. After an eternity in a plastic chair, a harried-looking woman approaches him. “Mr. López?”

He stands. “Yes?”

“I’m Andromeda. Jane’s daughter. Will you come with me, please?”

Andromeda looks nothing like Estela, nothing like any of the Thoras he remembers. He follows, wondering for the first time if this is all a mistake: if he is about to impose on a dying woman who happens to look like his imaginary friend.She told you to come, he reminds himself, as he enters a corridor full of staring family.

The daughter turns. She’s upset, but hiding it well; now he sees Thora in her. “She asked to speak to you alone. We want to respect her wishes, but she doesn’t have much time left. We’d all appreciate it if you kept it short.”

He considers telling her that Thora, like him, has nothing but time. “I’ll do my best,” he says, and goes in, closing the door behind him.

Thora lies in bed, gnarled hands gripping the coverlet. Her hair is the ice-cream blue of old women, permed into unnatural curls. He’s never seen her so old. She must have had a good life, this time around. A safe life. He thinks of his scrabbling childhood that ended in two years of jail and feels a sick resentment. He won’t live to see her age in this lifetime.

“You’re late.” The old woman’s voice is barely more than breath. Still, it’s Thora’s. She is real, and she’s right in front of him, just in time for him to lose her again.

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