Page 79 of Meet Me in Another Life

“I’m not trying.” He takes a shallow sip. “We’ve both collected plenty of pieces of each other by now.”

Thora frowns. Then she laughs.

“What?” he asks.

She smiles ruefully. “I was about to say that’s bullshit. But look at me. Patiently feeding you soup while you rail against the injustice of the universe.” She looks away, holding out her fist for Félicette to rub up against. “I spent so long defining myself in opposition to you. At first it was subconscious, but later—I guess I was scared. Of how much I’d taken from you.”

Santi looks at her, remembering a letter he once wrote.I don’t know how much of me is me anymore and how much of me is you.It’s almost a comfort. When he goes, part of him will remain, as long as Thora is alive.

“Don’t follow me,” he says, on impulse.

“What?”

“Stay.” He takes her hand. “Use the time you have. Don’t risk it just for the chance I’ll come back.”

“Would that be enough meaning for you? Sacrificing yourself so I could get out?” She shakes her head. “You really should have been a martyr. How you would have enjoyed being eaten by lions.” She takes the soup bowl from him. “Thanks for the offer,but I’ll decline, if it’s all the same to you. We don’t tend to do well when we stop talking to each other.”

He shifts away from her. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’m referring to the time I decided to throw your cat and your wife into a void and you decided to stab me.” She smiles. “Besides. What if I get out, and then I still can’t wake you up?” Her brow furrows. “Both of us, or neither of us. Okay?”

It’s not okay, but he’s too tired to argue. He sinks back into the sofa, eyes closing.

When he wakes, Thora is there. “How are you feeling?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “How am I alive? How are you here?”

She pokes his arm gently. “That was not a philosophical question. Can I get a serious answer?”

Santi feels his grip on this world loosening. The Thora in front of him seems more and more like a mirage. “The serious answer is that it’s serious.” He swallows. “I don’t think I have much time left.”

She nods. “Okay,” she says, her voice hoarse. He understands. They have lost each other so many times, but this is different: neither of them knows for sure if they are coming back.

Santi decides it doesn’t matter if he knows. He chooses to hope. A fragile, tentative hope, compared to the deep faith of his old, sure self, but all the more precious for that. “In real life,” he says. “Do you think we’re friends?”

“No. We probably hate each other.” She looks down at him fondly. “As soon as I wake up, I’ll remember how much. Then I’ll throw you out of the airlock.”

He laughs. “This may shock you, but I disagree.”

“Well,” she sighs, “it wouldn’t be the first time.”

“I look forward to continuing this argument in our next life.” He wants to keep his eyes open, to keep the sight of her as long as he can, but he’s so tired, so ready for an ending. He lets them drift closed. In the darkness, points of light hover unreachably far away. There’s a pattern here: one he may never understand, at least not while he is alive. But he chooses to believe the pattern exists, whether or not he can see it. “Ah,” he sighs, something like peace stealing over him. “Thora, I wish you could see this.”

Her voice is quiet, getting quieter. “What is it? What are you seeing?”

Through the pain, a smile spreads across his face. “The stars.”

Only One Choice

Thora lives.

In a strange, accelerated place, between somewhere and nowhere. She watches her life happen from a distance, like an audience who knows the magician’s tricks: sees the secret door in the drowning cabinet, the assistant swimming free. The early move from the Netherlands to the UK that should have fractured her. The chance comment from her father that was supposed to lodge in her mind forever. She floats through it all, a skillful sailor on a sea she knows by heart. At thirty-five, she rides the wave to a crest and leaps, landing on her feet outside the Hauptbahnhof, the cathedral rising above her into the cloudless summer sky. Here she is, back in Cologne again as if she never left.

She takes in a shuddering breath. She’s not dead. There may still be time to find a way out. She runs, abandoning the suitcase she brought with her. The staring people fade into the background as she pelts past the cathedral, one goal in her mind. Get to Der Zentaur. Wait for Santi.

It doesn’t occur to her that she might not be the first one there until she sees the mural on the building across the street: a blue-hairedgirl sitting on top of the clock tower, her profile making a gap in the stars.

She stares up at it in mingled joy and dread. Santi is already here. How long has he been in the city without her?

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