Page 46 of Meet Me in Another Life

Thora laughs, half-nerves and half-relief. She draws her wife in for a kiss.

Jules leans across and pokes Santi solemnly in the shoulder. “Hey. You. All that stuff in the kitchen. You shouldn’t have.”

Santi waves her off. “Least I can do for my favorite nephew.”

Jules looks worried. “You can’t afford all that.”

“They pay me enough.”

“No, they don’t! They pay you minimum wage,” Jules retorts. “Speaking of which. My boss is looking for an assistant. Money’s crap, but it’d be more than you get right now. And there’d be potential. Progression.” Jules leans forward until Santi has to look at her. “The chance to use your prodigious brain, instead of numbing it on a production line.”

He laughs. “Thank you. But—I already have my work. It just isn’t how I make my living.”

Jules raises an eyebrow. “Well. That’s certainly mysterious.”

“It’s not easy,” Santi says. “Finding the right path.” His eyes meet Thora’s until she looks away.

After he leaves, Jules sits down at the kitchen table, the little furrow between her brows that Thora adores. She bends to kiss it. “What’s up?”

“Santi.” Jules sighs. “He looks too skinny again. And did you see his sweater? Full of holes.”

Thora blinks. “I didn’t notice.” She sees Santi as she expects to see him, a portrait drawn more by her overlaid memories than by this reality. “Santi’s fine,” she says. “He’s made his choices. If he wanted help, he’d ask.”

“Would he?”

“He already did, remember? Otherwise we wouldn’t be stuck looking after his terrible cat.”

“She’s not terrible.” As if to prove Jules wrong, the cat chooses that moment to hop up on the table, almost knocking over her tea. “Jesus, Félicette!”

Thora strokes the cat, looking into her green eyes. “I’m sorry your owner went mad. But don’t worry. We’ll take care of you.” Félicette rubs against her knuckles with a soft, reproachful meow.

“I just worry about him,” Jules says, chin propped on her hand. “That job’s destroying him, and he spends every spare moment either volunteering or scribbling in that book of his. What’s he writing in there?”

Thora looks at her wife. At moments like this, she’s consumed with the desire to tell her.I’ve waited for you for lifetimes.But that would mean telling her about the other times they were together, about the versions of herself that weren’t right. She doesn’t want Jules to know any one but this.

“Who knows,” she says. “A theory of everything.”

She doesn’t see Santi for a month. She’s used to him disappearing for weeks, reappearing with a head full of questions and a book full of notes and drawings. She’s not exactly sure what he does without her. Mostly, she’s too absorbed with Jules and Oskar to wonder. Only sometimes does she get a feeling like an itch inside her, a prodding from the part of her that always needs to explore.Next time, she tells herself. She’s in no hurry. Her life is no longer bounded by her birth and her death: perhaps no longer bounded at all.

She’s up feeding Oskar at two in the morning when the buzzer rings. She lifts the receiver. “Santi, it’s two in the morning.”

“I know. Can I come up?”

“What’s wrong?” she asks when she opens the door. “Did you get kicked out?”

“How did you die?”

Thora blinks. “I’m sorry?”

“The life where I was your teacher. I died a year after you left, of a heart attack. How did you die?”

“Keep your voice down!” Thora grabs his arm and pulls himinto the kitchen. Santi takes out his tobacco pouch and starts rolling a cigarette. “You’d better not be planning to smoke that in here.”

He gives her a look. “Of course not. Stop stalling and tell me.”

Thora arranges herself with Oskar in a chair. “I died in an accident when I was eight,” she says. “First term in the new school. Served my parents right for moving me, I guess. Remember when that cable car fell in the river?”

Santi nods.

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