Page 61 of Meet Me in Another Life

“Atone?” Thora catches up with him as they emerge from the tunnel. “How can we atone when we don’t even know what we’re being punished for?”

Santi lifts his chin. “We’ll know it when we see it.”

“How? How will we know?” She pursues him as he turns toward the cathedral. “Take last time. Obviously we failed, according to your reasoning, because we’re still here. But what would have done the trick? If I’d sold my house and moved into a bungalow? If you’d given back to all the people you stole from? Then what, there’d be a bright light and a chorus of angels and we’d finally be free?”

Santi looks at her, uncertain and close to tears. She forgets how vulnerable he is in this world, how much he needs her approval. Her fault. “I don’t know,” he says. “But whatever it is, it won’t be easy. You can’t atone without making a sacrifice. Giving up something you really don’t want to lose. Freely, of your own choice.”

The wind blows cold across the cathedral square. Thora pulls her jacket closed and keeps walking. She’s furious with him, and it takes her a moment to articulate why. She rounds on him, walking backward into the wind. “So you believe we have a choicenow? What happened to God’s hand? Everything happening because it has to happen?”

“That was when I thought there was one universe.”

Thora laughs, throwing her head back like a mad witch.

Santi scowls. “What’s funny?”

“What’s funny is we’ve swapped places.” She grins at him maniacally. “Go on. Ask me what I think.”

He pouts like the sulky teenager he is. “What do you think?”

The wind whips Thora’s hair into her eyes as they come up the steps to the cathedral. “We have no meaningful choices at all,” she says. “Our actions don’t matter, because whatever we do has the same result. We die, we come back, we die again. Forever.”

Santi’s face contorts with frustration. “Why?”

She shrugs violently. “Because someone decided that’s what we deserve. You want to think we’re going to learn from this, that it’s all going to add up to something in the end. But it isn’t. It’s just going to go on, and on, and on—”

“Thora!” Santi yells. His hand reaches out. Thora grabs it without thinking, lets him pull her forward: remembers his tiny fingers, clinging to her like she was the only thing in the world.

A high-pitched singing, impossibly loud.A chorus of angels, Thora thinks, as something shatters behind her. She turns to see the paving littered with shards of black stone. “What the fuck?”

“A tile from the cathedral.” Santi tugs her back down the steps. “The wind must have blown it loose. It was—it would have hit you.” She lets him lead her to the shelter of the train tracks. “Are you okay?” He looks strange, drawn, as if he’s seen something he can’t bear.

“I’m fine. What about you?” Thora searches his face. “I don’t want to know what you’re thinking, do I?”

He’s looking up at the cathedral. “You almost died. And I saved you. Just like you did for me, at the clock tower. Before—” He shudders. His hand goes to his throat.

“Fuck.” Thora stares at him. “What are you saying? That I’m fated to die now, and the world’s just going to keep trying until it kills me?”

“Maybe—” Santi bites off the word, looks away. “Maybe that’s part of the plan.”

Thora doesn’t have the breath to laugh. She looks past him, up at the cathedral that sent her death singing down to her. “So what, next time I’ll have to wait even longer?” Her voice shakes. “Fuck that. I can’t go through this again.” She pushes his arm off her and keeps walking, like she kept walking across the field that never ended.

Santi catches up with her. “There’s nothing we can do.”

She considers retorting:Actually, there is. It’s called a murder-suicide. What do you say?But she knows Santi would never agree to it. Some things are always sacred to him. However much it hurts her to know she’ll die before him, she can’t be the one to tear that away. “Why?” she says instead. “Because it’s destined? I don’t care. I’ll thwart destiny.”

A smile breaks through his troubled expression. “If anyone could, I’d bet on you.”

Thora snorts. “And from anyone but you, I’d take that as a compliment.” They come out through the narrow streets of the old town into the clock tower square. Her heart is steady now, her mind almost resolved. In the shadow of the tower, her fingers trace the words of her message. NOTHING TO LOSE. She takes a breath and ducks through the jagged hole in the wall.

“What are you doing?”

She turns. Santi stands in the light, like she’s seeing himthrough a portal to elsewhere. She wonders how she must look to him: a shape in the darkness, already half-gone. “Taking the only way out I can.”

She knows his face so well. The part of her that helped raise him cries out in protest. She doesn’t want anything to hurt him. “What do you mean?” he asks.

“I’m not waiting around for the universe to kill me.” She looks up at the dark space above her. “If I’m going, it’ll be on my own terms.” It’s a peaceful feeling. Like being in a nose-diving plane, her hands coming to rest on the controls.

She starts to climb. After a moment she hears Santi’s footsteps behind her. She turns, meeting his eyes in the dark.

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