Page 65 of Meet Me in Another Life

He could say yes. He could walk out now, with no explanation. Or, he could do what he did the last time he was with her, the same thing Thora did to Jules: tell her his truth until it breaks her. As he watches her face, he doesn’t sense that any of it would come as a surprise. He recognizes the constant note in their relationship: she is always, somehow, waiting for him to leave.

Perhaps, for once, he can surprise her. “Not this time,” he says, and draws her into his arms.

A week later, at Der Zentaur, he is arguing with Thora. It’s cold for sitting outside, but she wanted to smoke. Santi feels the ghost of a previous self’s craving as she taps away the ash.

“I don’t understand why you don’t understand.” She leans across the table. “I’m saying you were right, about you and me. We’re not made to live in the world like other people. We’ll always, always want what’s beyond. We’ll always want out.”

“I agree,” he says. “But what you’re doing—living in the gaps, refusing to engage with it as reality—that’s not getting out. That’s going further in.”

Thora sips her wine. “How is acting like this is real going to get us out?”

Santi pauses. He considers telling her that he is still looking for atonement, for the freely given sacrifice that will lead him to redemption. But he’s afraid she will pull him away from his purpose, like she has done so many times before.

“I’m still waiting for my proof, by the way,” Thora adds, drumming her fingers on the table. “I hope it’s not supposed to be the wine. I’ve had my doubts about that since before we started to remember.”

Santi checks his watch. “Should be here any minute now.” He looks up and sees the woman crossing the square toward them.

Thora follows his gaze. “No.” She gets up so violently that her glass falls from the table, wine spilling red over the cobbles. “No, I’m not doing this.” She walks away.

Santi goes after her, grabs her, and turns her around. Jules stops.

“Hi,” she says, waving awkwardly. “I’m Jules. You must be Thora.”

Thora’s body is angled away, her eyes downcast, as if she doesn’t trust herself to look.

“Tell her she’s not real,” Santi says in Thora’s ear. “You can’t. Can you?”

Thora takes a breath, like she’s about to plunge into icy water. She looks at Jules for a heartbeat before closing her eyes. When she opens them, she’s looking at Santi in fury. “You told me once this wasn’t hell,” she says. “You were wrong. What’s worse than a face you love that doesn’t remember?”

Jules frowns, a soft confusion in her eyes. “I’m sorry. Have we met before?”

Santi feels like a monster. He swallows what he wants to say to Thora.I’m sorry for following you from life to life like a starving dog. I’m sorry for haunting you with your wife’s ghost.He has to make her understand. “That’s the point,” he tells her. “This wouldn’t hurt if it wasn’t real.”

Thora shakes off his hold. “I’ll show you hurt.” The glance she gives him before she walks away is murderous.

Jules comes up to Santi, watching Thora leave. “Is she okay? I thought you said she wanted to meet new people.”

Santi looks at Jules, puzzled and friendly, always ready to give a stranger the benefit of the doubt. He thinks about how he got her here: tracking her down through her work, befriending her under false pretenses, using old memories to manipulate her into wanting to help him. Is he any better than Thora? “I’m sorry,” he says. “She’s having a bad day.”A bad series of lifetimes.

“That’s okay. Another time.” Jules squeezes his shoulder, as if part of her remembers the years she’s known him. “Tell her she’s cute,” she says with a wink as she walks away.

Santi goes back to the abandoned table and sits down, staring at the wine-edged prints of Thora’s boots. Their bloodstained path across the cobbles is comforting and horrifying: something he’s come to think of as the essence of her.I’ll show you hurt.He knows her well enough to understand it as a promise.

He doesn’t hear from her for weeks. He hearsofher, in the conversations that drift past him as he walks the city, looking for his chance to atone. Stories of a woman who can vanish into walls: a thief, a trickster, uncatchable as a ghost. He dreads running intoher, and wishes for it, often at the same time. He can’t tell which causes the jump in his heart when he returns to his apartment one morning with coffee and pastries for Héloïse and finds a note on the kitchen table.

Meet me at the tower, it says in Thora’s wide, looping hand.

He’s surprised by the fact that he recognizes her handwriting. Parts of her are becoming more constant: this, the blue hair, the way she dresses. Flashes of the real reflected in this flawed mirror, like the look on her face when she saw Jules across the square. A phrase from the Bible surfaces in his mind.En un mal espejo, confusamente. Through a glass darkly.He wants to believe that each lifetime, they come closer to seeing each other face-to-face. But now he feels her fleeing from him, back turned as she fades into the dark.

The apartment is quiet. Too quiet. Héloïse should be up by now, singing to Félicette as she measures out her breakfast. “Cariña?” he calls.

No answer. He drops the coffee and pastries on the table and goes through to the bedroom. The bed is hastily made, the wardrobe hanging open. Héloïse’s shoes are missing from their place by the front door.

He grabs his keys and leaves the apartment, a shiver of foreboding riding his shoulders. As he nears the old town, the streets ahead of him echo with crashing noise. It sounds like the city is at war. He’s afraid it’s Thora, that she has done something terrible, when he remembers: it’s carnival. Crowds collect around him, raucous and already half-drunk. Santi pushes through until he reaches the tower. FOLLOW THE LIGHT, Thora’s words shout, but she’s not there. He circles the wall, searching. Drums pound, a bassline to the crowd’s shrill screams. On old reflex, he reaches into his jacket for the handle of his grandfather’s knife.Dizziness hits him, so intense he sees stars. Then he sees Thora, standing in the grassy courtyard.

She’s dressed for carnival, in a devil mask and horns. She is holding something it takes him a moment to recognize as a cat carrier. Through the bars, he sees Félicette meowing piteously. She hates confined spaces, he thinks. Then he sees where Thora is standing.

“Roll up, roll up!” Thora calls, seeing him coming. “For the greatest magic trick the world has ever seen!”

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