I read their queries and comments. A sense of belonging was waiting for them somewhere out there, and they were simply in the wrong place, the wrong body, the wrong life. Queries ranged from curious to desperate. Some people had specific memories of previous lives: a hoop skirt covering a long scar shaped like the letter S. For some it was just a vague sense that they didn’t fit where they were now. Some people were aggressive in their insistence that past lives were real. Some were embarrassed but “had to give it a try.”

There was nothing to help me understand Cole.

Beside the computer was a round end table, with a glossy coffee table book—Elijah West’s book, the one he’d left the island to make, all the most beautiful bridges of the world. The cover showed a long causeway, with an orange sun balancing on its highest point. I picked up the book and thumbed through.

“Can’t you find something better than that to read in here?” Elijah said, appearing behind me. He looked at the pages as I turned them.

“I guess I’m desperate,” I said.

“Take it home,” Elijah said. “Share it with Lucas.”

He was so proud of the book.

“It’s beautiful,” I told him, and I meant it. “Seriously. I’ve been wanting a chance to look through it and really take my time.”

He beamed.

At home, I tried to show Lucas the book, but he still wasn’t talking to me. It was a lonely night—a long bleak dusk and silence in the house. I was restless. After eating alone, I shut myself in my room. In my notebook, I started a new list: Ways to Make Things Better. I wrote, wait, apologize, leave, stay.

I began to flip through the pages of Elijah’s bridge book. It started with a series of New York City bridges: the George Washington Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Queensboro Bridge, Hell Gate Bridge. They rose up into the sky like bones, like the rib cages of giant fish, wrecked on the beach. Rib after rib. I had the strange sensation that Elijah’s book, like a bridge itself, was connecting me to the rest of the world.

I turned the pages and saw bridges over streams. Log bridges. Bridges made from planks. A bridge made from the bottom of a boat. A bridge made from window shutters. Firm little walkways from one bank to the next. Then longer bridges. The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, the Seven Mile Bridge through the Florida Keys. Suspension bridges. Swaying bridges. The covered bridges of New England.

Stop.

I leaned closer to the book. The bridges of New England were all dark wood against bright red and yellow leaves. Pretty and charming, but that wasn’t what caught my eye.