And so he left, and came back at night through the window he had already noted as a possible point of entry. The habits of a criminal lifetime are hard to break. Now he sits down at the computer, bringing up the login screen. In another life, he worked here: a summer job when he was an engineering student. He longs for the focus, the quickness of that self. Why can’t he will himself to change, even when he remembers being otherwise? Those first few weeks after he arrived, it was almost a relief to remember. He had been so lost, this life: ten years out of prison, haunted by all the ways he had failed. To know he hadn’t always been this way felt like a gift. Now, it feels more like a curse, his memory crowded with better versions of himself he can never be.

He thinks back to the decisions that led him here. A youthful theft to impress a girl, falling in with the wrong crowd, risking bigger and bigger scores until the one that landed him in prison. Decisions made blindly, without the conviction that has been taking root in him for lifetimes, that the way he and Thora live their lives matters. He can’t help resenting the unfairness of it. How can he seek the right path, when the life he lived before his memories returned has molded him into a shape he can’t alter?

Santi. Focus. He imagines Thora’s voice, her steadying hand on his shoulder. The login screen glows, awaiting his input. The password used to be heimweh. It still works. Shaking his head, he brings up the records of alumni who were students sixty years ago. He pages through, eyes flicking to the glass of the office door, checking for light and movement. He almost skips over her before he goes back. There she is: a low-res photo in the top right corner of the screen.

“Jane Smith,” he reads. He can’t help himself: he laughs aloud. The name she joked about using to introduce herself. The name he guessed, in the life where he married her. She could have chosen anything else. It confirms his first thought on seeing her message. Part of her wants to be found.

He looks through her record. He remembers when he could scan this kind of information effortlessly, but now his mind judders, skipping from place to place. Courses she took in undergrad, none of them familiar: literature, economics, theater. An address, recently updated, with a phone number and a note saying, Regular donor—stay in touch!