He swears. He wasn’t careful enough: the neighbor must have seen him. He shoves Thora’s letter into his pocket and pelts down the stairs. He hears the door splinter, heavy footsteps behind him. For the second time, he closes his eyes and prays for a miracle. This time, God doesn’t answer. One of the officers grabs him and slams him to the floor. In the dazzle of the flashlight, Santi sees the echo of another light—a flame, speechlessly bright—before it swings away.

The trial is brief: neither Santi nor his lawyer put much effort into his defense. The mostly local jury are not inclined to be lenient to a dark young man with a foreign accent caught breaking into the house of a dead old lady. The sentence comes down: three years in prison. His mother cries and promises to move to Cologne to be near him; his sister Aurelia is angry. He tries to comfort them, but it makes no sense to him to grieve for something inevitable. From the instant he remembered Thora, no other path existed.

He writes to her from prison. He knows the letter has nowhere to go but her grave, but he imagines it piercing the veil, going on somehow to the place they will meet next.

Dear Thora,

The last time I met you for the first time, you were in a hospital bed. You were older than I’ve ever seen you. But I knew you, just the same.

This life hasn’t been good to me. I miss the one where we were happy. You know the one.

(How likely is it that we’re thinking of different worlds?)

There’s a song, stuck in my head. There’s a tattoo on my wrist. I bite my nails, and I want a cigarette, and I don’t know how much of me is me anymore and how much of me is you. I used to be so sure of who I was. Is that something you stole from me? Or are we both drifting now, both as lost as each other?

Maybe you’re right, to want to forget. Maybe it was easier when we didn’t remember, when we thought each life was our only chance. But when I look back now, I can’t remember not remembering. It all feels like one thing: a path leading us step-by-step to where we need to be.

I know why you’ve resisted thinking about the meaning of all this. I know you like explanations, and you’re afraid there might not be an explanation for what’s happening to us.

I think we are the explanation. I don’t know if that makes sense to you. I’ve never been that good with words.

I wish I could tell you