He trails off. There is too much he wants to say to Thora, not enough space in the words to hold it. He folds up the letter and keeps it under his mattress, always intending to finish it.

Between the daily déjà vu of prison, between visits from his mother that leave him sadder and calls from Aurelia that remind him there is life outside these walls, he turns his mind to the mystery of him and Thora. The police confiscated her letter; Santi assumes they gave it to Andromeda. He imagines her in the chaos of her mother’s secret room, staring up at the map of her madness. He wishes he could go back there, read Thora’s notes, have something to work from. Instead, he is trying to solve a puzzle with half the pieces missing and one hand tied behind his back: the handicap this life has given him, of a brittle mind that can’t focus on details. Still, he tries, writing out the notes he remembers and sticking them on the wall, mimicking Thora’s chaotic display. In the center, he places a drawing he did from memory of one of the photographs: Thora in her youth, but no youth of hers he’s ever seen. She’s astride a horse, her face round and healthy, her eyes creasing up with laughter. On the days his head hurts from trying to work out who they are, what their purpose is, he looks into her eyes as though she could somehow look back. “I need you,” he says softly. “I need you to help figure this out.”

“She your girl?” Jaime asks, coming in sweaty from exercise in the yard. It’s a comfort, having his old friend as his cellmate, even if as far as Jaime is concerned they just met.

“No,” Santi says. “She’s the old lady I stole from to end up in here.”

Jaime laughs. “You’re crazy, López,” he says, swinging himself onto his bunk.

Maybe we’re both just crazy. Thora, last time, under the unchanged stars. Locked in a little room somewhere, dreaming of other lives.

Santi raises an eyebrow. “That’s one possibility.”

He flicks through his memory book, filled with drawings of himself in every lifetime: better selves, smarter selves, who would have had a chance of finding the right path. He thought that made the test unfair, but he was wrong. He pauses on a picture of his old science classroom, Thora upright and self-conscious in the second row. He hears his own voice: If God’s test were easy, it would be meaningless. He will try to pass it with the tools he has been given, the self he is this time. If he doesn’t succeed, perhaps the next version of him will. Each time they reawaken is another chance to get it right.