“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.