Buddhists do not believe in a soul, you know. Which is not to say that nothing remains—though nothing remains forever. Buddhists are comfortable with death. The Buddha taught Anatta, the doctrine of No-Soul, which identifies a cluster of forces within us—body, sensation, perception, mental formations, and consciousness—as that which makes us believe we have something unmoving and eternal at our cores. But we do not.

What, then, is reincarnated?

Nothing, my father told me once. Reincarnation is just one candle lighting another.

Taoists, on the other hand, believe that if you do all the right things, in the right order—well, you’ll die, of course, but if you’ve been very good, you’ll skip the afterlife and become immortal. Hindus have an eternal atman, similar to the Christian soul. A couple of Mormons came to my door recently, and I asked them about death. They said we’d definitely be corporeal in heaven (I would be included if I’d only read a certain book, give them my telephone number, maybe a donation), but they couldn’t tell me how far up heaven would be, or how our body parts would get there from our graves, or whether we’d be healthy again, our bodies fixed and fused, or whether we’d also get space suits. I think this is all there is, I told them. But it’s all right. It’s not so bad, the world. Their faces fell. This can’t be all there is, the paler one said. If that’s true, that’s the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard. They were so young; razor burn and starched collars.

When we saw the truck drive up, the men unloading equipment to dredge the pond, it was impossible to understand it as anything other than an admission: they were no longer looking for Serena, or for Luke. They were looking for their bodies. Even the peonies that had lined the paths so brightly at the beginning of the summer hung their heads, left petals in the dirt. It was just as well. They were spoiled now, overfat. They would die and be reborn.

Somewhere off to my right, Jamie was talking loudly to one of her friends. She laughed, clearly unmoved by the dredging, and I was surprised by the way her voice carried, her calm squared shoulders, the new solidity in her form. It suited her. She caught me looking and nodded once before turning away.

That was the day Dominique called me into her office alone. I had never seen her look so small. Even her magnificent breasts seemed deflated behind her desk.