I knew him.

I loved him.

Do you have any idea what our freedom cost?

But I keep looking out over the plains, and finally I see something like two ants wandering along a dusty pile. I sigh. All the way down there in the valley, where we began the climb up this mountain, through the trees, those two small specks walk away, walk west. Their progress is barely visible, but there is nothing to stop them, not as far as the eye can see. We will soon be separated by this great chasm. Everything has fallen into a stark, dazzling white, the light glaring off endless miles of glittering frost. I can smell snow, but none is falling.

He is going with her.

I hoped that he might be among the last of the crowd, that he could possibly be tagging along at the back, that he would come up and surprise me. We would hug and I would laugh out loud—my first real laugh in a long time—and he would explain how he got out of going back and that all the wrong I had done was magically undone.

But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t reverse my mistakes, couldn’t easily untie my deceptions, and the only option was for someone to go back. He is doing it. I strain my eyes toward the horizon, but even from that height, I can’t see the mountain we came from, the one whose shadow we have finally escaped. I don’t think I’d want to see it, but I search that far-off horizon anyway.

“Do you see him?” she asks, walking up behind me. Not long ago, she would have wrapped her arms around my body, moved in close and held me. I would have felt her warmth against my back. But not now. Not after everything that has happened.

I close my eyes, imagining. I shiver and nod. “I can’t believe he has to go back.” Unspoken are the words, It’s my fault.

We stand there in those words, the wind whipping them around us, catching on them, sailing away with them. She doesn’t offer any kind of consolation.

“It was here all along,” she says, a lining of amazement in her voice. “This mountain was here, waiting for us.”

“Are you . . .” I begin, then start over. My voice is hoarse, and I clear it against the dry, cold air. “Do you . . . remember?”

“Everything. It’s all coming back to me.”

“Even before?”

“Even before.”

“Me too,” I whisper.

How is it that a mind can contain so many memories? Where does it all fit? Into what nooks and crannies do we place these recollections of love and sadness, horror and joy? Into what tiny space of our minds do we put a person we met long ago, or a disappointment, or a lie? And where do memories go when we forget, and how is it that they can come rushing back, unbidden?

I am embarrassed by what I did, the choices I made. There are things I would rather forget, but because I can think of nothing else to say, a confession emerges: “I’m such a liar. You know that by now, right? How many things I said that weren’t true?”