He found himself thinking of his grandfather Joseph, Molly’s father. He thought of Joseph not so much as he was when he was old and sick in hospice in Fairfax, but as he was when they lived in Alabama by the pond. There were geese in the pond through the winter, and they fed them bits of stale bread almost every morning. It wasn’t easy to get a goose to trust a couple of humans, but they had succeeded. They didn’t plan it, really. They were both early risers, and they showed up there. He could still picture Joseph’s delighted expression in the center of a whirling globe of black heads with white chinstraps and gray wings and dark, squawking beaks. Geese paired up like humans, Joseph explained. Better than humans, because geese stayed true.

Daniel also remembered the days in the spring when the first flocks would go back up north to Canada or wherever they came from. He and Joseph would look up at the racing V overhead, a single thumping bird soul, and watch them with the excitement of travel and the sadness of being left again. Daniel remembered envying them their purpose and connectedness, and how they could just fly away. He collected feathers as a way to hold on to them. His grandma said they were dirty, but his mother secretly let him keep them.

Joseph dreamed of being a pilot, and he would have been if he hadn’t had polio when he was a teenager, which left his leg weak. Daniel told Joseph that’s what he would do, too, and he fully meant it at the time. After they moved, Joseph used to send pictures of the planes he thought Daniel should fly. Daniel felt sorry that he ended that life before he could do it.

He was partly surprised because he almost never thought of grave-yards. They meant so much less than most people thought they did. He remembered a woman from his old neighborhood in St. Louis driving fifteen miles to the cemetery every day to mourn her long-dead husband at a cold gray stone, while the husband was busy selling milk at the 7-Eleven just half a mile down the road from her house.

Daniel hadn’t seen his grandfather since he’d died, though he had been keeping an eye out for him. They would likely be about the same age now. He’d thought they would have crossed paths, being as close as they were. But they hadn’t, and it made him wonder if Joseph had lived his last life. It fit, as he thought of it, and it made him sad. Some chances you really did lose.

He parked the car and walked up to a hilltop. It was good to get out and walk a bit. He was drowsy, and his focus turned so deeply inward he half expected his body to stop breathing.

His grandfather’s gravestone looked as he thought it would, except that it didn’t have the bunches of dahlias he had pictured. He looked around and saw the familiar flowers a little way down the row, an armload of them, fresh-cut and deep pink. He was confused by that, and slightly alarmed. Was there a new death in the family? He hoped his brothers were all right. Curiosity drew him down the row to the decorated grave. He read the name twice before it meant anything to him. “Daniel Joseph Robinson, beloved son of Molly and Joshua.”

It was possible he really had stopped breathing, as his breath came fast and painfully now. They’d engraved the name they’d given him second and the name he’d given himself first. There were not only flowers but two candles and a photograph in a frame. He didn’t want to look at the photograph, but he reached for it anyway.

It was him, of course. It was him in his cross-country uniform, standing next to Molly. He was sweaty, the hair on his neck in wet spears. It was just after a race, and Molly carried the trophy. She wasn’t holding it up for the camera, just dangling it in her hand. He won most of the races, and she knew he didn’t care about the trophy.

He must have been about fourteen. He wasn’t quite as tall as her yet. He was leaning his head against her shoulder. His eyes were closed, and he was laughing about something, not posing but really laughing. He knew why she kept this picture. Maybe there had been a moment or two of satisfaction for her.

He never looked at his own graves. He never wanted to see an old picture of himself. He had avoided those things, not knowing exactly why, and now he knew why. He sat down. He realized he held his car key in his hand and it was shaking. He put the key in his pocket.

He remembered the races. He remembered being fast, just effortlessly fast in that body. He remembered those autumn days and his favorite course that wound through the hemlock forest of the land trust. He’d never been so good at running before. No matter how much diligence and strategy you brought to a race, those legs were just faster than the others.

He thought of Molly tending this grave, bringing these flowers, lighting the candles. His impulse was to go and find her. “I’m fine,” he wanted to say to her. “I still love you, and I think about you all the time. I’m not down there, I’m right here.”

He looked at the photograph again. He looked down at his hands and remembered his old hands—the nail of his left middle finger, which grew in funny, his bony knuckles, his freckled skin. Those hands weren’t here; they were down there. Or whatever was left of them. Those fast legs weren’t here; they were buried, too. That was him, Molly’s son, and he was under there; he wasn’t right here. That was me.

He missed that body. He heard music so well in that body. His fingers were graceful and quick on the piano keys. It was a talented body, and it was a shame to throw it away.

As he looked at Molly’s face in the picture, he knew he hadn’t loved that body because it was fast and heard music well. He would have liked to think so, but he knew it wasn’t true. He loved it because he’d been loved. Because Molly had loved him.

In this present body he hadn’t been loved, and he found almost nothing to love about himself. He didn’t want to give a mother that kind of power, but Molly had it anyway.

It was amazing how he thought he could take his whole self with him to every new life, not remembering that when you left someone like Molly, you left a part of yourself behind forever. Sometimes he wondered if his memory for the important things was really very good at all.

He glanced at the photograph for the last time before he got up on trembling legs. He hadn’t been able to see it or accept it then, but it seemed so obvious now. He’d looked just like her.