He felt as though he was trying to solve a problem with too many variables. How had Joaquim found Sophia? If someone was helping him, as Ben had suggested, then who was it and why? And what kind of memory did this person have? Or had Joaquim somehow gained the capacity to recognize people on his own?

By whatever means Joaquim had found her, he had probably discovered Daniel’s proximity and also his remoteness, and thinking of that made Daniel feel stupid. Why had he stayed away so long? What, besides cowardice, was the point of that, exactly? Was he bowing to her fear or to his? By staying away, even while knowing what he knew, he left Sophia open to these weird machinations.

And this troubling thought ushered in the second category of variables. How had Joaquim been able to pass himself off to her as Daniel? What powers of persuasion could he have used to get her to believe that? And moreover, how had he gotten anywhere with it? Daniel, who’d loved her all her life, had sent her running for the doors, and Joaquim, who’d been nothing but brutal to her, somehow got to take her on vacation to Mexico. Daniel hadn’t been able to make her believe anything, and somehow Joaquim had convinced her of . . . God only knew what. Maybe they were having a lovely and romantic time together. Maybe Daniel didn’t know anything of human nature at all. “Fuck,” he muttered to himself.

Joaquim wouldn’t hurt her. Not yet, at least. That was the single benefit to Joaquim’s pretense. As long as he was Daniel, he wasn’t going to hurt her. When the real Daniel showed up, though, it would all be blown open.

The heat of the sun on his back as he walked off the plane in Ixtapa pressed on him like a weight. He stood in a snaking line of spring-breakers, already pink and drinking tequila out of paper cups. He was grim from his face down to the dark winter clothes he hadn’t taken time to change out of. He was trying to think of something to say in his eighteenth-century Castilian to the customs official to get him to the front of the line.

It was impossible getting anything done in a town full of half-drunk tourists. Nobody else was in a hurry. It took him an hour and a half to rent a car. He was on the edge of giving up, but he knew he’d want it later. Slow down, he kept reminding himself. He’s not going to hurt her. Not yet.

Once in town, it didn’t take him long to find her. It wasn’t a huge town, and there were only a handful of luxury hotels. If he had doubted whether it was a setup, whether Joaquim wanted to be found, he needed to look no further than the name he used to check them in to the Ixtapa Grand Imperial: Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Grey. Granted, Daniel was a little funny about his name, but still. It pissed him off.

The original, actual, and true Daniel waited in the lobby. He used the time to study the layout of the building until at last he saw a face he knew. It wasn’t the one he wanted, but it was clarifying. And though he’d known who the imposter would be, it shook him anyway. The man from the Lakers game with the near-courtside seats and the good haircut and the rotted soul was more disturbing in person. There was something so deeply corrupt about his soul that it made him difficult for Daniel to recognize in the usual way, but Daniel knew it was him, and the passage of time didn’t really make the feeling of revulsion less. This was the thing he hoped against and feared, but here it was.

“Do you sell cigarettes here?” he overheard Joaquim ask the concierge. Joaquim didn’t bother to speak Spanish.

The man pointed him to the shop around the corner.

“You don’t sell them here? Are you kidding me?”

“No, I’m sorry, sir. Just outside.”

Joaquim strode out the door, and Daniel went up to the desk. “Mr. Grey’s room, please,” he asked in Spanish.

“I can’t give you the room number, sir,” the young man said politely. “But I can connect you.”

“Yes, that’s fine.” He watched long enough to see the room number he punched in.

The attendant said a few words into the phone and put the line on hold. “Mrs. Grey is there, sir, but Mr. Grey is not.”

He shook his head dismissively. “I’ll call back later.”

As soon as the attendant turned his head, Daniel took the stairs. He ran up six flights. It was hot in this place. If there was any air-conditioning, it was relegated to the rooms. He found room 632 and knocked.

“Yes?” He heard a tentative voice from inside the room, a voice he knew.

“Uh, room service,” he said. If it had been a different day, he wouldn’t have been able to say it with a straight face.

He fidgeted miserably as he waited for her to come to the door. Please open it, he thought. There wasn’t much time.

What was she going to think when she saw him? For the first time in a long time he had the sense that he was walking into his life as opposed to just hanging around by the front door. That is, if she let him in. He hoped his face would not be completely unwelcome.

She’d gotten through one night of this, but she wasn’t sure she could get through six more. She couldn’t sleep with him. Her nerves recoiled at the thought of having sex with him, and she literally couldn’t fall asleep with her body next to his. They’d gotten in late the night before, and she had been far too agitated to sleep. She dozed off, finally, reading in a chair, and was startled awake long before the sun rose. As much as she blamed herself, it didn’t change the way she felt. She’d made stupid excuses—she had her period, she was a heavy bleeder, cramps, and so on—stuff you said to put a man on his heels, possibly permanently. She was burning this thing down by now, but she couldn’t help it. She couldn’t sleep with him.

And he was frustrated, of course. You didn’t take a girl to Mexico to have her sleep in a chair with her book. He didn’t do anything hurtful, but still she felt strangely watchful around him. She sensed a volatility not far under his skin that she’d never picked up on in high school. He went out to buy cigarettes and she felt relieved, even just to have a couple of minutes to herself. She had a fantasy of sneaking out of the hotel and heading home. God, what was the matter with her? What would Constance say? How had it come to this?

Maybe there was some mercy in this if she looked at it the right way. Before he’d found her, her life was at an impasse. She couldn’t move forward without him. She thought she’d never get over him. But now that she was with him, she knew she could. Now that she was with him, her old romantic notions seemed ridiculous to her. She had more than gotten over him, in spite of the fact that she was stuck in a hotel room in Mexico with him for the next six days. She could eagerly and with a big dose of relief picture life without him. She was sorry to Constance and Sophia for not taking up her legacy, but she couldn’t. As promising as this bold new world had once seemed, it was a disappointment. And maybe that was for the best. She could finally recommit herself to the old one without looking back.

When she heard footsteps outside the door, her heart sank. She didn’t want him back so soon. She was surprised that he would knock.

“Yes?”

“Room service.”

She hadn’t ordered anything. Had he ordered something? She was frankly relieved as she walked to the door. She wouldn’t open it for Daniel in her robe, but she wasn’t afraid of room service.

She expected a stranger with a tray, and she could not take in what she actually saw. She looked at him and looked away and looked at him again.

“Oh my God.”

“Hey,” he said nervously, looking behind him, down the hall, and then back at her.

“Daniel,” she whispered. He was an apparition, but he was also sweating and fidgeting and leaving dusty footprints on the dark rug.

“Do you remember me?”

“Oh my God.” Her mind grabbed at different things. Had he somehow changed again? Got into yet another body? Got his old body back? How did it work? What was possible? But she saw his eyes and his chin and his shoulders and his shoes and his neck and his collar and his hands and she knew he was not, absolutely not, the same person as the one who left to buy cigarettes. Oh my God. It was him.

“I’m sorry to barge in on your vacation like this, but will you come with me?”

“Where?”

“Away from here.”

He looked as though he was going to jump out of his skin. She understood that she had to hurry. “Just . . . like this?” She glanced down at her robe.

“Okay.”

“Right now?” Her heart was ready to explode, her same old romantic heart.

There was the ding of the elevator reaching their floor.

“Right now.”

She stepped quickly out of the room and he closed the door quietly. The elevator was down the hall, but you could hear the doors open. He took her hand, and she followed him, barefoot. They turned two corners. She heard footsteps not far behind and a keycard unlocking a room, probably hers. He stopped at a door just before the stairwell. He opened it and pulled her in. He closed it behind him. It was some kind of utility closet. He was able to lock it from inside.

They stood in the dark, and she tried to catch her breath. She realized they were still holding hands.

“Are we running away from the guy I came here with?” she whispered.

“Yes. Do you mind?”

“No.”

“Good.” He stood close, and she could hear them both breathing hard. “I’m sorry to be so surprising,” he murmured.

She laughed. It was a strange sound to her own ears, as if she had never laughed before in her life. “You have no idea.”

He smiled at her outburst but widened his eyes as though she had better be quiet.

The throb of her heart went up into her throat and down to the bottom of her pelvis. The idea that that other person she’d come here with was the same as Daniel was just so preposterous that she felt sorry for herself for trying to think it was so.

“I can’t believe you are here,” she whispered. “Are you really here? Are you still alive? Am I imagining you?” She’d stopped laughing, and now there were tears dropping out of her eyes.

“I think I’m really here.”

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yes. I’m happy to see you.” He watched her face, which was open and brave, and it made his chest hurt. Maybe he did know a little bit about love.

“Even after what happened last time?”

“That wasn’t your fault. That was mine.”

“No, it wasn’t.” His look was vehement.

There were two sets of footsteps outside the door. Joaquim’s voice was shouting at a man who was answering in quiet Spanish. “I’m sorry, sir, but we can’t help you with that,” the quieter voice was saying. “You’ll have to contact the police if you think something is amiss.”

Daniel felt Sophia squeezing his hand. The sounds passed and faded.

“He said he was you. I knew he wasn’t you. Why did he tell me that? What does he want from me?”

“It’s a very long story,” he whispered. “And possibly hard to believe. But I’ll tell you if you want me to.”

“Right here? In this closet?”

“No. I think the best thing is to wait here for a few more minutes and then go down through the kitchen and out that door. I’m parked in the alley. There’s a place we can go to up the coast until I can arrange a flight out of here.”

She nodded, both eager and bewildered, staring at him up and down as well as she could in the darkness. “You still have those shoes,” she whispered.

He looked down at them and back at her questioningly.

“Those shoes. From high school. I remember them.”

“Do you?” He felt absurdly happy about it.

He waited until all was quiet before he felt through the hangers in the back of the tiny room and handed her a dress-length, zippered smock like those the housekeeping staff wore. “You might be less noticeable in this,” he said. He found a head scarf that went with it. “Keep your head down, okay? We shouldn’t walk together. You go first, and I’ll follow. But don’t worry about me, just keep going. Go down the stairs to the right and then into the kitchen. Walk straight through to the metal door under the exit sign, which will take you outside. The car is a red Ford Focus with Mexican plates parked directly across the alley, and it will be open when you get there. Don’t stop, and don’t talk to anybody if you can help it. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay.” He wanted to hold her. He wanted to touch her in some way. It was hard to keep his hands off her, but it was impossible to put them on her, too. What did she think of him now?

“Is he dangerous?”

“Yes,” he answered. “But I won’t take my eyes off of you.”

She held up the smock.

He smiled in spite of himself. “Except for right now. While you change. I’ll turn around.”

She smiled, too, and he didn’t want to turn around, but he did. He heard her fiddling with the smock.

“Done,” she said.

He turned back around and the robe was on the ground and the smock was zipped up the front. She was packing her hair into the scarf. He put his hands in his pockets.

“What about shoes?”

“Right.” There were shallow cubbies along the wall, in which he found a pair of pink foam flip-flops. He held them up to her.

“I think they’ll work.” She put them on.

He found a shelf of white linens and handed her a tall pile. “Here.”

She took it.

He moved to the door and put his hand on the knob. He listened for a moment. “You ready?”

“Yes.”

He opened the door. “Go. Keep your head down.”

She went out into the hall. She took a moment to turn around and smile at him, and his heart melted some more. She made a beautiful housekeeper.

“He’s taking down the plates,” Daniel said to her, looking in his rearview mirror.

“What do we do?” she asked.

“We’ll figure something out.”

She kicked off her flip-flops and put her bare feet on the dashboard. “This is fun.” She should have been scared, and she was, but it was hard to give the real world much notice when he was this close.

“If we get out of here it will be.”

Daniel concentrated for a few moments on finding the road to take them northward. He kept glancing in the rearview mirror, and she guessed he was checking that they weren’t being followed.

“Does he have a car?” he asked.

“Not that I know of. We didn’t rent one. We took a cab from the airport.”

“Good. That might slow him down a little.”

“Are you sure he’s going to come?”

“No. But I think he’s going to catch up with us eventually. He’s not going to give up now. We just have to hope it takes him a while.”

She took off her scarf and studied the side of his face. It felt good to be with him, no matter what.

“Is this a good time for the story, do you think?” she asked.

He nodded, but his look was cautious, and she understood why. “It’s long and strange, and you don’t need to believe any of it if you don’t want to,” he said. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll tell you my version, and after that we can try to think of an explanation that actually makes sense.”

His voice was light, but she felt deep compassion for him. He’d been alone with his version of the world for a long time. She wanted him to know she understood that. She had that and so much else to tell him, but she couldn’t seem to get any of it out. Her ideas spun wildly in her head, and she couldn’t slow them down or put them in a logical order. “It’s okay, Daniel,” she managed to say. “I understand more than you think I do.”

He glanced from the road to her face and back. He was quiet for a few seconds. “What do you mean?”

She tried to calm her thoughts. She took a few slow breaths. “I mean I—I don’t understand it exactly, but I believe—I think I believe the idea that we—our souls—live on in some way so that you can know people and remember things through more than one life.”

He looked from her to the road and back several times. It was harder to have this conversation when they couldn’t look at each other. She longed to connect with him in some way—not to grab him and kiss him, although she didn’t want to rule that out, but to understand how he felt about her, to read his awkwardness better, to begin to break down five numbing years of uncertainty.

“What made you . . . think this?” he asked carefully.

“Well. A psychic, a hypnotist, and a few other things I don’t believe in. That’s another long story.”

His posture was still. Both hands gripped the steering wheel.

“Do you know about me?” He looked as though he was scared to trust her.

“I only know a little bit. I know I’ve known you before. At least I think so.” She plucked at her seat belt. “Can I ask you something I don’t understand?”

“Sure.”

“How come you are always Daniel, while the rest of us keep coming back as different people? Have you been alive for a very long time?”

She saw relief on his face. “Is that what you thought? That I was hundreds of years old?” He looked at her and smiled. “I think you’ve relaxed your standards for what’s acceptable in a companion.”

She laughed. “It’s been a strange few years.”

He let his breath out. He sat back in his seat. “I’m twenty-four years old. In a way I have been alive for a very long time, but I’ve died a lot of times, too, just like you.”

“Then how do you stay the same from one life to the next?”

“I don’t. It’s my mind that stays the same. Because I remember.”

She nodded.

“It’s the only unusual thing about me. But it’s very unusual.”

“Huh.” She took a moment with that. “And you remember everything? All of your lives? All the people you’ve known?”

He kept glancing at her, as though he wanted to be able to tell how this was going down. “My memory isn’t perfect, but yes, I remember almost all of it. Except my birthday. I tend to forget that.”

She heard the lightness in his voice, and she felt it, too. “You do not.”

“I do. It seems like half the days of the year are my birthday. They sort of lose their punch.”

“I can see that.”

“And it undermines my belief in astrology.”

“That’s sad.”

“Sad and happy.” He looked happy right now.

“So . . . happy birthday.”

“Hey, thanks.” He fiddled with the radio and turned on some salsa. They were both smiling stupidly.

She drummed her fingers against her knee. “Is there anybody else like you?”

“A handful of people.”

“Do you all know each other? Is it like a club?”

He laughed. “No. Not quite. No T-shirts or secret handshakes. But I know two of them and have met or heard of a few others.”

“Like who?”

Daniel glanced at the rearview mirror. “Like the man who will soon be following us.”

“Really?” she said. “And here I thought it was my first time.”

He laughed. He was strangely relaxed, almost drunk on a cocktail of excitement, relief, and fear. The relief was because she knew about him, believed him, didn’t run away from him or regard him with apprehension. It was remarkable, really, how she had worked these things out. What did it mean? What did he mean to her? And then the darker thoughts nagged to be let in. How could she have thought that Joaquim was him? How could she have come all the way to Mexico with Joaquim?

“So when was that?” she asked.

“A long time ago.”

“What was my name?”

He looked at her in surprise. “It was Sophia.”

“Sophia? That’s the name you called me in high school.”

“It was the first name of yours I knew. Last time we made our getaway on a beautiful Arabian, which was more romantic than the Ford Focus.”

“I’m good with the Ford Focus,” she said, and he laughed.

No matter how she’d ended up in this place, there was surprising sweetness in getting away from Joaquim, in being joined with her in a common cause and feeling that he could protect her. It was the one inadvertent good turn Joaquim had ever done him, or probably anyone.

She tucked her feet under her and looked at him more seriously. “Why did you kidnap me that time?”

“For the same reason and from the same man. I was trying to help you.”

“Did I need helping?”

“Yes. Though by no fault of your own.”

“What does he want from me?”

Daniel veered onto the road toward Los Cuches and got up to speed. “Now or then?”

“Let’s start with then.”

He nodded. “I’ll start at the beginning, if you want me to.”

“I want you to.”

“Not the very beginning but the beginning of you and me and the man you came here with. His name used to be Joaquim, and I don’t know what it is now. We know it’s not Daniel, so I’ll call him Joaquim. I’m kind of attached to the old names, as you probably noticed.”

She nodded.

“It starts more than twelve hundred years ago in what is now called Turkey.”