It felt like the big bang theory was being played out all over again—in my brain. Everything I knew was speeding outward toward the farthest reaches of space. Maybe in a few billion years the fragments would have slowed and cooled enough again to allow some life again, but right now they were only flying out.

Frances held up her own right hand, palm out. Covering it were lines and ridges, highways crossing and separating, a lifetime of lines on skin, a detailed albeit chaotic map of the many days of Frances Hatch.

“What are you saying, Frances?”

She slowly raised her left palm. It was blank. I looked quickly at my left but it was as blank as my right.

She brought the hands together and folded them in her lap. “Palmists disagree about what the individual lines on a hand mean, but most concede those on the left indicate what you’re born with and the ones on the right are what you’ve done with them. Left hand,” she raised her blank one. “Right hand.”

“Why are both of mine blank?”

“Because now that you have discovered who you really are, you have no fate anymore. Everything from this point on is up to you.” She licked her lips. “You’re different now.”

“From what I learned today, I’ve been different all my life. All my lives!” I said the last word like a hissing snake.

“But now you know the truth about who you are. That changes everything. Now you can do something about it, Miranda. Everything is up to you from this point.”

I looked at my smooth palms again, not sure of what to say or ask. “Tell me about you and Shumda.”

“I haven’t seen him for seventy years. Not since the day I saved him. That’s part of how this works—if you sacrifice yourself for another person, you will never see them again. In most cases, because they never want to see you again. They don’t like to be reminded of what you did for them. But if they’re young, they never know it happened, because they don’t understand.

“In other respects it’s tolerable. You simply become a normal human being and live a normal life. You get flu, pay taxes, have kids if you want.… And sooner or later you die. For good. Welcome to the ‘mortal coil.’ No more VIP lounge for you. Watch out for cholesterol.

“I was extraordinarily lucky, Miranda. I gave my immortality to Shumda, but then went on to live a gorgeous life. Now it’s over. I have no complaints.” Her eyes betrayed her. As soon as she finished speaking, they shifted to the flowers as if the beautiful clusters knew a secret she didn’t want told.

“But Frances, I died! I fell in the theater. I fell off the scaffold in the church—”

“And you came back. Again and again. Normal people don’t. They live once and die. We live and die and come back. No one else does that, only us. But that’s why people believe in reincarnation—because some of us do return, just not the ones they think. Unsterblich.”

“What?”

“Immortal. The German word for it. Shumda loved that word. He said you had to wrap your tongue around it like a kiss.”

“That word was on the cradle. It was carved on our baby’s cradle.”

“I’m not surprised. Everything we experience links up sooner or later. Our separate lives, the smallest details… nothing is left out. You met Hugh because of a discussion about your James and Lolly Adcock’s paintings. You met me because of her work too. Remember those connect-the-dots coloring books you had as a child? That’s us. Everything connects.”

“Why now, Frances? Why am I learning this now?”

“Because of love, dear; because you’re finally in love and have the opportunity to be selfless. It happens only once in a lifetime, any lifetime. There are big loves and small ones, but only one selfless love. In your case, I assume it’s for your child. I would have thought it was for Hugh, but it wasn’t, because you had this revelation after he died.”

Without any warning I felt violently ill. I was going to throw up. I slapped a hand over my mouth to try and stop it. I did, but only just.

So much had occurred since I’d learned I was pregnant that there had been no time to reflect on what it meant. But I knew what Frances said was true. The child inside me meant everything. The daughter from the man I had planned to spend the rest of my life with. The baby I had wanted all my life but avoided thinking about because the possibility of long love and children had faded as I grew older. It was a joy I tried not to think about. Getting older means you have fewer beginnings. Children are the beginning of everything again, no matter how old you are or how fixed in your ways.

The day I learned I was pregnant I had another, altogether different revelation. Riding home on the train to Crane’s View, I considered the best way to tell Hugh. Somewhere in the middle of that planning, I was embraced by the thought: I will never be alone again. With this child in my life, I would never be alone again. It was the most warming, intimate, reassuring sensation I have ever known.

While Frances spoke, I unconsciously put both hands on my stomach, but whether for reassurance or protection I didn’t know. In a whisper I said, “What’s so bad about being normal?”

“Nothing. But it is entirely different from what you’ve known.”

“Different how?”

She thought it over. Once her right hand flew up off the bed as if reaching for something in the air. Only after it had floated back to her lap and she thought some more did she speak. “Being human is a deeper, richer, much sadder experience than you know. Somewhere inside all of their souls, their genes, inside their cells, human beings understand this is all there is. But most of the time they can’t figure out what this is. Your spirit is comfortable because it knows that when this dance is finished there’ll be another for you. And another.”

“What exactly would I be giving up?”

“Your immortality. You would give it to your child. You give it to the person you love as much as yourself. I gave mine to Shumda. They were going to kill him. I couldn’t let that happen because I realized I loved him more than my own life.”

“How do you give it up—is there some special way?”

She shook her head. “No. It’s always different, but instinctively you’ll know what to do when the time comes. It’s not anything you have to think about.”

“What did you do, Frances?”

She closed her eyes. “I set a dog on fire.”

“Why?”

“I can’t tell you. But it was necessary. When I realized that was what I had to do, I also understood it would cause the change. And it worked. As soon as I had done it, a lawyer appeared and said he could save Shumda. Herr Doktor Pongratz. I’ll never forget that name. He said he had read about the case in the Viennese newspapers and had found a little-known law in the Austrian judicial system that would exonerate Shumda. And it did.”

“But couldn’t someone else have found that law too?”

Frances straightened up and smoothed the sheets around her. “No, because no such law existed until Pongratz found it.”

“Can you give your immortality away to anyone, or does it have to be the one you love?”

“To anyone. Once you realize who you are and what you have, it’s your decision what to do with it. You can give it to whoever you choose.”

We sat silently amid her flowers and the piped in music. I had so many questions to ask.

“Can I have the baby even being who I am? Without giving up the immortality?”

“Yes! Of course you can, Miranda. But you’ll destroy it. You’ll love it and care for it and do everything in your power to give it a wonderful life. But eventually you’ll destroy it because you are what you are. Your ego takes precedence over everything else. And as you’ve already discovered, it’s not always obvious. You can’t fight the instinct, no matter how hard you try. It’s like pushing against the ocean.