Daniel tucked his phone into his shirt pocket, still on. Said,

“Lady, your husband is one sexy mofo.”

Laney hung up, pressed a button. The speaker on her phone was small and tinny, and the sound was muffled. But his voice came through clear enough, saying, Lady, your husband is one sexy mofo.

“I don’t know,” she said, frowning.

“What do you mean? Worked fine.”

“Yeah, but it’s quieter here.”

“It will do.”

“I’d rather just pay him.”

“With what?” Daniel shrugged. “This will work. We’ll have pictures of him and a recording of him threatening us. That should give us enough.”

“I don’t like you out there alone.”

“Has to be that way. If you’re there, then there’s no reason he can’t take us. But grabbing just me does no good.” He leaned over, touched her hand. “You said Bennett is careful, that he survives by people not knowing anything about him. There’s no way he’ll want us going to the police with this.”

Laney didn’t reply. The setting sun filled the air with gold.

Daniel flexed his fingers, tapped a beat on the steering wheel. His exhaustion was making him manic. The couple of minutes of sleep in the hotel had only managed to remind him how very tired he was. “It’s funny, kind of. Using a recording against Bennett.”

“Ironic.”

“Yeah. A lot of that lately. You know, if it hadn’t been so terrifying, this whole experience would be kind of interesting.”

“Interesting?” She cocked an eyebrow. “Are you kidding me?”

“It’s changed the way I think about things. About what’s real. You convince yourself that you know who you are, what your life means. You remember the things that have happened to you. But really, that’s not true, is it? Memories are just stories we tell ourselves to explain how we got where we are. There’s no absolute to them. It’s all subjective.”

“My memories aren’t subjective.”

“Sure they are. You’re just comfortable with the order they’re in. But you chose which to keep and which to dump. Maybe not consciously, but still.”

“We don’t choose our memories.”

“You know we do. Same way you chose to be somebody else. When you were all those other women, you gave them memories, and you used those memories to make them real.”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“Because . . .” She made an exasperated sound. “Because it is. When I become someone else, I don’t really become them. I still know who I am.”

“But see, I don’t. And it’s made me realize that it’s always up for grabs.” He swiveled in his seat to face her. “Like that tape. The one Bennett has of you.”

Laney glanced over, her eyes narrowed. “What about it?”

“It’s you, right? Doing things you’re not happy about, that you wish you could take back. Having sex with a man to—” He cut himself off. “But the thing is, there’s also video of you in our kitchen, singing the Peanuts Christmas song and dancing.”

She smiled. “I remember.”

“So both exist. Is one more real than the other? Do we have to weigh them the same? They’re in the past. Frozen moments that will never come again. You’ve changed since both of them.” The world outside rolled by, smooth and removed, cars and billboards and other people. “Over the last week, if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that you’re only who you choose to be. Every moment. The past is gone. Memories are no more solid than dreams. The only real thing, the only true thing, is the present. That’s it.”

“So the things we’ve done don’t count?”

“Of course they do. But we can decide how much. And we can decide what we want the present to be like. We can live it however we want. Own every minute. Be the person we want to be.”

Laney was silent for a long moment. Finally, she said, “I think there are things that can change who we are. Things we can’t forget. Or get over.” She spoke to the windshield, her tone even and measured.

Gentle. You’re poking at a wound. “Look, I don’t care what you did ten years ago. That’s my point. I want to be with you. The video I’m going to remember is the one of you singing and dancing.”

Laney didn’t respond, and he let it drop. Traffic was slow. As the sky started to shade with color, he found himself remembering a concrete canyon and a tunnel of perfect black. The buildings looming like judges. “I had that dream again.”

“Which one?”

“The same one I’ve been having since I woke up. It’s weird. I feel so guilty in it. Like I’ve done something terrible. Before I found you—”

“I found you.”

“—before I found you,” he continued, smiling, “I was starting to wonder if maybe that was my subconscious. If I was telling myself that I’d killed you.”

“So much for your subconscious.”

“I know, right?” He laughed. “I wonder what it means, though. Since you’re alive, shouldn’t it have gone away? What do I have to feel so guilty about?”

Laney shrugged. “It’s probably a guy thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you thought I was dead. And guys want to solve things. Hunt the woolly mammoth and protect their women. But you couldn’t, and I died.”

“Huh.” Maybe.

Ten minutes later, he got off the freeway in Santa Monica, looped around, and pulled into a wide parking lot beside the pier. On a Saturday afternoon, the lot might have been packed, but now it was barely a quarter full. The kiddie roller coaster on the pier swung around a turn, its rattling rumble wafting on cool ocean breezes. He slowed to a stop. For a moment they stared out the window.

“Time to hunt mammoth.”

Laney looked over, tension drawing taut the lines of her face. “Daniel . . .”

He waited, but she didn’t say anything else. “It’s going to be okay.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.” He reached for the door handle.

“Hey,” she said. “You forgot something.”

He turned, saw her smile, and realized what he’d forgotten. He took his time collecting it.

When he got to the end of the pier, Daniel found half a dozen photographers leaned against their tripods, long lenses pointed out to sea, snapping pictures of surfers and the fading sunset and the bright lights of the pier winking on against the coming dark. He chose one slightly apart from the rest.