The scene before me reminds me too much of the funeral in my notes and emblazoned in my brain, a vision now so confusing it hurts.

It was sweet of Luke to take me there, to Lingering Pines Retirement Community. He had read all about it last night and explained on the way that meeting my grandmother in person would be best. He had printed a map, and he bought travel snacks when he left my house. He'd also gone home to shower and change his clothes so that his parents wouldn't worry.

During the drive, Luke talked through every giggle-inducing, glow-generating, lust-inspiring detail of the night before. At times, I wanted to tell him to pull off the road so that I could jump across the center divider and have my way with him.

He told me about me: all the notes he'd read and thoughts he had about what my life must be like.

Luke talked about us meeting as kids, about being drawn to me from childhood. About the shoe game.

We chatted and sipped lattes and ate M&M's and peanut butter crackers, and I was calm and happy and loved.

But then we arrived.

What I saw of Lingering Pines was the reception desk, where a fat young nurse checked a computer and called her supervisor before pulling me aside to whisper in my face with onion breath that Jo Lane had in fact lived there for five years until she moved on.

"Where did she go?" I asked innocently, not getting it.

"I'm so sorry to be the one telling you this, but Jo passed last winter," the young nurse said. "She died," she added, probably because of my dazed look.

That's about the point when I felt myself being strapped onto a roller-coaster ride that I didn't stand in line for. After having the wherewithal to glean as much additional information as possible, Luke guided my stupefied self back to the van and drove me far away from Lingering Pines, never pressing too hard but letting me know he was there.

"I'm so sorry, London," he said.

"I didn't know her," I said back, my mind reeling. The miles flew by then. We were headed home, and I was not only empty-handed but downright mystified as well.

The questions in my mind were the same then and now.

How can she be dead? She's in my future. Am I wrong about the woman at the child's funeral? Is it someone who just looks like my grandma? I need to check that photo again. Maybe I should show it to my mom. Maybe my grandma has a sister. A twin sister.

Each thought stands in turn in front of my mind's eye for a mental audition, but no one gets the part. No thought is just right.

"Thanks for bringing me here," I say quietly, cutting through the silence as Luke and I move straight down the center aisle of the graveyard.

"No problem," Luke says softly. He keeps his eyes on the sea of stone going by. Our feet crunch on dirt and rocks as we walk, and I'm desperately trying to remain rational, to not picture zombies digging themselves up from underground or ghosts whispering in my ear.

Unsure of exactly what I'm looking for, my eyes instinctively seek the familiar: the groundskeeper's shack disguised as a mausoleum.

Tracking my gaze, Luke squeezes the hand he holds tight.

"That's where the smoking guy will be, right?" he asks. His simple question gives me a strange sense of calm. Belonging, even. From reading my life, Luke not only understands me, but he remembers, too. In a way, he has become the closest thing to a memory I might ever have.

"Yes," I say with a nod, keeping my eyes focused there.

I'm so absorbed that I see the movement from inside that anyone else might have missed in the dying light. "Let's go over," I say, pulling Luke off the main path and onto a smaller branch cutting through graves toward the shed. I lift my hand to knock, but the door opens before I get the chance.

"Good evening," says a cherub-faced man with a beard like Santa Claus's. "How can I help you kids?"

"Hi," I begin timidly, trying to find my words. "We're looking for a grave. My grandmother's grave, actually. I didn't know her, and we were wondering whether there's some sort of directory."

"A directory, huh? The only directory you'll find here is locked in my noggin," the man says with a kind smile and a tap, forefinger to temple. "My mind is like a steel trap: it never lets anything out. What was your grandmother's name?"

I glance at Luke before turning back to Santa.

"Jo Lane," I say.

"She died last winter," Luke offers.

Santa scratches his head, muttering, "Lane... Lane, hmm..." I watch; the caretaker seems familiar to me. Maybe it's just that he looks like Santa Claus.

Luke and I catch gazes again, and just as I'm wondering whether Santa's brain isn't as advertised, his weathered face brightens.

"I've got it. Aisle thirteen, plot two hundred forty-seven. Or is it two hundred forty-eight? Follow me, please." He steps onto the path and leads us in the opposite direction from which we came. We follow, farther away from the safety of the main walkway, right into the thick of death.

As Luke and I gingerly step behind the crunch, crunch, crunch of Santa's work boots, at least one of us wonders about the sanity of someone who chooses to work at a cemetery. As he moves, Santa mutters under his breath about Jo Lane's funeral.

"Sad turnout, that one. Only just the man and the priest. Poor woman."

Blameless, I'm guilty just the same.

I'm preoccupied by the eeriness of the passing graves, now that it's officially dark outside. Low-hanging trees make it even darker. It feels like the dead of night, even though it's barely six thirty.

Abruptly, the caretaker stops moving, and Luke grabs my waist to keep me from running into the old man.

"Here she is, two hundred thirty-seven," Santa says, gesturing to the simple rectangular granite grave marker at his feet. I can't help but think that he's standing on my grandmother.

"Thank you," I whisper, edging closer to the stone.

"No trouble," Santa says, turning back toward the shed. "Take your time; I'll close up when you leave."

I hear his boots crunch away as my eyes lock on the piece of stone like it's going to grow a mouth and tell me all the answers.

WIFE, MOTHER, GRANDMOTHER, FRIEND.

JOSEPHINE LONDON LANE.

JULY 10, 1936-DECEMBER 10, 2009 Tears sting my eyes for a woman I never knew. My namesake, apparently. Luke wraps his arm around my shoulders and pulls me close to his chest.

"You okay?" he asks.

"I don't know," I answer truthfully. I feel like I'm outside the scene, watching it unfold instead of living it.

We stand there a short while, and when it feels right, I take a step back.

"Let's go," I say to Luke.

He quietly leads me back the way we came, through the graves and toward the caretaker's shed. It's impossible for me not to picture the darkness: I can see the younger, handsome, and seemingly out of place groundskeeper smoking now, consoling me from afar. In my memory, I'm looking at him from the direction we're now facing. In my memory, I am standing way over...

My heart leaps and my feet stop as I see it: the green stone angel who cries that day in the future.

Luke turns to face me and asks what's wrong. Instead of answering, I take off running.

"London?" Luke calls after me.

I hear him running, too; I'm reassured by the heavy thud of his steps in my wake. At least if I hit a tree or encounter a ghost, he'll find me quickly.

My North Star in the expanse of graves, the crying angel stands tall above her silent neighbors, keeping watch in the night.

As I approach, the butterflies in my stomach breed and multiply in fast-forward. My side aches from sprinting, and vomit threatens to rise in my throat. I don't know if it's the exertion or the anticipation that's making me feel sick, but I swallow hard to keep it at bay.

Soon enough, I am at the angel's base. Instead of lingering, I turn in the direction I remember, facing the location of the funeral in my mind.

Instead of the nothing I expect-the vacant plot waiting for the helpless being, the child-there is something.

Slowly, trying to catch my breath, I creep toward it, my mind clicking and spinning and working on the problem it can't seem to sort out. Until there it is.

The answer.

I find myself standing in the exact spot as in my dark memory, facing not a freshly dug hole but a tasteful, polished headstone surrounded by mature plantings. Light from the street lamp outside the iron fence bounces just right; I can read the ornate lettering plain as day.

I swallow back bile as Luke stomps up next to me. At least I think it's Luke. I don't turn to check.

"I lost you back there for a second," his familiar voice pants as he catches his breath.

Staring, I'm not sure whether I'm still breathing at all.

I stand motionless, eyes locked on the letters. Out of my peripheral vision, I see Luke read them, too, then glance up toward the groundskeeper's shack in the distance and to the green angel to the left.

"Wait, is this..." His voice trails off midquestion, and, finally, he joins me in the realization. "Whoa," is all my boyfriend says, before taking my hand and staring right along with me.

When the groundskeeper approaches and scolds us for running through the cemetery and disturbing the peace, I turn to realize that it is him.

He's older now, fatter and bearded, but were he smiling in sympathy instead of scowling and annoyed, he would look the same. I can see now what I couldn't see before: I can see him beneath the years.

Luke and I grudgingly agree to leave, but not before I take one last long, hard look at the engraving that will derail my life forever.

SWEET BABY BOY.

JONAS DYLAN LANE.

NOVEMBER 7, 1998-MAY 8, 2001

34.

It punches me in the gut once more, just like the first time I read it and the time after that.

The funeral was in the past.

The past.

And I remember it.

I was so focused on the who that I completely missed the when.

Walking toward the cemetery gates, my head spins so much it aches. Inside the van, Luke cranks the heat and we begin to defrost as we drive in silence toward my house. I am paralyzed by emotion. Not until we exit the freeway and turn left into my development does Luke speak.

"You have to talk to your mom," he says.

I watch the houses that I remember from tomorrow go by and wonder whether a part of me remembers them from yesterday, too. All the rules to my world are being challenged with this one discovery. The simplicity of knowing what's coming isn't so simple after all.

I find myself wanting to call Jamie. Wishing I could. I shake off the thought and watch the houses some more.

As Luke pulls into my driveway, the porch light blinks on. I glance at the dashboard clock and realize that it's nearly eight o'clock, which is not so strange, except that I left before eleven this morning and haven't called since.

"She must be worried." Luke says what I'm thinking.

"She should be," I say.

"Go easy on her."

"I'll try," I reply weakly before I slide out of the van and head inside to confront my mother and discover the truth about my missing memories.

35.

"Who was Jonas?" I ask again, somehow guessing the answer but needing confirmation.

My mother's eyes share a mixture of shock and sorrow that makes me want to look away.

But I don't.

"Who was he, Mom?" I ask a third time, softer now.

"How do you know..." She looks down at her hands. I stay still, watching her realize that how doesn't matter.