I was afraid that any warmth I felt toward Sebastian was really just grief wearing a mask, my heart trying to trick me into believing Santiago had come back.

I could not tell, in those years, where my love for a dead man ended and my growing fondness for a living one began, and the not-being-able-to-tell kept me at arm’s length from a happiness I was not sure I was allowed to want.

I know now that my instinct to distrust the resemblance was the truest thing in me.

I simply drew exactly the wrong conclusion from it.