Infinite

Chapter 1

“We’re very sorry for your loss, Mr. Moran,” the cop told me as he handed me a white foam cup filled with coffee. He already had his own coffee in his hand, and he was eating a powdered doughnut that left a dusting of sugar on his mustache like fresh snow on a lawn.

I said nothing. I felt dazed and numb, as if I were in a coma from which I wasn’t sure I would ever awaken. The chill made me shiver. They’d taken away my soaked, dirty clothes and wrapped a wool blanket around my naked body, but it didn’t help. A policewoman who lived nearby had offered to wash and dry my clothes and bring them back to me before morning. The deep cuts on my arms and legs had been disinfected and bandaged, but I felt a stinging pain regardless. I kept coughing, and when I did, I could still taste the river.

It tasted like death.

“Feast or famine,” the cop said.

He was probably about forty years old, with a round face and not much brown hair left on his head. He had a large mole in the seam of one of his nostrils, which was the kind of thing you couldn’t stop looking at. He was plump, clean, and dry, a cop who spent his nights at a desk. Two other cops, young and fit, had found me in the field, with rain pouring over my face along with my tears.

Where was I?

What town was this?

I didn’t even know. The police had driven me here, but I remembered none of it. I only remembered shouting Karly’s name as they dragged me away. She was still down there in the water.

“Feast or famine,” the cop said again. “That’s been us this season. May and June were dry as a bone. Been driving the farmers crazy. Land’s hard as a rock. We get a storm like this, and all the water just runs off into the creek. The banks ain’t made for that much rain that fast.”

He was right. My grandfather grew up in the flatlands of North Dakota, where the waters rose every spring with the snowmelt, and he used to warn me about rivers. Never trust a river, Dylan. Give a river even half a chance, and it’ll try to kill you.

I should have listened.

“Sorry about all the paperwork at a time like this,” the cop continued. I thought his name was Warren, but I couldn’t even lift my head to study the nameplate on his shirt. “I know that’s the last thing on your mind, but somebody dies, we have to jump through a lot of hoops. That’s the law. Like I say, I’m really sorry.”

“Thank you.” I barely recognized my voice. It didn’t even sound like me.

“Can you tell me your wife’s name again?”

“Karly Chance.”

“You and she didn’t have the same last name?”

“No.”

“How old was she?”

“Twenty-nine.”

“And you?”

“I’m thirty-two.”

“The two of you live in Chicago?”

“Yes.”

“What brought you down to this part of the state?”

Dylan, let’s go away for a few days. I know you’re upset and angry, and you have every right to be, but we need to start over.

“I’m sorry. What did you say?”

“I said, why were you down in this part of the state?”

“We took a weekend away from the city,” I replied. “A friend of Karly’s has a place in Bigneck.”

“What do you do in Chicago, Mr. Moran?”

“I’m the events manager for the LaSalle Plaza Hotel.”

“And your wife?”

“She works for her mother. She’s a real estate agent.” I added a moment later, “She was.”

Warren popped the last bite of doughnut into his mouth and then rubbed his mustache clean with a napkin. He kept scribbling notes on the yellow pad in front of him, and he hummed to himself as he did. I looked around the police interview room, which had chipped cream-colored paint on the walls and no windows. Warren sat on one side of a rickety oak table that was old enough to still have cigarette burns in the wood. I sat on the other side, swaddled in the blanket like a newborn. I couldn’t trust any of my senses. When I breathed, all I smelled was the dankness of water in my nose. Every time I closed my eyes, I was back inside the car, as the river flipped us like a carnival ride.

“You got a way to get home to the city?” Warren asked me. “Family or friends or somebody who can pick you up?”

I didn’t know what to tell him. I had no family, not really. My parents died when I was thirteen. That’s the clinical way I describe it to people, which is easier than saying that my father murdered my mother and then killed himself right in front of me. After that, I moved in with my grandfather. Edgar’s ninety-four now and doesn’t drive. We get along, but we don’t get along, if you know what I mean. It’s always been that way.

As for friends, the childhood friend who had always bailed me out when things got bad was Roscoe Tate, and he died four years ago after bailing me out. Literally. That was the night I met Karly. I was covered in blood, my arm broken, my leg broken. Roscoe was dead behind the wheel, his neck snapped. I thought I must be dead, too. I stared through the car’s shattered windows and saw an angel staring back at me, her dress billowing in the wind, her hand reaching in to hold mine. Her quiet voice murmured that help was coming, that I was going to be okay, that she wouldn’t leave me.

That was Karly.

And now she was gone. Another car accident.

“I really don’t have anyone,” I told Warren.

“Oh,” the cop replied, his mustache wrinkling. “Well, we can figure something out. Don’t you worry, we’ll get you home.”

“Thank you.”

As we sat there, the door to the interview room opened. The deputy’s face bloomed with surprise, and he jumped to his feet, brushing sugar from his sleeves. A fifty-something woman, trim and small, stood in the doorway. Her size didn’t diminish any of the authority she conveyed. Her blond hair was pulled into a tight bun behind her head, leaving wispy bangs on her forehead. She had polite brown eyes and a calm, neutral expression on her mouth. Her uniform was slightly damp, as if she’d come in from outside, but the creases were crisp.

“Sheriff,” Warren exclaimed. “Sorry, I didn’t realize you were coming in.”

The sheriff gave her deputy an impatient look that said he shouldn’t have been surprised at all by her arrival at four in the morning. A river had flooded, and a woman had died in her county. Out here, that was a big deal.

“I’ll take over, Warren.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Warren made a quick exit with a sympathetic nod to me. The sheriff sat down and opened a file folder with a small stack of papers inside. With a glance at the top page, I saw an incident report from the Chicago police. I was pretty sure my name was on it.

“Hello, Mr. Moran,” she said. “I’m Sheriff Sinclair. You have my deepest condolences on the death of your wife.”

“Thank you.”

I realize there’s nothing else for people to say in these circumstances, and it makes them feel better to say it. I’m sorry for your loss. But as the one who just lost everything, I can tell you, it doesn’t help at all.

“I wonder if you could take me through the details of the accident.”

“I’ve already done that, Sheriff.”

“Yes, I know you’ve been through it with my men, and I know how difficult this is, but it would be very helpful if you could tell me again.”

So I did.

I replayed it all like a horror movie that you can’t stop watching. How the two-lane road vanished, swallowed up by inky black water overflowing the banks of the river. How we plunged into the mud-thick current, which wriggled and surged like a sea creature. How we shimmied on the surface like a dancer struggling to do a pirouette, and then the front end lurched downward, and sludgy water filled the car.

“That’s a terrible thing,” Sheriff Sinclair said when I was finished. Her eyes never left me the entire time I was talking. Somehow I had the idea that I was strapped to a polygraph in her mind, with probes tracking my heartbeat with every breath I took. She reminded me of my mother, who’d also been a cop and who’d been able to tell when I was lying as a child just by looking at my face.

“Do you know how fast you were going when you went into the water?” the sheriff continued.

Dylan, slow down.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Do you know how fast you were going when you went into the water?”

Dylan, please. Slow down.

“No, I don’t know. Too fast, obviously. I didn’t see the flood in time to stop.”

“The car sank immediately?”

“Yes.”

“And you were both trapped?”

“Yes.”

“How is it that you managed to get out of the car but your wife didn’t?”

I twitched. In my head, the car jerked through a somersault under the water. Our bubble of air spilled away. The window near me broke into pieces, and something shot through the space like a javelin.

“A tree trunk came through the car,” I explained. “I was able to pull myself out. I was trying to get Karly out, too, but the car shifted and ripped her away from me.”

“Did you dive back down to find her?”

“Of course I did.”

“At what point did you give up?”

“I didn’t give up, Sheriff,” I snapped back at her. “I lost consciousness. At some point, the current must have thrown me clear. When I came to, I was on the riverbank, and the police were there.”

“I see.” The sheriff pushed some of the papers in the folder with her fingers. Her tone stayed neutral, but I heard an accusation in her voice. “I have a few other questions, Mr. Moran. Had you been drinking before the accident?”

“No.”

“Nothing at all? No liquor, no drugs?”

“Your deputies tested me. The test was negative.”

“Yes, I know. Although to be clear, it took them some time to get the test done, so the results aren’t necessarily reliable. I ran your name through the system. It’s routine in cases like this. You’ve had a history of problems with alcohol, haven’t you? I’m seeing two DUIs in your record.”

“Those were years ago. Yes, sometimes I drink too much, but I wasn’t drinking tonight.”

“Okay.”

Sheriff Sinclair twisted a pencil around in her fingers. Her eyes were still focused on me, as if she were taking the measure of this man in front of her. I’ve always felt that women make rapid judgments about the men they meet, for better or for worse. They decide if they’re solid or not solid in a matter of seconds.

“You have a temper, don’t you, Mr. Moran?”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m seeing arrests for assault in your past, along with the drunk driving. Bar fights, that kind of thing. Your record suggests that you can be a violent man.”

“I’ve made mistakes a few times when I was drunk,” I acknowledged. “I deeply regret the things I did.”

“Ever hit your wife?”

“No. I have never laid a finger on Karly or any other woman. Ever.”

“What about verbal abuse? Threats?”

“Absolutely not.”

“How were things between the two of you?”

Dylan, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I made a stupid mistake. Can you ever forgive me?

“What?” I asked.

“How was your marriage?”

“Our marriage was fine,” I lied. Which was a foolish thing to do. People knew what had happened. Karly had told her mother about it. I’d told one of my coworkers. And yet I couldn’t say out loud to this police officer that my wife had cheated on me.

“Your wife came from money, didn’t she? She’s a Chance, as in Chance Properties?”

“Chance Properties is her mother’s real estate agency, yes. Karly worked for her mother. I’m not sure what that has to do with anything, Sheriff.”

“I just want to understand what happened. You were driving too fast. Some might say recklessly. You have a history of alcohol abuse and violent behavior.”

My face reddened. I could feel the heat of the flush. “What the hell are you saying? Are you implying that I drove my car into the river deliberately and then left my wife there to die?”

“I’m not implying anything.”

“Well, you seem to think I’m the kind of man who would do that.”

“I have no idea what kind of man you are, Mr. Moran. I’m not saying you were to blame for the accident. It’s simply my job to get the facts.”

I leaned across the table. The blanket slipped down my bare shoulders and I shrugged it back. My voice rose, but with the static of a radio station that’s going out of range. “You want the facts? The fact is, my wife is dead. I loved her. I did everything I could to save her, and I failed. If life handed out second chances, I’d be back in the water right now trying to get to her. Is that clear enough for you, Sheriff?”

Her face softened just a little. “It is. I’m sorry, Mr. Moran.”

“I’d really like to be alone,” I said. “This is all too much. I don’t even know where I am.”

“Yes, of course.”

Sheriff Sinclair closed the folder in front of her. She rolled the pencil back and forth on the table, then slid it inside a pocket. She stood up and went to the door, but as she opened it, she turned around and studied me again.

I knew what was coming.

“One more question, Mr. Moran. According to my deputies, you were mostly incoherent when they found you.”

“Is that a surprise?”

“No. Of course not. But they said you kept talking about seeing a man on the bank of the river near the scene of the accident. You kept asking why he didn’t help you. Why he didn’t try to rescue your wife.”

My throat went dry. This was the part no one would understand.

“I don’t remember saying that,” I replied.

“Did you see someone near the river?” the sheriff asked.

I closed my eyes and inhaled sharply. I felt my lungs screaming for air again, my chest ready to burst as my face breached the surface. I gulped in a breath, and as I prepared to dive back down, I saw him.

A man.

A man stood barely ten feet away on the riverbank at the edge of the rapids. When the lightning flashed, I saw him clearly. There was no mistaking what I saw, and it didn’t matter that what I was seeing was impossible. All I could do was shout to him. Beg. Plead.

That man was my lifeline. I needed him. He could save Karly.

Help me! My wife is drowning! Help me find her!

“No,” I told the sheriff, keeping my voice steady. “No, it was night. It was raining. I didn’t see anything.”

A strange little wrinkle of concern crossed her forehead. She didn’t believe me, that was obvious, but she couldn’t understand why I would lie about something like that. Instead, she gave me another polite smile and left the room and closed the door behind her. It was quiet now. I was alone with the chipped cream-colored paint on the walls and the stench of the river in my head.

Yes, I was lying, but I couldn’t tell her the reason.

I couldn’t tell her about the man I’d seen, because I had no way to explain it to myself. You’ll think I was imagining things, and I probably was. I was panicked and oxygen deprived, and it was night, and it was raining.

On the other hand, I know what I saw.

I was the man on the riverbank.

It was me.

Chapter 2

After the accident, I couldn’t go home. It was too soon. Karly and I lived near River Park in a two-story Chicago apartment house, where I’d grown up with my grandfather. Edgar lived upstairs, and our place was on the first floor. When I walked in, the rooms would smell of Karly’s perfume. Photographs of us would be hung on the walls and in frames adorning the fireplace mantel. Her clothes would be in the closet, her shampoo in the bathroom. I’d see her handwriting on little poems she’d scrawled and left for me on the fridge. In the apartment, my wife of three years would still be alive, and I couldn’t face the fact that she was dead.

One of the police deputies drove me as far as Bloomington-Normal, and I took a train from there into the city. I walked to the hotel where I worked, which was on Michigan Avenue across from Grant Park. I booked a room and got out of the lobby before the staff could fawn over me with their sympathy. I spent the next two days and nights in a kind of hibernation. The phone rang; I ignored the calls. People knocked on the door; I didn’t answer. I ordered room service and had them leave the trays outside, and then I put them back in the hallway later, having eaten almost nothing at all.

Did I drink?

Yes, I drank a lot.

I know what you probably think of me. Dylan drinks. He gets into fights. He is a bad man. I can’t really disagree with you. It’s been that way since the death of my parents, but that’s not an excuse for how I’ve led my life. It simply is what it is. My vices cling to me like boat anchors. Karly told me once that I was always doing battle with another side of myself and that one day I would have to make the choice to cast him aside. But I’ve never known how to do that.

Sometime during my second night in the hotel, I had a nightmare that I was still under the water. I was a blind man, with no compass to guide me, swimming deeper into an abyss of darkness. The heaviness weighed on my lungs, like a balloon about to be popped. Somewhere beyond my reach, I could hear Karly’s muffled voice calling to me, begging for rescue.

Dylan, come find me! I’m still here!

I awoke tangled in the blankets. I was bathed in sweat, gasping as I stared at the ceiling. My blood was still poisoned with alcohol, leaving me dizzy. The hotel room spun like a carousel. I got out of the ultraplush bed and went to the window. Grant Park stretched out below me, the glow of lights lining the street that led toward Buckingham Fountain. Behind the park, Lake Michigan loomed like the stormy backdrop of a painting. Normally, I loved this view, but now I saw nothing but my own reflection in the glass, going in and out of focus.

Dylan Moran.

I stared at that face and saw a stranger reflected back from the window. I couldn’t see inside the person who was staring at me. It was as if I had broken into pieces and left part of myself with that other man on the bank of the river. And yet, for all that, the reflection was still me. My face.

My black hair is bushy and a little unkempt. My dark eyebrows are thick, arching like the hunched shoulders of a gargoyle. My face is full of sharp angles, a tight jawline, pointed chin, hard cheekbones, fierce little nose. Karly would joke that she had to be careful when she caressed my face because she might cut her fingers. I wear heavy stubble on my lip and chin, mostly because I can never seem to shave it completely away, so I stopped trying. It’s like a shadow that goes with me everywhere.

I’m not tall. My driver’s license says I’m five ten, but my doctor knows I’m barely five nine. I stay in good shape, running, boxing, lifting weights, doing all the things that a short, skinny kid does to make himself look tougher. I want everyone to know you don’t mess with Dylan Moran, and you can see that in my eyes. They are ocean-blue eyes, intense and angry. I’ve spent too much of my life angry about something. It never seemed to matter what it was.

It was funny. Not long after we got married, Karly was digging around in Edgar’s apartment, helping him straighten things up, and she found a photograph of me when I was about twelve years old. This was before everything happened with my parents. Before the high school years when Edgar and I argued over grades and girls and smoking and drugs. I didn’t look all that different back then, not physically. I still had the same messy haircut, and I was already about as tall as I was ever going to be. But Karly looked at that photograph and then over at me, and I could see what she was thinking.

What happened to you, Dylan?

Back then, I had a big smile and a wide-eyed innocence. I’d been a happy kid, but that young kid was long gone. He’d died in the bedroom with my parents. Staring at my reflection in the hotel window, with the park and the lake hovering behind my face, I said the same thing out loud.

“What happened to you, Dylan?”

Then I put a half-full bottle of vodka to my lips, drank what was left, shouted a profanity at the city about a dozen times, and threw the glass bottle against the wall. It broke into razor-like pieces that sprayed across the bedsheets. I sighed with disappointment at myself. It always happened like this, again and again. I went and gathered up the shards, and then I sat down by the side of the bed and squeezed the glass fragments in my fists until blood oozed through my fingers.

For the rest of the night, I stayed right there, until the blood dried and I finally fell asleep.

The first wave of grief can’t go on forever. You may feel dead, but eventually you realize you’re still alive, and you have to figure out how to go on.

On the morning of the fourth day, I picked out a suit from the closet in my hotel room. My assistant manager, Tai, had arranged for some of my work clothes to be sent here from my apartment. She was efficient that way. I took a shower, put on the suit, knotted a tie tightly against my neck, and left the room. I wasn’t really ready to go back out into the world, but I didn’t have a choice.

I took the elevator to the lobby. The LaSalle Plaza was one of downtown’s grand old hotels, dating all the way back to the White City days of the Chicago World’s Fair. You could feel turn-of-the-century ghosts here, passing you with a brush of silk. The lobby glistened with marble floors, a chambered ceiling, and elaborately decorated archways of glass, brass, and stone.

I’d worked at the LaSalle Plaza since I was a college student at Roosevelt University. I started as a bellman and worked my way up. The previous events manager, a man named Bob French, hired me as his assistant, and he stuck with me even when my behavior outside the office got me into trouble. Six years ago, Bob left to run the events program at the Fairmont in San Francisco. He invited me to go with him, but I couldn’t imagine a life outside Chicago. Bob did me the favor of telling the hotel managers that they shouldn’t hire anyone but me to fill his shoes, which was a big leap of faith given my age at the time and my tendency to leave the hotel and head straight to the Berghoff for drinks rather than going home. Ever since, I’d tried to prove they made the right call, which often meant fourteen-hour days and long weekend nights. Karly told me more than once that my work was my life. She didn’t say it as a compliment.

My first stop wasn’t in my office but in the hotel ballroom. Karly and I were married here; it was the hot ticket for Chicago weddings. The two-story space was a kind of miniature Versailles, all done up in gold leaf, with chandelier sconces on the walls and cherubs flying above the rounded doorways and murals painted on the ceiling. I hovered in the back, watching the maintenance team set up chairs and a riser for an evening event. Normally, I could rattle off every ballroom event for weeks at a time, but the accident had erased certain details from my memory. I saw a large marketing poster on an easel near the door, and I walked across the stone floor to remind myself who had booked my ballroom for the night.

The poster showed a photograph of an attractive woman in her forties. She had long brown hair that glinted with blond highlights and was swept over her head like a cresting ocean wave. She was white, but the faint almond shape of her eyes suggested Asian blood somewhere in her past. Her eyes were golden brown, staring intently at the camera, with lips creased into a dreamy smile that offered only a hint of teeth. She wore a black long-sleeve knit top, and she leaned forward with her arm on a desk. Her fingers were bent as if in midcaress. The whole effect of the picture was intimate and erotic, as if she were beckoning you to come closer.

Above the photo was her name and the title of her talk:

I tried to remember who she was, but I came up empty. We hosted conferences and speakers here all the time, but I had no recollection of booking space for Eve Brier. Based on the photograph, I didn’t think I would have forgotten her. And yet there was something familiar about her, too. Her face stirred... what? What was it? It wasn’t really a memory, but I felt as if we’d met somewhere.

“Hello, Dylan.”

The voice came from behind me. I turned around and saw my assistant manager, Tai Ragasa. Her face was exquisitely sad. She came and put her arms around my neck and held me tightly. Her closeness made me uncomfortable, but I opted not to push her away. She hugged me for several beats longer than was appropriate, and then we broke apart. Tai wiped away a tear and reached out and took hold of both of my hands. I could feel the sharpness of her long fingernails.

“I don’t know what to say,” she told me.

“I know.”

“It’s so horrible.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure you should be here?”

“No, but I was going crazy on my own.”

“Of course.”

Tai led me to a row of chairs at the back of the ballroom. We sat down next to each other. The maintenance men worked around us, calling out to each other in voices that echoed in the high space, their cleaning equipment banging on the furniture. I tried to pull my hand away, but Tai wouldn’t let go.

“What can I do?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Everyone in the hotel has your back. I mean, if you need anything, we’ll all be right there to help you.”

“I know.”

“You really don’t need to be here. I’m serious. I’ve got everything under control. We can manage.”

“I appreciate that.”

“Just focus on yourself,” she said.

“Thanks.”

She kissed me softly on the cheek. Her clean, floral smell enveloped me. When she backed away, her ebony eyes held on to mine, and a few strands of her black hair clung to the buttons of my shirt.

“If you ever need to talk, I’m here,” she murmured. “I’m sure you’re not ready yet, but any time you want to—”

“I’m not. I’m definitely not ready.”

“Okay.”

The speaker on her radio buzzed. I heard one of my staff reaching out to her with a catering question. In our jobs, we had to be in constant contact with vendors inside and outside the hotel. Successful events were about a million details, laid out in order, one by one. Tai gave me a look of apology as she answered the call, but I was glad to have some space.

I’d hired Tai six years ago, right after I got promoted myself. Like me, she went to Roosevelt and was enrolled in their hospitality master’s program. As a boss, I chose people based on my gut, and my gut said she was smart and would be running the whole hotel someday. She was twenty-eight now, with a conservative Catholic family back in the Philippines. Tai had a deeply religious streak herself, but it was tough to stay conservative in a metropolis like Chicago. In the past few years, she’d discovered tequila and hip-hop music and tight dresses that emphasized her bony curves.

She was a wisp of a thing, a five-foot-nothing dynamo in high heels. Her black hair was very long and straight and parted in the middle. Her dark eyes twinkled below wicked eyebrows, and her lips were always bright red. Her cheeks dimpled when she smiled, which was often.

If I were posting about our relationship on Facebook, I would say it was complicated. I liked mentoring her. I liked that she flattered me by telling me how good I was at my job. I liked the snarky little jokes she whispered about couples getting married in the ballroom. To me, she was a younger sister, and as an older brother, I tended to confide my secrets to her. Most recently, I’d told her about Karly’s one-night affair, and like any good sister, Tai was quick to assure me that I was right and Karly was wrong.

All of this seemed safe to me because I had no romantic interest in her. Karly didn’t see it that way. From the moment they met, she didn’t like Tai at all. Karly had a habit of making up words to suit what she wanted to say, and she invented one for Tai. Manipulatrix. In Karly’s dictionary, that was a dominant, controlling woman who got what she wanted by pretending to be submissive. To Karly, who was strong in her own right, that was the worst kind of sin.

“So what can I do for you, Dylan?” Tai asked when she put away her radio. She took my chin with her long fingers and turned my face so I was looking at her. “I want to help with anything you need.”

“I don’t even know yet,” I replied, which was true. “Just hold down the fort here, okay?”

“Absolutely.”

“I thought I could go back to work, but I don’t think I can. Not yet.”

“No one would expect you to be ready so soon,” Tai said.

I checked the time on my watch. “I need to go. I’ve got to meet Edgar at the Art Institute in an hour. It drives him crazy if I’m late.”

“Does Edgar know? I mean, about Karly?”

“I called to tell him, but I don’t know whether he really understood what I was saying. Plus, his short-term memory is shot.”

“Sure.”

I stood up from the chair. So did Tai, and she wrapped me up in another embrace that went on too long.

“Are you staying in the hotel again tonight?” she asked.

“Probably. I can’t go back to the apartment yet.”

“I’ll call you before I head home.”

“You don’t need to do that.”

“I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

She squeezed my shoulder, and I gave her an empty smile of thanks. I turned away, but then, as an afterthought, I remembered what I wanted to know.

“By the way, who’s Eve Brier?”

“What?”

I gestured at the poster near the ballroom door. “She’s the speaker at the event tonight.”

“Don’t you know her?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s strange,” Tai replied.

“Why?”

“She told me she picked the hotel on your recommendation.”

“On my recommendation? She said she knew me?”

“Definitely.”

I took another look at the photograph of Dr. Eve Brier and felt the same sensation that her eyes were sending me an invitation. Come closer. Get to know me. Yes, she looked familiar, but I had no recollection of meeting her.

“Maybe I ran into her somewhere and gave her my sales pitch,” I speculated, although I didn’t think that was true. “Who is she?”

“She’s some kind of new age self-help guru,” Tai explained. “She left me a copy of her book, but I haven’t looked at it. Whoever she is, she’s very popular. We’re planning on a big crowd for her talk.”

“‘Many Worlds, Many Minds,’” I said. “What does that mean?”

“Apparently, she applies a theory from quantum mechanics in physics to her psychotherapy practice. It’s about how we’re all part of an infinite number of parallel worlds. Every time we make a choice, a carbon copy of ourselves makes the opposite choice in a different universe.”

“Parallel worlds?” I said skeptically.

I couldn’t wrap my brain around the concept. Maybe that’s because I was focused on the other two words she’d used.

Carbon copy. Like a double. A twin. A man in a storm.

“That’s what she says,” Tai replied. “When Eve was signing the contract for the ballroom space, she told me that an entirely separate universe had already been created in which she didn’t sign it.”

“What did you say to that?”

Tai winked. “I said to make sure that she lived in the universe where she paid the bill.”

Chapter 3

On my way to meet Edgar at the Art Institute, I stopped in the museum’s south garden, near the Fountain of the Great Lakes, where the water flowed from clamshells over the bodies of five beautiful bronze women.

This place was flush with memories for me.

I’d sat with Karly here once on a spring afternoon, holding hands among the honey locust trees and listening to the bubble of water. We were still in our early days then, when we knew we were in love but before we’d shared all our stories. Karly wore a long-sleeve green sweater and a plaid skirt that made her look, to me, like some kind of Irish rebel. A woman for all seasons. Her skin was ivory pale, with a few freckles. Her eyes had a way of changing color with the light, and that day, in the cool April shadows, they were a sad country-song kind of blue. A single brass stud adorned the top of her left ear. Her blond hair, jaggedly chopped off at the shoulders as if she’d done it herself to show the world she could, smelled like a fresh sprig of rosemary.

I remembered that particular day well, because that was when I’d told her what my father had done to my mother. She knew what had happened, of course, but not the details, not what I’d actually seen from the corner of the bedroom. Other than Roscoe, I’d kept that secret to myself. I’d told Karly I had something important that I needed to share with her, and although I didn’t say what, I was sure she’d already guessed. That moment from my childhood was a gaping hole in what she knew about me. Even so, as we sat together by the fountain, I found myself struggling to talk. Somehow, I couldn’t switch on the clickety-clack of my mental projector and go back to when I was thirteen years old, my eyes wide, smelling the smoke and seeing the blood on the floor. There are simply places in your past you don’t want to visit again.

Karly gave me space. She didn’t push me, hoping I’d tell her without prompting. When that didn’t work, she told me one of her own stories to get me started. Most of Karly’s stories had to do with her mother.

“Did I tell you that Susannah’s first business failed?” she said. She always called her mother Susannah, not Mother or Mom. “Before she started Chance Properties, she went bankrupt. Not many people know that.”

“Oh, yes?”

I didn’t know why Karly had chosen that story for that moment, but she always had her reasons.

“Yeah, this was years ago. She and her best friend split from one of the big commercial houses and went off on their own. Small time, just the two of them, but you know Susannah, she had big plans. They were pretty overextended. Her partner — Bren was her name. I liked her a lot. We had a little apartment on Devon back then, and Bren would always bring me takeout from Superdawg when she came over to meet with Susannah.”

“How old were you?” I asked.

“Eleven, twelve, something like that. Like I said, I really liked Bren. The two of them were the same age, and their relationship went back for years, but Susannah was definitely the boss. I guess Bren just kept trying to please her, but even as a kid, I already knew that was a no-win game. Anyway, the business was only a year old when Bren screwed up. I mean, it was a big screw-up, but Susannah signed off on it, too, so it’s not like it was all Bren’s fault. They closed on a series of commercial properties south of Milwaukee, because Bren had inside information about a big corporate headquarters relocating out of Chicago. This came right from the CEO. It was solid. But as it turned out, the tip was just a ploy to get the city to shell out more tax breaks. Susannah and Bren wound up holding the bag. They’d been played. They lost everything.”

Karly stopped. She studied the women in the sculpture pouring water, which was meant to symbolize the flow of the water from Great Lake to Great Lake. A cardinal landed on the very top of one of the women’s heads and trilled about what an amazing spring day it was.

“Bren came over that day, and Susannah laid into her,” Karly finally went on. “Blamed the whole debacle on her. She said they were ruined, that Bren was a failure, that she should never have trusted her to do anything right. It was one of Susannah’s most impressive performances. And Bren just sat there and took it. I mean, she walked into our apartment knowing what she was going to get, but she came over anyway. She even remembered Superdawg for me, too.”

I watched Karly steel herself. I didn’t understand the emotion I saw in her face, but I knew there was a twist to this story. Bren was important to her, and that was why she’d picked this moment to tell me about her. While I was struggling with my own past.

“Karly?” I asked softly. “What happened?”

“That night, Bren killed herself. She cut her wrists in the bathtub.”

A little strangled gasp of air escaped my throat. “I’m so sorry.”

“She actually left a note apologizing to Susannah. Can you believe that?”

“I’m so sorry,” I said again.

“I love my mother, Dylan, but you have to understand that there are times when I hate her, too. She can be so thoughtlessly cruel. To be honest, I’m always afraid that I’ll turn out like her. That she’s in my genes and I can’t escape my destiny.”

“I understand.”

Because I did. I knew exactly how she felt. I’d spent my life afraid of turning into my father.

Karly wiped her eyes and waited. I knew what she was waiting for. She’d done her part to help me pry open a locked door. To give me a safe space. If she could share her pain, her fears of who she was, then I could share mine.

In the long silence that followed, I gathered my strength. I said, barely louder than a whisper, “My mother was packing a bag.”

Karly didn’t need an explanation, didn’t need me to tell her what this was about. She reached out and took my hand, and her eyes held on to me with the fiercest, deepest of stares. My breathing got ragged; my heartbeat got faster. I could still see it all in my head, because it was always there. My father, drunk out of his mind, his face beet red, wearing an old leather biker jacket he’d had for years. Me, watching the two of them, my knees up to my chest as I sat in the corner. I could see it. I just needed to drag out the words so Karly could see it, too.

“My mother was packing a bag,” I said again. “She was in a hurry. She was getting us out of there, and she wanted to be gone. We were going to live with one of her friends on the force for a while. That’s what she told me. A cop friend, a man. I had no idea she was having an affair with him. My father knew, though. He knew.”

I remembered the things my father had said about her, the names he’d screamed in her face, but I couldn’t repeat them. Not to anyone. They were too vile.

“Her gun was on top of the dresser,” I went on. “I don’t know why she left it there. I guess she was rushing, and she didn’t think. My father was shouting at her, and she just kept putting clothes in the suitcase as he got madder and madder. Until he grabbed the gun. I saw him do it, like it was slow motion, you know? He hesitated with the gun in his hand, but not for long, maybe a few seconds. Then he cocked it and fired. The blood flew, all over their bed and the wall. Mom collapsed, dead, just like that. My father looked at her body in a kind of shock, like even he couldn’t believe what he’d done. And then he looked at me.”

I felt Karly squeezing my hand, as if I were dangling from a bridge and she was the only thing to keep me from falling.

“He saw me in the corner. I knew what he was thinking. I read his eyes. Me next. Kill me, too. I saw him raising the gun and aiming it right at me, but I was frozen. I couldn’t move. Something must have shifted inside him, watching me. He kept bending his elbow up until the gun was under his chin. Then he gave a little whimper. I remember that so clearly, this whimper, like a dog when his master dies. And then he fired.”

Karly was bawling. Not making a sound, but crying so hard she could barely breathe. Not me. Back then, I was cried out.

“I should have been able to stop it,” I said.

She threw her arms around my neck and told me what people had been telling me for years. “You were a kid. You were just a boy. What could you have done?”

Yes, what could I have done?

I’d asked myself that question every day since I was thirteen. I’d never been able to find an answer, but it wouldn’t have mattered if I had. No matter how much you wish or pray, there are no second chances. All you can do is make peace with your mistakes. Unfortunately, there’s no manual to tell you how to do that.

Now, years later, I felt as if I were living in a kind of infinite loop. They’d all died because of me. My mother. Roscoe. And Karly.

Every time. Every single time it was the same.

I should have been able to stop it.

Edgar and I met every Thursday at lunch in front of Edward Hopper’s classic Nighthawks. My grandfather and I didn’t agree on much, but we agreed that this was our favorite painting in the Art Institute.

For years, when I stared at Hopper’s three customers in the late-night diner, I would see myself as the lonely man with his back to the artist, the one whose face you couldn’t see. That was me, alone in Chicago. Then, after I met Karly, I began to see myself as the other man, seated next to the redhead in the slinky red dress. I liked being that man. I liked his cigarette and his hat and his suit, and most of all, I liked the woman with him.

As I stood there, I heard the thunk of my grandfather’s cane on the wooden floor of the gallery. Edgar came up beside me, his right foot dragging as it had since his ministroke seven years ago. He wore a Cubs cap backward on his head, along with a V-neck Hanes white T-shirt that exposed his curly gray chest hair, baggy tan shorts, and black, well-shined dress shoes with black socks. Yes, Edgar had his own sense of style, and he didn’t care what anyone else thought about him. He didn’t acknowledge me. Instead, he exhaled with a sigh of satisfaction as he stared at Hopper’s painting.

At ninety-four, the fact that my grandfather was still alive was sort of a miracle. He’d been a heavy smoker his whole life, existing mostly on a diet of Chicago dogs and Budweiser. We used to be the same height, but he’d shrunk over the years and was now three inches shorter than me. He didn’t leave the apartment much anymore, and Karly and I had hired a nurse to stay with him several days a week, which he hated. But every Thursday, regardless of rain, wind, cold, or snow, Edgar still hopped a bus and headed downtown to meet me at the Art Institute. I was never sure if he was really here to see me or Nighthawks.

“Did I ever tell you that I’m the reason this painting is here in the museum?” Edgar asked.

This was our routine. He asked me the same question every week and told me the same story. I didn’t know if he’d forgotten that I’d heard it a thousand times, or if he didn’t care.

“I was six years old,” Edgar continued, listening to himself talk as he adjusted the volume on his hearing aid. His voice carried to the entire gallery. “My parents had taken me to Chicago to see the Christmas windows at Marshall Field’s. We were at the corner of State and Randolph, and I saw this man with a huge white beard near the store. I was absolutely sure it was Santa Claus. I took off running, and I collided with a man who was just about to cross the street. Knocked him completely off his feet! Well, don’t you know, at that moment, a grain truck went screaming through the intersection. If I hadn’t knocked that man down, he would have been killed for sure. And do you know who that man was?”

I smiled. “Who was he, Edgar?”

“His name was Daniel Catton Rich. He was the director of the Art Institute. That was Christmas of 1941, and the very next year, Rich acquired Nighthawks directly from Edward Hopper. It’s been here ever since. If it weren’t for me, who knows where that painting would be?”

Edgar shuffled on his feet, looking pleased with himself, as he always did.

I let him study the picture awhile longer, because I was hesitant to raise the subject of Karly. I didn’t know how he would react. When the crowd around us had thinned, I finally said in a low voice, “Edgar, do you remember my call? Do you remember what I told you?”

My grandfather took off his Cubs hat and scratched his scraggly gray hair. “About what?”

“About Karly. About what happened.”

I didn’t see any recollection in his eyes. Facts had a way of coming and going in Edgar’s mind without hanging around for very long. He put his hat back on and stared at the painting again. His brow wrinkled in frustration, as if he knew I’d told him something important and he should remember what it was.

“She died,” I reminded him, my heart breaking as I said it.

He thought about this for a long time without replying. After a while, I wondered if he’d even heard me. Then he pursed his lips to tell me what he thought.

“You’re better off without women,” he announced, with a dismissive sharpness in his tone. “Nothing but backstabbers. My wife left me for another man when I was fifty. Never saw her again. Good riddance.”

“Edgar,” I sighed, not wanting to hear another diatribe. Not today.

“She said she didn’t know who the hell I was anymore! What does that mean? I was the one putting food on the table, that’s who I was. Someday you’re going to realize you’re lucky, Dylan.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. My fists clenched as I struggled to control myself.

I’d like to tell you that this was Edgar’s age talking, but in fact, he’d been this way most of his life. He was a cantankerous son of a bitch and the king of mean jokes. Pick any “ist” you like, and that was Edgar. Narcissist. Racist. Misogynist. I never met my grandmother, but I was sure he didn’t treat her well, and that’s what led to her packing up and leaving for California without even a note.

All that anger Edgar felt covered up a lot of pain. And guilt, too. People were always blaming him for what my father did, and on some level, I’m sure Edgar blamed himself, too. When your son murders his wife, you can’t help but ask yourself what you did wrong. Plus, with my parents both dead, Edgar was stuck raising a teenager on his own. He was already in his seventies when I moved into his apartment. I didn’t make it easy on him, that’s for sure. I was hurt and angry, and I hated the world and him, too. I made sure he knew it.

We made a hell of a family tree. Edgar. My father. Me. But I wasn’t going to stand there and let him tell me I was lucky because Karly was dead.

“I’m going to walk around a little,” I said in a clipped tone, swallowing down my desire to shout at him. I just needed to get away, or I’d say something I’d regret.

“Yeah, whatever. We’ll get a hot dog later, right?”

“Right.”

“Is Karly coming?” Edgar asked. “She’s a keeper, that one.”

This time it really was Edgar’s age. He’d already forgotten.

“No,” I replied, not wanting to say it again. “No, Karly can’t make it today.”

“Too bad. You don’t deserve a girl like her, you know.”

“Yes, I know.”

I left my grandfather in front of Nighthawks. He didn’t need me to stay with him. He’d be there for hours some days, staring at the painting and telling everyone who came up beside him the story of Daniel Catton Rich.

I had nowhere in particular that I wanted to go. I just needed to breathe, but that was hard to do in here. It was a crowded day inside the museum, with tourists crushed in front of the standards like American Gothic and Water Lilies. I wandered from wing to wing, barely stopping, my chest heavy. When I went into the men’s room to wash my face, I turned on the faucet at one of the sinks and realized that just the sound of water was enough to make me hyperventilate. Even the barest trickle crashed through my head. I had to turn it off and grab the counter for balance, and my reflection stared back at me, still as opaque as a total stranger. I staggered back out of the restroom in a sweat.

Faces stared at me wherever I went. That was how I felt. I imagined eyes on me everywhere. The people, pushing around me, blocking my way, all looked at me as if they were murmuring under their breath, “He’s the one. His wife died.” Even the paintings haunted me. Warhol’s Elizabeth Taylor flirted with me from behind her red lips and blue eye shadow. The younger of Renoir’s two sisters studied me curiously from under her flowered hat. They were so close, so vivid, so bright that I expected them to come to life.

I know what you’re thinking. I was in the midst of a panic attack. That’s the explanation for what happened next. My grief, my anger over Edgar, my hyperventilation, my face in the mirror — it all came together, and I began seeing things that weren’t there. Maybe you’re right, but that’s not how it felt.

It felt real.

As real as it had been when I was drowning in the river.

I was in the room with Seurat’s enormous pointillist masterpiece A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, ten feet wide, nearly seven feet tall. I’d seen that work a thousand times, probably more. I could tell you the details from memory: the long pipe of the man in the muscle shirt, the monkey with the perfectly curved tail, the parasols all in different colors. It was one of the museum’s most famous works, and I couldn’t get anywhere close to it because of the crowd, so I stood at the back of the gallery, eyeing the painting over the heads of thirty or more people clustered in front of it. They made a kind of Grande Jatte themselves, different ages, races, heights, sizes, clothes, all frozen in wonder by the art.

Then my gaze drifted to one man with his back to me. What drew my attention was his jacket.

It was a leather motorcycle jacket, weathered and black, with parallel seams down the backs of the sleeves. The jacket was just like the one my father had been wearing that night when I was thirteen. That night when my life became Before and After. For years, I’d kept that jacket in a closet, unable to touch it but also unable to throw it away. After Karly moved in, she finally convinced me that the day had come to get rid of it. I burned it. It became ash. It no longer existed.

So it was a shock to see the man in front of the painting wearing a jacket of the exact same style.

Except, more than that, I realized that this was my father’s jacket.

When I looked closely, I could see the chocolate-brown bloodstains. They were soaked into the leather, a permanent reminder of the night that changed my life. Believe me, I’d memorized the pattern of the blood spray long ago, like the paintings I saw in the museum. I would never forget it.

The man in the coat glanced back, revealing his face. When he did, my knees buckled beneath me. I couldn’t stand; I had to grab for the wall to hold myself up. Our eyes met as dozens of people came and went between us. He looked at me; I looked at him. He reacted. He recognized me. I watched his steely blue-eyed gaze grab on to me like a predator spotting prey.

The encounter lasted only a second, and then he turned casually away and disappeared into the next gallery.

But I’d seen him. I’d seen myself.

My profile. My face. Just like at the river. That was Dylan Moran studying La Grande Jatte and wearing my father’s murder coat. The shock of it left me paralyzed, but he didn’t look surprised to see me at all. It was as if he’d been waiting for that moment, waiting for me to find him.

I shook myself out of my coma and pushed off the wall. I headed across the exhibit floor, weaving through people in my way, who didn’t understand the impatience of the crazed man pushing past them. My doppelgänger had disappeared, but I rushed after him into the next hall, where I stopped to pick him out in the crowd.

Where was he?

Where was I?

But the man I’d seen wasn’t in the room. He’d already vanished.

I continued to the next gallery, and then the next, and finally I ran down the stairs to the first floor of the museum and all the way out to the busy traffic on Michigan Avenue. I collapsed on the steps near one of the green lions facing the street. It was a summer afternoon, warm and perfect. People surrounded me everywhere, but there was no Dylan, no man in a biker jacket, no identical twin taunting me.

I sat on the museum steps and breathed in and out like a piston. I thought about Edgar, his memory failing, his mind drifting around in time, unable to distinguish what was real and what wasn’t.

Maybe the same thing was happening to me.

Maybe this was what it felt like to go insane.

Chapter 4

“Your blood pressure is elevated,” Dr. Tate told me. “So’s your heart rate. But that’s not surprising. All of your other vitals are normal. As far as the scans go, I don’t see any physical abnormalities in your brain that would explain what you’re seeing. No tumors, no aneurysm. So that’s a good thing.”

“I’m just crazy,” I said.

The doctor gave me an affectionate smile. “I wouldn’t go that far, Dylan.”

She got up from the rolling chair and went to the sink in the examining room to wash her hands. When I heard the water, I twitched a little. I’d come to her clinic on Irving Park just east of the river without an appointment, but I knew that Alicia Tate would always fit me in. She’d known me since I met her son Roscoe in sixth grade. After my own mother was killed, she became a kind of surrogate mother to me. As with Edgar, I didn’t make it easy. I could appreciate everything she’d done for me now better than I did as a hostile teenager. I also appreciated that after Roscoe died in the accident, she didn’t blame me for his death.

That made one of us, because I definitely blamed myself.

I picked up the picture of Roscoe that sat on her desk. Four years later, I could still hear his voice in my head, and I missed him more than ever. The photograph didn’t show him smiling. Roscoe rarely smiled; he was serious, both as a boy and as a man. That didn’t serve him well in school, where the other kids picked on him because he was bookish, small, and black. I wasn’t much bigger myself, but Edgar had taught me to be a dirty fighter, and I beat up the largest of the bullies who taunted Roscoe. They didn’t bother him after that, and Roscoe and I became best friends. That fight was also the last time I ever felt like he needed any help from me. Instead, Roscoe was the one who became my rock through my many ups and downs.

The photograph showed him in his priest’s frock and collar. Roscoe was a straight-A genius who could have been a doctor like his mother, but he’d chosen to serve God in a South Side Catholic parish instead, where he railed against guns and gangs with every breath. I wore a tough shell around me, but my best friend — five foot four, skinny, and mostly bald, in his Goodwill sweaters and old-fashioned glasses with Coke-bottle lenses — had been a far tougher man than I’d ever be.

Alicia sat down in front of me again. She noticed the photograph in my hand. “I still talk to him, you know. It makes me feel better to do that. You can, too.”

I put the photo back on her desk. “These days, I’d be concerned that he might start talking back.”

“I really don’t think you’re crazy, Dylan.”

“Then what’s the explanation? I’m obviously having hallucinations, but they don’t feel like hallucinations. I’ve seen myself. Twice. Looking as flesh-and-blood real as you are right now. This other Dylan interacted with me. He saw me, gave me this strange stare, as if he wasn’t surprised to see me. How is that possible?”

Alicia took my hand. Her skin had an antiseptic smell. “The first time this happened was at the river, right? When you were in the midst of a horrific, stressful event that no human being should ever experience? Nearly drowning and losing the love of your life?”

I nodded.

“The second time was at the museum today? And ‘you’ were wearing a leather jacket that doesn’t exist anymore — the jacket your father was wearing when he murdered your mother? In other words, another horrific, stressful event in your life that no human being should ever experience?”

I nodded again.

Alicia looked at me as if I were a child. “Do I really need to explain this to you, Dylan?”

“Okay, it’s a mental breakdown. I get it. Of course I do. Grief, loss, stress, shock. My mind is misfiring.”

“Exactly.”

“But why a manifestation like this? Why am I seeing other versions of myself?”

“That I can’t tell you. The brain reacts to trauma in unusual ways.”

I thought about the poster of Dr. Eve Brier in the ballroom at the hotel. She was a stranger to me, but I could still picture her face in my memory with unusual clarity. “Well, there’s a speaker at the LaSalle Plaza tonight who believes that we’re living in the midst of infinite parallel universes. So I guess there must be a lot of other Dylan Morans out there. Maybe they’re paying me a visit.”

“Are you talking about the Many Worlds theory?” Alicia asked.

I chuckled in surprise. “You’ve heard of it?”

“Of course. Most scientists have.”

“Is it legit?”

Alicia shrugged. “Many physicists believe it is.”

“Parallel universes? How the hell does that work?”

“Well, this isn’t my field, but as I understand it, the math of quantum mechanics creates a strange paradox. According to the math, particles have the ability to exist in two different states at the same time. However, whenever we look, we only see one state. That’s the problem.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “This is about Schrödinger’s cat.”

“I’m impressed, Dylan,” she replied with a smile.

“Hey, I watched The Big Bang Theory.”

“And you’re correct. Erwin Schrödinger used the story of the cat to explain the paradox. There’s a cat in a box with a vial of poison that may or may not be released depending on whether a single atom decays. Until an observer opens the box to check, quantum theory suggests that the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Except we all know that’s absurd. Well, a Princeton scientist named Hugh Everett came up with an answer: when the box is opened, the universes split. One observer sees a cat that is alive, and in a parallel universe, another identical observer sees a cat that is dead. That’s the Many Worlds theory.”

“That sounds insane,” I said.

“Not according to the math of quantum mechanics. And the math is pretty solid. That’s why we have things like the atomic bomb.”

I shook my head. “Well, I’m not a cat in a box, so what do I do? I’ve lost everything, and now I can’t even trust my own mind.”

“Try not to obsess about it,” Alicia suggested. “I can’t really explain why this is happening to you, but I suspect the hallucinations will go away as you deal with your grief.”

I wanted to believe her, but I kept seeing my doppelgänger in the museum. His face. My face. The way he looked at me. “You know what really scared me about that other Dylan?”

“What?”

“It was what I saw in his eyes. I felt this cloud of menace from him. He was capable of anything. And he was me.”

“Dylan, he’s not you. He’s not real.”

“Is that the way I look to other people? Dangerous?”

“No. Not at all.”

“The sheriff called me a violent man,” I pointed out.

“Well, you’re not.”

I picked up the photograph of her son from her desk again. “Are you sure about that? Be honest with me, Alicia. We both know I’m the reason that Roscoe’s dead.”

I’d finally sobered up.

With my bail paid, it was four in the morning, and Roscoe was driving me to his mother’s clinic, where Alicia was waiting to take x-rays and give me something for the pain. I was sure Roscoe had been asleep when I called. I knew he’d already had a long day, because there had been another shooting near his parish. There was always another shooting in Chicago. But he told me not to worry; he would be there for me. And he was.

I hadn’t said much on the drive. Roscoe didn’t push me to talk, not at first. We cruised through the green lights on Montrose, and fall leaves blew in the air and slapped across the windshield. The car was warm and quiet on a cool October night. Roscoe wore his white priest’s collar, which fit loosely on his skinny neck. He always wore the collar when he talked to the police. He said they didn’t like to argue with a priest.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?” he asked finally, when it was obvious I wasn’t going to open up. He eyed me from behind the wheel, his expression calm and serious, the way it always was. The city lights reflected in his glasses. Even at this late hour, he looked smoothly shaved, except for the neat beard around his mustache and chin.

“Come on, buddy,” he went on. “Talk to me.”

“I drank too much. I got in a fight.”

“You’ve been sober for months. Why fall off the wagon now?”

“It’s been crazy at work. I just wrapped up a week-long conference. I wasn’t ready to go home, so I went to a bar in Mayfair.”

“Is that all?”

It took me a long time to answer. “Okay, it’s also the anniversary.”

“There we go.”

“If I went home, I’d think about it, and I didn’t want to do that tonight.”

Roscoe shook his head. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“I needed to deal with this myself.”

“No, you didn’t. How many times have I told you that? Anyway, it doesn’t matter. You were alone, and you’d been drinking. Then what happened?”

“There was this man at the bar,” I said. “He was being a shit to his girlfriend. I told him to knock it off.”

“I’m sure that went over well,” Roscoe said.

“Yeah. He threw a drink in my face. The girl said I should mind my own business.”

“So you hit him?”

“No. I said thanks, I needed a shower. That was that. The two of them left. I finished my drink and headed out of the bar like fifteen minutes later. But they were still on the street, screaming at each other. I tried to ignore it. I was waiting at the bus stop, and I wasn’t going to do anything.”

“But?”

“But he hit her, Roscoe. He just hauled off and slugged the woman in the face. I lost it. I went over there and threw him to the ground. I got down on my knees and began beating the hell out of him. The two of us went at it until the police got there.”

Roscoe didn’t say anything for a while.

He eased the car to a stop, because Montrose was closed ahead of us. Overnight construction was underway. Weird, when you add up all the things that make a difference. The little choices that change everything. If some bureaucrat had picked a different night for the construction, Roscoe would be alive. If we’d taken Irving Park east instead of Montrose, he’d still be alive.

More than anything, if I’d kept my cool outside that bar, my friend would still be alive.

Roscoe turned onto a leafy side street a couple of blocks from Horner Park. We drove past matchbox homes and old three-story apartment buildings. Cars were parked on both sides, blocking our view. He drove slowly and kept looking over at me, focused on me and my story. He should have been paying more attention, but it was the middle of the night on a deserted street.

“I’m him,” I said.

“Who?”

“My father.”

Roscoe sighed as he pulled up to a stop sign. The only thing that I remembered from that intersection was a house for sale at the corner. A gold stone apartment building with a sign mounted on the lawn.

I remembered it because it made me think about chance. Chance ruled everything. Chance determined who lived and who died.

“I’m him,” I said again. “My father lost control that night. That’s what happens to me.”

Roscoe took a loud breath. I had no way of knowing it was practically his last one. “Why?” he asked me.

“What?”

“Why did you attack that man? Why did you go after him?”

“Because he hit that girl.”

“Exactly.”

Roscoe eased his foot onto the accelerator and started across the intersection. He was distracted, and he forgot to look right. If he had, he would have seen the headlights of the truck coming down the one-way street and barreling through the stop sign. I was off in my own world and didn’t see it either.

“Buddy, you’re not your father,” Roscoe told me.

That’s the last thing I remembered until I woke up and saw Karly’s face.

Chapter 5

This was where we’d met.

The ash tree on the corner still bore the scars of the accident. The truck hit us so hard that it drove Roscoe’s car over the curb and wrapped it around the tree trunk. I ran my fingers over the jagged crevices in the bark, which were the only remaining evidence that something violent had occurred here.

I hadn’t really intended to come back to this place, but Alicia’s office wasn’t far away. The day had turned dark, and rain began to spit on my face. I looked up at the old apartment building at the corner of the intersection. That was the building that had been for sale back then, with Karly as the listing agent. It was one of her first properties. She was twenty-five years old, determined to get a top price to impress her mother. She’d been working late out of a vacant apartment, and she’d fallen asleep, when the noise of the accident awakened her. That was when she rushed downstairs to find me in the car, broken and bleeding.

This beautiful stranger promised not to leave me, and she kept her promise.

Karly rode in the ambulance with me. She stayed in the hospital room with me and nursed me back to health in her own bed. For weeks, she held together the pieces of a shattered man who blamed himself for his friend’s death. I fell in love with her almost immediately, but I couldn’t understand why she’d fallen in love with me, too. The closer she got to me, the more I kept telling her to walk away.

I’d made too many mistakes in life, too many bad choices. In my heart of hearts, I didn’t think I deserved to have those bad choices lead me to someone like her. Sooner or later, I expected her to see who I really was, and that would be the end of us. When she slept with Scotty Ryan, I felt as if she’d finally proved me right. I didn’t want any explanations. That whole weekend in the country, I refused to listen.

Until the last night. Until her last words.

As we were heading home, with our bags in the car and the rain pouring down and our marriage in ruins, she stopped me at the door and said with resignation in her voice: “May I say something?”

I didn’t answer. I simply waited.

“Dylan, you never asked me what I saw in you after the accident, but if we’re really done, I want you to know the truth. From the moment I met you, I realized that we were exactly alike — no, wait, let me finish. I know you don’t believe that, because you have this strange, twisted vision of yourself. But we’re the same. We both grew up in cages we built for ourselves. And when I met you, I thought, here was a man who could help me become the person I wanted to be, and I could do the same for him. I still think that’s true. The thing is, I’m ready, Dylan. I can’t wait anymore. I’m not happy with my life, not because of you, but because I need to be someone different. I’ll do it without you if I have to, but I’d rather do it with you. And deep down, I think you want that, too. My question is, are you willing to try?”

That was a good question.

That was a very good question, and I knew what I wanted to say. I wanted to rise above the anger I carried — for the world, for her, but mostly for myself. Karly needed me to forgive her, and that was what I needed to do, too. Instead, I failed both of us. It was another of my mistakes, another bad choice. I should have kissed her right then, but all I did was walk past her and get in the car. That was how we drove out into the rain that night, with a bitter silence lingering between us.

You see, there are moments in your life you are desperate to take back as soon as they happen, but the clock ticks, and they’re gone. You make your choice, and an instant later, nothing is the same.

By the time I was ready to tell her how I felt, we were already in the water.

I couldn’t stay at the accident scene any longer. I walked down the side street toward the green fields of Horner Park, which I knew from my childhood. As I did, I learned that my life was still governed by Chance with a capital C, because in the next block, across from the park’s basketball courts, I noticed a two-story house with a familiar red-and-black sign mounted in the yard. The house was for sale, and the listing agent was another woman at Chance Properties whom I’d met once or twice.

However, I didn’t care about that.

Instead, I focused on the white pickup truck parked at the curb. The truck had a painted logo on the door for Ryan Construction.

Scotty Ryan.

He was inside the house.

I heard a roaring in my head, a thump-thump-thump as my heartbeat took off. I hadn’t had a drink all day, so there was no excuse for making a foolish mistake. No good could come from seeing him.

It didn’t matter. I couldn’t stop myself. I walked down the sidewalk and stood in front of the white picket fence. The house was neatly put together, freshly painted, with flowers growing in the window boxes. The front door was open, and I could hear the whine of a power saw inside. My common sense sent me a very clear message to walk away, which my heart ignored. I let myself inside the fence and headed for the steps. I hesitated only briefly at the house’s screen door before I ripped it open.

The interior had the sweet smell of cut wood. Plastic sheeting lined the living room floor. The noise of the saw deafened me, but then it cut off, leaving a stark silence. Scotty Ryan stood behind the saw, holding up a long length of oak trim to examine the cut. As he did, he saw me.

His whole body stiffened. When he recovered, he took off his noise-canceling headphones and his safety goggles and canvas gloves. He was dressed in jeans and work boots, with a loose Black Hawks jersey over his long torso. Sawdust made a film on his arms.

“Hello, Dylan,” he said.

“Scotty.”

We faced each other across the room. The standoff between us was like two tough dogs growling in an alley.

Scotty Ryan was forty years old, so nearly a decade older than me. He was half a foot taller, too, with a lanky, almost rubbery frame. He had wavy reddish-blond hair, and his face was sunburned pink from time spent in the sun. When he talked, he had an aw-shucks drawl in his voice, and his words always came out slowly, like honey from a jar. His casual good humor made him a difficult man to dislike, but believe me, I’d found a way.

“I’m really sorry,” Scotty said, which covered a lot of ground. “You can’t imagine how sorry I am.”

“You should be.”

My verbal blow rolled off him without causing any damage. He brushed his hand through his thick hair, and I could see the glow of sweat on his face. “I can’t believe she’s gone. I’m crushed. I’m sure you must be, too.”

“Wow. You think?”

Scotty shrugged his wide shoulders. “Hey, it’s hard to tell with you, Dylan. Karly always said you kept things locked up tight. You never showed her anything. That drove her crazy. No offense.”

Because adding “no offense” made everything better, coming from the man who’d slept with my wife.

“I have a question, Scotty.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“How long were you in love with Karly? How long were you hiding that little secret?”

Scotty rubbed his jutting chin and took his time to answer, the way he always did. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this now, Dylan.”

“How. Long?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Probably from the day I met her. I’ve known her a lot longer than you. I think she was only eighteen back then, but I never thought of her as young. She was so smart, confident, full of herself. I knew she was way out of my league, but yeah, I guess I had a crush on her from day one. Not that I ever intended to do anything about it.”

“Or you were just biding your time. Waiting until she was vulnerable.”

“That’s not how it went down. I swear. That’s not what happened.”

“Then what did happen?”

I took a couple of steps toward him. The plastic sheeting crinkled under my feet. He watched me warily, like a fighter in the ring.

“Look, what else do you want to know? I’m sure Karly already filled you in. When she called me, she said she was going to tell you everything.”

“You talked to her? Are you kidding me? When?”

“The day after,” Scotty admitted. “She was upset, blaming herself, said she couldn’t believe she’d made such a stupid mistake. She was going to tell you the truth, and she wanted me to know. For what it’s worth, I told her to keep it to herself and not risk her marriage over this. Believe me, I knew she had no intention of leaving you for me. That’s not what it was about. Whatever that night meant to me, it was just a drunken error in judgment to her. You should know what that’s like. You’ve made enough of those yourself, am I right?”

I didn’t take the bait.

“The details, Scotty. How did it happen?”

Scotty shook his head. “I don’t know what to tell you, Dylan. Karly and I have been friends for a long time, and yeah, it’s always been more than that for me. If she knew how I felt, she was classy enough not to let on and embarrass me. But the last few months, she started telling me things. Personal things. Confiding in me about her problems. She needed to talk to someone, because you weren’t listening.”

“And there you were, with a shoulder for her to cry on.”

“You think Karly was the only one turning to someone else? She said you told your assistant Tai more than you ever told her.”

I felt slapped. “There was nothing between me and Tai. There never was. Karly knew that.”

“Did she?”

“Don’t try to put any of this on me.”

Scotty rolled his eyes and stared at the ceiling. “I’m not. Seriously, man, I’m not. I’m just telling you the way it was. You were running so fast in your life that you never saw that Karly wanted to slow things down. She was ready to quit, Dylan. To tell her mother that she wanted out of the real estate business. She was always more like her dad than her mom — you know that. A book type. A poet. Karly was ready to have kids. She wanted all of that more than anything, but she didn’t think you’d ever go for it. It was eating her up inside.”

“I never said anything like that to her.”

“I don’t care what you said. I’m telling you what she heard. That night? Her and me? She’d landed a buyer on that place in Schaumburg for Vernon Hotels, and the renovations were all done. I opened champagne for us, and yeah, we had too much. But if that’s all it was, nothing would have happened. Except the more she drank, the more Karly started talking about wanting a different life and not knowing how to tell you. She didn’t blame you for it, if that’s what you’re thinking. She was just upset, and she started crying. I hugged her. I wanted to comfort her, and one thing led to another. Neither one of us planned it, and Karly hated herself for letting it happen. You can believe this or not, but I’m sorry it happened, too.”

I didn’t need a drink now to be losing control.

“You killed her,” I snapped. “It’s your fault she’s gone. We were out there in the middle of nowhere because of you.”

Scotty’s casual demeanor hardened into anger. Our nerves were both fraying. “Hey, you can blame me for the affair. I’ll take that. But I’m not the reason she died. If you want someone to blame for that, look in the mirror.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I mean, what happened in that river, Dylan? Explain it to me. Tell me the truth. Why are you here and she’s not?”

“I tried to save her. That’s what happened.”

Scotty opened his mouth and then clamped it shut. His sunburned cheeks flushed even redder, like steam building up in his face.

“Do you have something to say?” I asked.

“No.”

“Don’t hold back, Scotty. Say it.”

He pushed into my space, his scarlet face inches from mine. His voice became a snarl. “Fine. You want me to say it? I will. You should have died out there. If it was me in that car, I would never have come out of that river without her. Either we both lived, or we both died. But there’s no way I would have let her die alone.”

My left hand flew. I didn’t even feel it happening. I never did when I lost control. My arm swung like a rocket left to right, and my fist collided with Scotty’s mouth. The impact was like hitting a wall. Blood sprayed from his lips and nose, and I felt the shudder knifing through my forearm. I wondered if I’d broken my fingers. His head snapped sideways, and he staggered back, spitting out a tooth like a kernel of popcorn.

I tensed, waiting for him to charge me. He was big enough and strong enough to give me a beatdown if he wanted. A part of me hoped he would. I wanted to feel the pain of his fists until I was unconscious on the floor. I deserved punishment. I’d failed, and it felt as if I was doomed to relive that failure over and over. Whenever I closed my eyes, I was in the water, swimming through nothingness, searching for the car where Karly was trapped. I had to find her. I had to save her. I dove and swam and searched, but each fragile second dragged her farther away from me. Her voice stopped calling my name. Her cries vanished. All that was left was a terrible silence in my head, a silence of guilt and death. She was gone. My wife was gone.

I hit Scotty because I knew he was right.

I’d let Karly die alone.

When it was obvious that Scotty wasn’t going to fight back, I left the house, nursing my bruised and bloody hand. I was consumed by a mix of adrenaline and despair. At the sidewalk, I met an elderly woman walking her Westie. She studied my face with suspicious eyes and noted the blood on my fingers.

“Is everything all right?” she asked me.

“Fine.”

“I heard loud voices. An argument.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Should I call the police?”

“Everything’s fine, ma’am,” I told her, continuing into the street.

“This is a nice neighborhood!” she called after me, with the reproach of a schoolteacher. “We don’t like that kind of thing around here! People shouldn’t fight!”

I didn’t answer her. I crossed through the traffic to Horner Park and then into the wet, open grass of the park’s baseball field. I used to come here as a kid. Roscoe and I would toss a football around and tackle each other in the mud. We’d talk about playing quarterback for the Bears, and believe me, they’ve had worse.

The drizzle had turned into showers, and the rain soaked me as I stood there. No one else was around. I winced, feeling the sharp burn in my hand. My fingers felt stiff as I tried to move them.

The sheriff called me a violent man.

You’re not.

But my history said otherwise.

Ahead of me, I saw a lineup of trees where the park ended at the narrow ribbon of the Chicago River. A fence discouraged kids from hiking down the riverbank and falling into the water. Not that it worked. As teenagers, Roscoe and I had explored the banks on both sides of the river, playing spies, throwing rocks, hunting rats. Today, in the rain, I walked all the way up to the fence and took hold of it with both hands and closed my eyes. I leaned my forehead against the mesh.

Without Roscoe, without Karly, I didn’t think I’d ever felt more alone. They’d gone on to other worlds, and I was still here. However, when I opened my eyes again, I realized that I wasn’t alone anymore.

He was with me.

I can’t tell you how I knew. I didn’t hear footsteps on the trail. I didn’t see anyone watching me. The trees were close in around me, and the gray sky made it seem like night. A stranger could have been six feet away, and I wouldn’t have seen him. But someone was on the other side of the fence, hiding on the riverbank the way I used to do when I was a kid. Like he knew this was where I’d go. Like he’d been waiting for me to come here. I tried to be patient, to stand there like a statue in silence and see if he’d show himself.

He was back. I was back.

My doppelgänger.

I stared into the brush, watching for movement in the shadows. I could see the tree trunks like soldiers, and among them, I finally spotted a dark outline that looked out of place. A person. I hadn’t been this close to him before. Only a few feet separated us. I also realized, as I had in the museum, that this wasn’t just about me. He knew I was here, too. He was aware of me, just as I was aware of him. We were connected. And what I felt emanating from him was an aura of sheer sadistic rage. It was like I’d handed this shadow all my anger, all my bitterness, all my frustrations.

I looked around to be sure that no one else was nearby. Just him and me. My hallucination. My mental breakdown.

“I know you’re there,” I called to him in a low voice. Then I added for the hell of it: “Talk to me.”

I waited for an answer, but I didn’t expect to get one. Hallucinations didn’t talk back. Even so, by speaking to him, I felt as if I’d taken a leap into a rabbit hole, and I had no idea where it would lead me.

“Who are you?” I asked.

I still got no reply. The silence around me was punctuated by the patter of rain on the leaves.

Then, like a statue coming to life, a voice spoke from the darkness. My voice, as if I were on the radio, when you can’t believe that’s how you sound to everyone else.

“I’m you.”

I lurched back in disbelief. Did I really hear that? No, I couldn’t have heard that. Alicia had told me: he’s not real. This was my fevered imagination at work, all my memories playing tricks on me. My body twitched. I dug my fingertips into the top of my skull, as if I could squeeze out what my mind was telling me. My eyes blinked over and over. I rushed the fence and grabbed hold of it like a prisoner in a cell.

“What do you want?” I hissed.

Again the rain was the only sound for a long stretch of time. He dragged out my torture by saying nothing. I was starting to hope that I’d awaken and realize this had all been a nightmare. I’d be sane again. I’d be back in my bed, and Karly would be next to me, and all the preceding days would have been a dream. But as I stood there, soaking wet, chilled to the bone, the nightmare deepened.

It got blacker.

I shouted at him. “Why are you here? Tell me!”

This time, my shadow man answered. He whispered from the trees.

“To kill.”

Chapter 6

I ran.

I ran without looking back at the river. I sprinted through the park’s wet green fields, dodged through random side streets like a man being chased, and finally boarded the first bus that passed my way. I didn’t care where it was going. It took me away, which was what I wanted. Eventually I got off and transferred, and then transferred again. A long time later, I made it back to the hotel. I hurried through the lobby without talking to anyone and twitched impatiently, waiting for the elevator. When the doors opened, I tensed, not sure what I would see inside. The same was true when I got to the floor where I was staying.

I expected to see him. Me.

Finally, back in my room, I locked the dead bolt. I even thought about dragging a chair to the door to make sure it wouldn’t open. With my heart pounding, I paced back and forth between the walls, unable to stop, unable to calm down. When the phone rang, I jumped. I let it go, and eventually the ringing stopped, but only seconds later, it rang again. This time, I picked up the receiver without announcing myself. I waited nervously to hear who was on the other end, and I exhaled in relief when I heard Tai’s voice.

“Hey,” she said. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. Fine.”

“I tried you several times and didn’t get an answer. I was worried. I asked the desk people to keep an eye out for when you got back.”

“I was out,” I told her, without going into detail.

“Do you need anything?”

“No. Thanks.”

Tai was quiet for a while, breathing softly into the phone. “Well, I’m almost done for the day. I’ll be heading home soon. The team has everything under control for the Eve Brier event. Our Lady of Infinite Worlds. She’s speaking in the ballroom tonight.”

“I remember.”

“You sure you’re okay? You sound tense.”

I was more than tense. My life was breaking down like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, but I couldn’t tell her why. I couldn’t even explain it to myself.

“I’m fine, Tai. You’ve had a long day. Go home.”

“Okay.”

But she didn’t hang up.

“Do you want some company?” she went on after a brief pause. “There’s nothing but Lean Cuisine and Prime Video waiting in my apartment. I still have that thank-you bottle of pinot the Walkers gave us. I could bring it up, and we could talk. Or not talk. If you want to just sit there and drink and look at the lake, we could do that, too.”

“Not tonight.”

“Look, I know you may feel like it’s better to be alone, but that’s not always the best thing. Sometimes it helps to have a friend there with you. Someone warm, someone who cares.”

As if her meaning wasn’t clear enough, she made it even clearer.

“I can stay all night if you want, Dylan. As a friend. That’s all. I really have no expectations. But if you need to be close to someone, I’m here.”

I was tempted. Not because I’d ever been attracted to Tai, not because I wanted sex, but because I liked the idea of having a real person with me, keeping me sane. I was afraid of being alone and of what would happen to me next.

Listening to her, I also felt like a fool for missing her intentions. Karly had been right, as she usually was. I’d been telling Tai my secrets for months because it felt safe, but there was nothing safe about it.

“I appreciate the offer,” I told her over the phone, “but I wouldn’t be very good company.”

“Are you sure?”

“Very sure.”

Her disappointment was palpable. “Well, the door is always open, Dylan. I mean that. If you change your mind, call me. Or come by my apartment. I don’t want you feeling like you have to be by yourself.”

“Thanks, Tai.”

I hung up the phone. The hotel room was quiet, just the rumbling white noise of the fan blowing warm air. I’d turned up the heat, but I was still cold, because my clothes were soaking wet. I peeled them off and stood shivering in the darkness. I’d bought a bottle of bourbon in the gift shop earlier, and I opened it and poured a glass, neat. The amber liquid trailed fire down my throat into my stomach, and the warmth spread. I took it to the window and stared out at the city, where night had fallen. In the distance, I could see the gold lights of the fountain, the glow of waterfront condominium towers, and the kaleidoscope of the huge Ferris wheel out on Navy Pier.

Where was he?

Who was he, this man that my mind had conjured? Was he down in that darkness, staring up at my window?

I didn’t know what was happening to me. I wanted my old life back the way it was. I wanted Karly, naked like me, her skin pressed up against me from behind, her chin on my shoulder. If I closed my eyes, I could feel her there. I could hear her whispering to me. I would turn around, and we would kiss, and our eyes would glisten with desire, and we would tumble onto the bed and melt into each other with breathless, urgent laughter.

We’d had so many moments like that.

We would never have them again.

I drank more bourbon, but my body was still cold. When my third glass was empty, I went into the bathroom and ran a scalding-hot bath for myself. As the tub filled, I slid down into it, the hot water lapping at my skin. I let it go as high as it could, and then I sank down below the surface. I immersed my whole body, and the hot, clean water became black as night, and the slimy mud oozed over my skin, and my wife screamed for me to save her.

Dylan, come find me! I’m still here!

If I drowned myself, I’d be with my wife again. But my body betrayed me. As I ran out of air, I threw myself upward. My face burst from the water, and I gasped for breath, gagging and coughing. I opened the tub drain and listened to the loud, sucking slurp as the water went down. When the tub was empty and I was cold again, I finally climbed out and went back into the bedroom.

I needed to talk to someone about all of this. About my grief and my hallucinations. I needed answers.

I realized there was someone in the hotel who could help. Dr. Eve Brier — author, philosopher, and psychiatrist — was downstairs, and according to Tai, she knew me, even though I didn’t know her. I wanted to understand how that was possible.

“Don’t you know her?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s strange. She told me she picked the hotel on your recommendation.”

I got dressed again. I put on a navy blazer and black slacks, playing the role of hotel events manager. I made sure I was shaved, and I brushed my teeth and popped a few mints in my mouth to cover the smell of the bourbon. Then I headed to the elevators.

The hotel’s gold ballroom had a narrow second-story balcony that made a U around the palace-like space. From up there, people could lean on the elaborately carved railings and watch the wedding parties dance below them, or pretend that they were in powdered wigs and part of the court of Louis XIV. I let myself onto the walkway through a staff entrance and stayed discreetly at the back. No one was up here tonight. The action was below, in the darkened ballroom, with several hundred guests paying rapt attention to the woman illuminated on the stage.

Dr. Brier was dressed completely in black. Black pantsuit, black heels. In the stark spotlight, her head looked almost disconnected from her body, and her hands fluttered like flying birds as she gesticulated to the crowd. Her highlighted hair swirled as she walked from one side of the stage to the other. I could see the reflecting glint of her golden eyes like two faraway jewels. Her voice, through the microphone, had a mellifluous quality, the kind of singsong sweetness that could hypnotize you or seduce you, depending on what she wanted. It worked its magic. I didn’t think I’d ever heard our ballroom as drop-dead quiet as it was at that moment. Dr. Brier had these hundreds of people holding their breath.

“Think about what this means,” she told them, drawing out her words with a pregnant pause. “If we accept the Many Worlds theory as true, then our universe is constantly replicating itself, atom by atom, moment by moment, choice by choice. Every possible outcome of an event exists in its own separate world. We are all inching along on a single, solitary, fragile branch of a tree that grows infinitely larger with each nanosecond. As I leave the ballroom tonight, I turn left, but I also turn right. I go home, and I don’t go home. I kiss my husband, and I slap his face, and I have sex with him, and I stick a knife in his heart. In my consciousness, I only experience one of those outcomes, because I’m on one branch of the tree. But the Many Worlds theory tells us that all of those things happen in parallel universes.”

She paused. “Of course, I’m sure my husband is hoping I’m in bed with him later and not wiping the blood off my knife.”

Laughter rippled through the crowd.

“In fact, I’m not actually married,” she said, “not in this life. However, in a myriad of other worlds, I am. In other worlds, I’m not a psychiatrist, I’m an actor, I’m a cop, I’m a homeless drug addict. In other worlds, I’m not alive; I’m dead. And so are you. There are infinite copies of you in infinite worlds, making all of the choices you don’t make in this life. That’s what the theory says.”

Dr. Brier stopped in the middle of the stage.

“Is this crazy talk? The ravings of mad scientists trying desperately to explain why their elegant math doesn’t work in the real world? Well, maybe. Or maybe our vision of the universe is simply limited by what we can see. Until we had microscopes and could look at a drop of blood, nobody would have believed that there were so many other worlds living inside it. Millions of cells inside a single drop of blood! Impossible! But now we know it to be true. So is the idea of the Many Worlds an absurd theory? Or do we just need a better microscope?”

There was something magnetic about this woman. She wasn’t speaking to the audience as a whole. She was speaking to everyone in the room. Personally. Individually. Or maybe she was just talking to me, because that was how it felt. Standing on the balcony, I might as well have been alone with her in the giant ballroom. I felt her watching me. Staring up at me. Directing all her comments and thoughts to me. I expected her to use my name.

Dylan, you are not alone. You are part of many worlds.

You are infinite.

“Philosophers took this idea from the physicists and came up with their own theory,” Dr. Brier continued. “They called it the Many Minds. Their theory is that all these endless choices, all these parallel lives, really do exist — not in the big wide universe, but inside our individual brains. We’re the ones who divide like amoebas over and over. Still sound crazy? Well, think about your dreams. A dream is an elaborate world that your brain creates instantaneously. All that extraordinary detail devoted to building a fantasy place that only exists for a few moments of sleep, never to be visited again. If the brain can do that night after night after night, then maybe it isn’t so strange to think that it can build entire parallel worlds, too. No, for me, the important question isn’t whether it’s possible. The question is, What does this have to do with you and me and our actual lives? With our single little branch of the tree? Does any of this really matter if it’s all just theoretical? Because physicists and philosophers don’t agree on much, but they do agree on one thing. Whether it’s Many Worlds or Many Minds, we’re stuck on our own branch. Isolated. Powerless. Every version of yourself lives in its own separate world, and you can’t visit those other universes.”

Dr. Brier let all of that sink in. She took a sip of water from a bottle on the stool placed in the middle of the stage. Before she began to speak, I saw it again. Her eyes shifted to the balcony.

She stared directly at me.

“Or can you?”

After her speech was over, I waited in a long line to meet her. This whole event was about selling books. She’d written a self-help book, using the hook of the Many Worlds, Many Minds theories to give it a sexy twist. The idea was to teach people to lead better lives by showing them how to “visit” the alternate choices they’d made in parallel worlds.

Still wondering if you should have asked your college girlfriend to marry you? Imagine the version of yourself that’s living in that world.

Trying to decide whether to take that new job? Somewhere in the universe, you will. What does that life look like?

I understood the appeal of the theory. I was drawn to the idea that there was a universe right now where I hadn’t driven into that river. Somewhere, either in another world or buried inside my head, Karly was still alive, and I was still with her.

Believe me, I would have done anything to have that life for myself.

But that was a different Dylan. A Dylan who made better choices.

I could see Dr. Brier on stage as the guests trooped across one at a time to get her signature, along with a smile and a photo. She was attractive, eloquent, and persuasive, the way all cult leaders tend to be. I kept staring at her face and trying to remember where I could have met her, but I came up blank. It had to be a mistake. Somehow, Tai had misunderstood what she said.

Finally, it was my turn. I walked across the stage, leaving the line of people behind me. I had the copy of the book I’d bought in my hand. Dr. Brier’s eyes watched me come closer. I reached the table where she was seated by herself, and I could feel myself enveloped by her aura. I stood over her and handed her the book to sign. She took it, but her smile looked forced.

“Hello, Dylan,” she murmured. “I saw you in the balcony. I didn’t think you’d come. It’s not such a good idea, you and me being seen together.”

Her words threw me off balance. “I’m sorry, do you know me?”

She froze before she signed the book. Her almond-shaped brown eyes bored into mine. “Is that a joke?”

“No.”

“I don’t like this game, Dylan.”

“I’m sorry, Dr. Brier, but you must have me confused with someone else. As far as I know, we’ve never met.”

“I see.” She glanced at the people still in line on the other side of the stage, and then she swept her long hair across her head. She signed the book with a flourish, added a little note, and then handed it back to me across the table. As she did, her fingertips grazed mine.

“My mistake,” she said. “Enjoy the book.”

I walked away in a daze. I glanced over my shoulder to see if she was watching me, but she’d moved on to the next person. I left the ballroom and found a bench near the elevators, where I sat down and opened the book.

Below her signature, she’d added a note.

The fountain. 1:00 a.m.

Chapter 7

Three hours later, I walked into Grant Park with a cold lake wind blowing into my face. I kept my hands in my pockets and my head down. Every few steps, I looked back at the lights of Michigan Avenue to see if I was being followed. I didn’t feel his presence now — my presence — but that didn’t mean my doppelgänger wasn’t here.

I crossed over the railroad tracks and continued beside the green lawns of the park. Traffic was light, and I jogged to the other side of Columbus to get to the Buckingham Fountain. Its water cannons had been stilled until morning. Beyond the fountain, the dark swath of Lake Michigan filled the horizon. I stood by the pond for a while, near the sculptures of the seahorses, and then I found a bench on the south side of the plaza to wait.

I wasn’t alone. I saw a homeless man wrapped in a blanket on one of the benches near me. From behind me, I heard the sultry breaths of a couple having sex in the shelter of the trees. Near the fountain, two silhouettes whispered to each other, and I saw something pass from one hand to another. Drugs.

Dr. Eve Brier arrived exactly on time. I checked my watch, and it was one in the morning on the dot. I saw her coming, still in black, with a dark trench coat waving like a cape behind her as the wind blew. I stood up as she approached, and she came up and put her arms around me, an oddly intimate gesture that took me aback. Her perfume rose off her skin like a bouquet of roses. To anyone watching us, we must have looked like two lovers meeting, but I felt her hands exploring my back and then my chest, patting me down.

“What are you doing?” I asked her.

“Making sure you’re not wearing a wire.”

“Why on earth would I do that?”

“I don’t know, Dylan, but none of this makes sense. I’d rather be careful.”

We sat down next to each other on the bench. I could feel an incredible tenseness radiating from her. She was scared of something. Her head swiveled, surveying the shadows to see if we were being watched.

“What was all that about in the ballroom?” she asked me.

“What do you mean?”

“Pretending not to know me.”

“I don’t know you.”

“Stop it, Dylan. You’re scaring me.”

“I’m serious,” I told her.

She studied my face carefully, as if looking for a lie. “Say the word,” she said finally.

“What word?”

“You know.”

“I don’t. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Infinite,” she said. “Say it.”

“Why?”

“Say it,” she repeated like an order.

I shrugged. “Infinite.”

Dr. Brier eased back on the bench. I didn’t know what she expected would happen, but nothing did. She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, as if the lake breeze was making her cold.

“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” I asked her.

“You seriously don’t remember me?”

“Dr. Brier, I already told you. We’ve never met. The first time I heard your name was when I saw the poster for your event at the hotel.”

“Call me Eve,” she said. “Please. Anything else sounds strange. I need to ask you some questions.”

“Okay.”

“Have you been having blackouts? You wake up and can’t account for where you were or what you did?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Even when you drink?”

“How do you know that I drink?”

“Just answer the question.”

“No, I haven’t gotten blackout drunk in years. Typically, I remember the stupid things I do.”

Eve frowned. “Have you experienced any kind of trauma lately?”

“Yes. The worst trauma of my life, in fact. I lost my wife in a car accident.”

“Your wife,” she exclaimed.

“Karly. Our car went into a river. She drowned. I wasn’t able to save her.”

Eve inched away from me on the bench. Her voice grew frostier. “I’m very sorry for your loss. That’s a terrible thing.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Is it possible you experienced some kind of memory loss after the accident?”

“If I did, you’re the only thing that got erased,” I told her. “Look, you obviously think I’m someone else. Are you going to tell me how I supposedly know you?”

Eve stood up from the bench and reached out a hand to me. I stood up, too, and we walked eastward, away from the fountain. We crossed the outer drive and then continued until we were within a few steps of the lake. I could taste the spray on my lips. Out in the harbor, sailboats bobbed, their ropes clanging. Beyond the piers, I could see whitecaps dotting the rough water. The skyscrapers glowed behind us.

She turned and faced me. In her high heels, she was taller than I was. The wind whipped her silky hair. “You’re my patient. That’s how I know you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’ve been coming to me for therapy for several weeks.”

I backed away from her. “What?”

“It’s true.”

“No, it’s not. I don’t even know you.”

“Believe me, you do. And I know you, too. Of course, you never told me about being married, which is a surprise.” She cocked her head, studying me like a clinician trying to get inside my brain. “This must be some kind of memory loss. Although I suppose there’s one other possibility.”

“What’s that?”

Eve frowned. “You could be suffering from multiple personality syndrome. Your mind has split into different versions of yourself. One Dylan doesn’t remember what the other Dylan has done. I never saw any signs of that, but other personalities can be very convincing. I guess it’s also possible that my treatment made your condition more severe.”

“Treatment?”

“Yes. You were my first patient in a new experimental protocol I developed. I call it my Many Worlds therapy.”

“What the hell is that?”

“It’s a way of breaking down barriers between the separate lives that our brain creates. Of bridging the parallel universes. It’s similar to the concept of past life regression, but instead of going backward in time, it’s like going sideways into your other worlds. That’s why I had you say infinite. That’s our code word, the signal that triggers your brain to end the session. Wherever you were, whatever world you were in, you could say that, and you’d be back with me. I wanted to see how you reacted to the idea of saying it.”

“I didn’t react at all, because it meant nothing to me.”

“Yes, that’s interesting. I’m not sure what to make of that.”

I shook my head. “How does this treatment work?”

Eve glanced at the sidewalk near the water. We were still alone, but she obviously didn’t want anyone to hear us. “Have you ever heard of a San Francisco psychiatrist named Francesca Stein? She was in the news a few years ago when she was found to be altering the memories of her patients using a combination of psychotropic drugs and hypnosis.”

“If you say so. I don’t know the name.”

“Frankie and I are friends. We were in school together. We’ve talked a lot about the therapeutic possibilities behind the Many Worlds theory. She believed it might be possible to use a technique similar to what she used in altering memories to get people to ‘experience’ their other lives. I’ve been exploring the idea ever since.”

“Jumping between worlds?” I asked cynically.

“That’s right.”

“Are you saying you did this to me?”

“Exactly.”

“I would never have agreed to that.”

“In fact, you volunteered. You pushed me to try it. You said you wanted to know the truth about yourself. So we agreed that you would be my guinea pig.”

I felt as if all I could do was sputter out my protests. “Experimenting with psychotropic drugs? Is that even legal? Because it sure as hell doesn’t sound ethical.”

“You’re right. I push the boundaries. Actually, you said that was something you liked about me, that we had things in common. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life. I was a drug addict for a while back in medical school and nearly got kicked out. If people found out what we did, I’d probably lose my license. That’s why I was so cautious with you tonight. Yes, I gave you hallucinogenic drugs to alter reality for you, but believe me, it was with your full consent.”

I shook my head. “Impossible. You’re making a mistake. I don’t know you.”

Eve sighed at my denials. “You’re Dylan Moran. Events manager at the LaSalle Plaza Hotel. Your father killed your mother and then killed himself right in front of you. You moved in with your grandfather, Edgar, after their deaths. You still go to the Art Institute with him every week. Your favorite painting is Hopper’s Nighthawks. Edgar likes to say that if he hadn’t accidentally bumped into the museum director when he was a boy and saved him from getting killed on State Street, that painting would be hanging in a totally different place.”

My breath left my chest. I grabbed her shoulders and hissed in her face, “How do you know all that?”

“How do you think? You told me.”

I stared at her face in the starlight and tried to make sense of this woman. She was a doctor and a psychiatrist, but she was something more, too. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but she had an enigmatic quality about her, as if she could seduce people with her mind. I felt the spell she cast pulling me into her orbit. She was beautiful, sensual, unforgettable. A magician. I could picture being with her in her office. I could hear my own voice telling her secrets about myself.

But it had never happened.

“This therapy,” I went on. “What did I experience?”

“You told me you saw other Dylans from other worlds. You interacted with them. You went into their lives.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“You believed it.”

“What did I see?”

“If you want to know that, you should go back inside your head. Try it and see for yourself.”

“No thanks.”

“Are you sure? You told me after one session that you wished you could stay in the world you found. You were tempted to take over that other Dylan’s life.”

“None of that is real,” I said.

“How do you know? Frankly, I wasn’t sure before we began, but your experience made me a believer. The Many Worlds theory is true. We really do take every road that’s open to us. In some other world, you and I never met. We’re passing each other by the lake right now like strangers. In another world, we’re having sex. In another, you’re holding me under the water and drowning me.”

I flinched at the violent image. “Drowning you? Why on earth would you say something like that?”

“Because that’s why you came to me, Dylan,” Eve said. “You said you were having visions of killing people, and yet these people were still alive. But you could give me details, dates, descriptions, methods of how you’d murdered them. You wanted my help. You were afraid you were on the verge of becoming a serial killer.”

Chapter 8

Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror — I mean, really looked at yourself — and wondered who you were?

What kind of person lives behind your eyes?

That was how I felt at that moment. I no longer had any idea what to believe about Dylan Moran. Eve had told me things about myself that seemed impossible, and yet they also made sense in a crazy way. If my personality had split apart, if another side of me was living a different life that I knew nothing about, then maybe my mind was projecting that second Dylan Moran into my hallucinations.

I was seeing myself. Talking to the other version of myself. Somehow, my brain was bringing my second personality to life, and what I knew about that personality scared me. When I was him, I didn’t know what I was capable of doing.

Why are you here?

To kill.

I needed something I could hold on to, some kind of driftwood in the sea that would keep me afloat. I needed Karly, or at least a reminder of her. So I took a cab north along the lakeshore toward the house where Karly’s parents lived. There were faster ways out of the city, but I asked the driver to take the slow route along Sheridan Road, and I told him I’d make it up to him in the tip. Karly and I had taken this road many times when we were visiting her parents. She liked to see the neighborhoods change, from the green fields of Lincoln Park to the academic neighborhoods of Loyola and Northwestern, and then to the lakeside mansions of Evanston, Kenilworth, and Winnetka.

Personally, I just thought she wasn’t in a hurry to see her mother.

Susannah Chance lived in a stone mansion that dated to the 1930s. It looked like a Tudor castle, with bay windows, tall austere chimneys, and sharp gables. Yes, Karly’s father lived here, too, but this was the House That Susannah Built. Karly’s father, Tom, was a published poet and high school English teacher who would have been just as happy living in a one-bedroom apartment near Wrigley Field. Susannah, however, was the force of nature behind Chance Properties, and her Wilmette estate was the ostentatious symbol of her success.

I had the cab let me off on Sheridan Road, and I walked the last hundred yards under the old-growth trees. I was white and wearing nice clothes, which probably protected me from someone calling the cops. The people in this neighborhood had itchy 911 fingers. When I got to the Chance house, the lights were off, which wasn’t surprising given the late hour. I didn’t want to talk to Susannah or Tom. Instead, I let myself into the fenced backyard and made my way through the gardens to Karly’s dollhouse.

You can call it a dollhouse, but at more than a thousand square feet, it was bigger than our Lincoln Square apartment. That tells you how far down in the world Karly came to live with me. When she turned twenty-two, she moved out of the main estate and into the dollhouse, which was all the independence that her mother would allow her. She was still living there when we met, so I’d spent a lot of time in this strange fairy-tale world. I’d had a key for years, and I knew the security code.

When I went inside, Karly may as well have been a ghost rattling chains at me, because her presence was so strong. Her school pictures were on the walls and her dance trophies and poetry books on the shelves. She hadn’t lived here in three years, but her mother still kept it like a shrine, decorated with furniture she’d picked out for Karly at age sixteen. Susannah probably hoped that her daughter would eventually come to her senses, dump me, and move back home where she belonged.

I sat down in a beat-up leather chair that overlooked the garden. The chair came from Karly’s father, and I think he gave it to Karly for the dollhouse rather than let his wife take it away to Goodwill. It was a man’s chair, ugly and incredibly comfortable, and it looked out of place amid pink wallpaper and sunflower quilts. I’d spent weeks in this chair after Roscoe was killed. With my arm and leg in casts, I was essentially immobile, and Karly did everything for me. We barely knew each other, but she was my caregiver. And soon after that, my lover.

The last time I’d been here was six months ago, in January. She’d called me from the office on a Tuesday morning and said she needed to get away, and could I meet her in the dollhouse? I said yes, but I got there late. I was always late. Work always came first. As I came in from outside, I brought cold wind and snow flurries with me. Karly had made a winter picnic for us, spreading out a blanket on the floor and opening wine and laying out a Mediterranean lunch of hummus, grape leaves, and pita.

She stood on the other side of the dollhouse, where a fire in the fireplace warmed her bare legs. The chill had pinked up her face. Her breasts swelled with each calm breath. She stared at me with a kind of forever seriousness, just the barest smile on her lips. I swear, she was like a painting that way, frozen in her beauty. A Manet. A Vermeer.

“What’s the occasion?” I asked.

“Nothing. I love you, that’s all.”

“I love you, too.”

It was hard to imagine a more perfect moment, but looking back, I knew that very day was when things had begun to fall apart for us. I could draw a line from our lunch in the dollhouse to her foolish affair with Scotty Ryan to the last speech she’d given me that weekend in the country.

If I’d been paying attention, I would have noticed that Karly was unusually quiet. She was off somewhere in her own world, and she never took time off in the middle of the day unless something was wrong. I should have looked behind her peaceful smile, but instead, I was blind. I poured wine, and we sat across from each other on the blanket, with the fire crackling beside us.

“Susannah talked to me,” Karly said, when we’d enjoyed our lunch quietly for a few minutes. She said it casually. No big deal.

“Oh?”

“She’s giving me the Vernon Hotel account.”

I put down my wine and realized this was a celebration. Except it didn’t feel like a celebration. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s like the biggest account in the firm.”

“Yeah. It is. She says I’m ready.”

“Well, of course you are.”

“Thank you.”

“This is huge,” I said, trying to fill this moment with excitement, because the excitement in her face was strangely missing.

“Yeah. Pretty huge. It’s way more money. That’s good, huh? But a lot more time. Long hours.”

“So neither one of us will ever be home,” I joked, but Karly didn’t laugh.

“Susannah thinks we should move. We should be up here in Highland Park or something. She says we need a place where we can entertain.”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

The same flat monotone all the way through. So unlike her. So not Karly. Why didn’t I see it?

“Well, congratulations,” I said, leaning over to kiss her. “You’re a star. I mean it.”

Karly smiled at me, but her smile was hollow, like one of her dolls on the shelves. Then, just like that, she changed the subject.

“I bumped into a friend at Starbucks this morning,” she went on. “A girl I knew in college. Sarah. I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned her.”

“I don’t think so.”

“She’s got four kids now. They were all with her. Her youngest is almost two. A Down syndrome girl. So, so sweet. While Sarah was chasing the others, her little girl sat in my lap. I fell in love.”

“Of course you did.”

Karly delicately brushed something from the corner of her eye, and then she closed her eyes altogether. “Anyway... ,” she murmured.

I thought she was just basking in the warmth of the fire and in the glow of her success. She’d worked hard for it. I had no idea, no idea at all, that she was watching two trails diverge in the woods and thinking that she was on the wrong one.

“I’m really proud of you,” I said.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

You were running so fast in your life that you never saw that Karly wanted to slow things down.

Scotty was right. Karly had told me how she was feeling that day in everything but words. I never heard her.

“I wondered who was out here,” Susannah Chance said from the doorway of the dollhouse. “I thought it might be you.”

Karly’s mother wore a satin robe tied at the waist over her nightgown, and I could have sworn she’d put on makeup to go check on an intruder. She came inside the cottage and went and made herself a cup of coffee at the Keurig machine on the counter. When that was done, she took the mug into her hands and sat down on the sofa across from me.

Physically, she looked the way Karly would have looked in another twenty-five years, although Susannah was still trying hard to look like Karly’s older sister. She’d groomed her only child to be a carbon copy of herself, with the same ambition, same charm, same need for success. Karly had spent her twenties following that blueprint under Susannah’s watchful eye.

“How are you, Dylan?” she asked.

“I’m lost.”

“Yes, of course. Tom and I are devastated. I wake up each day, and I can’t believe it.”

“I’m sorry.”

Susannah sipped her coffee. The steam rose in front of her face. She’d said she was devastated at the loss of her daughter, and I’m sure she was, but Susannah Chance didn’t show emotions easily. Her husband was the poet, the one who wore his heart on his sleeve.

“You can stay here tonight if you like,” she added.

“Thanks. That’s nice of you. But I just needed to feel her again. That’s why I came.”

Susannah looked around at the dollhouse and gave me a numb smile. Maybe loss always brings self-reflection. “I don’t know if this is the right place to do that. I think Karly felt like a doll herself when she was here. Artificial. Unreal. A plaything. That’s my fault. The truth is, she was never really happy until she met you, Dylan. And if you sometimes felt that I didn’t like you, maybe that was the reason.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing at all.

“She told me what happened between her and Scotty Ryan,” Karly’s mother went on. “She was inconsolable over what she’d done. It was a stupid, drunken, onetime mistake and had nothing to do with how she felt about you. I hope you know that.”

“I do now.”

“Did you forgive her?”

“I never got the chance.”

“Oh, Dylan.” Susannah drank her coffee and looked away, with a teary shine in her eyes. She got up and went to the sink in the kitchen, where she washed the mug carefully and dried it with a towel. Susannah was always neat and precise. She put it away in a cabinet and then tugged her robe tighter around her body. She went to the door and opened it as if she were going to leave without saying anything more, but with the night air coming in, she hesitated. “I should tell you something. I know what you did. I understand it, even if I can’t condone it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I know you confronted Scotty about the affair.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Dylan, why? Why couldn’t you let it go?”

I shrugged, because I had no excuse for the assault. “I didn’t plan to see him. It was chance. He was there, I was there. I should have walked away, but I gave in to my temper. I blamed him when I should have been blaming myself. That doesn’t change what he did, though.”

“Well, the police know,” Susannah said.

“The police?”

“Yes, they called me. The house was one of our listings, so they called to see if I knew anything about it. They had a description of you, Dylan. They had a witness who saw you leaving the house. They knew about the fight. I’m sorry, I couldn’t lie to them. I told them about the affair with Karly. I’m afraid it gives you a motive on top of everything else.”

“Susannah, what are you talking about?”

“They know you killed Scotty,” she replied. “They told me you stabbed him in the heart. He’s dead.”

Chapter 9

I expected to find the police waiting to arrest me when I got back to the hotel. Instead, at five in the morning, the lobby was quiet and empty. Apparently they didn’t know I was sleeping here. I was relieved, because I needed time to think, to figure out what to do and where to go. Scotty Ryan was dead. The man who’d had an affair with my wife had been murdered. I’d killed him.

Except I hadn’t.

I’d hit him in the face and left him alone, bleeding but very much alive. Yes, a part of me wanted to kill him. That was true, and I couldn’t deny it. When I walked into that house, I’d been consumed with rage and out for revenge. But if I’d taken a knife and plunged it into Scotty’s chest, I’d remember doing it.

Wouldn’t I?

Or had a different personality taken control of my mind? A personality that was here to kill. Just like my delusion had promised.

I took the elevator upstairs and let myself into my hotel room. I was exhausted. When the door closed behind me, I leaned back against it and measured out my breathing, trying to relax. Trying to think. To grasp at some kind of explanation for what was going on. Except I noticed almost immediately that something was wrong. There was a foreign smell around me, a sharp, sweet fragrance that lingered in my nose. I took stock of the room, suddenly awakened by a rush of adrenaline.

The bed was undone. The blanket lay on the floor, the sheets tangled. That wasn’t how I’d left it. The maid had done the room long ago, and I hadn’t slept since then. When I’d left to see Eve Brier, I was certain that the blanket had been folded into crisp corners.

Someone had been here. In my room.

It was like a macabre joke: Who’s been sleeping in my bed?

Slowly, my eyes filled in the details. I saw an empty bottle of Jim Beam on the window ledge, reflecting the lights of the city outside. That was the bottle I’d opened earlier. I’d had three glasses myself. Or was it four? Regardless, the bottle was empty now, and there were two lowball glasses beside it. I went to take a look at the glasses and saw water in the bottom. Melted ice.

Ice? I never put ice in my drink.

I picked up the second glass and saw a red smear on the rim. Lipstick. Two people had been here, a man and a woman.

I examined the room again. This time, I spotted clothes scattered near the bed. Women’s clothes. A beaded, multicolored dress lay pooled in layers like an accordion, as if it had dropped straight down over bare shoulders and hips. Near it was a lacy bra. Lavender bikini panties. Black high heels, kicked off.

The sweetness I’d smelled wafted like a freshly opened flower from the clothes and the bed. I recognized the perfume now. Obsession.

Then the rattle of a doorknob startled me. I wasn’t alone. I glanced at the bathroom door and saw a bright light go off under the crack of the frame. When the door opened, Tai emerged into the darkness of the hotel room. Chicago’s glow through the window lit up her naked body, which had a sheen of dampness from the shower. She had a towel in her hands, drying her long hair, her face obscured. I could see the prominent swell of her collarbone, her narrow hips and bony legs, and everything else, too. Chocolate-brown erect nipples dotted her shallow breasts. The triangular thatch between her legs was black and full.

She dropped the towel and noticed me. Her bright-red lips made a sexy smile, and her dark eyes devoured me.

“Oh, hi. I thought you had to go. I’m glad you stayed.”

I didn’t have time to ask her what was happening. She crossed the space between us, laced her fingers through my hair, and molded her lips against mine. Her nude body pressed against me, soft and sensuous.

“You’re cold,” she murmured. “Did you go out and come back?”

I still couldn’t find any words.

“Let me warm you up,” she said, her hand traveling down my body, slipping inside my pants. As much as my hormones didn’t want her to stop, I separated myself from her and backed away. She gave me a confused look.

“What’s wrong?”

“I can’t do this.”

She smiled at me again. “Oh, I bet you can. I could already feel things waking up.”

“Tai, it’s not that.”

“Then, what is it?” She tried to read my face, and something about my expression must have made her feel very naked. She sat down on the bed and wrapped the rumpled sheet around herself. Her smile fell away. “Ah. I get it. You feel guilty. You’re sorry we did it, aren’t you?”

I studied the bed, which looked and smelled of sex. Tai and I had made love here. In some part of my memory, I could feel her beneath me, feel her legs tightly wrapped around my back, feel myself deep inside her. But it wasn’t really my memory. It wasn’t me.

“It’s okay,” Tai went on. “I said no strings, and I meant it. I’m still glad you called. You turned to me when you needed someone, and that’s what I wanted. But I know you’re dealing with a lot of pain right now.”

“Tai, I’m sorry—” I began.

“Don’t apologize. I’ll go. When you told me you needed to leave, to clear your head, I should have guessed.”

I sat on the bed next to her and tried to figure out what to say. What she’d told me, what I saw in this room, was making my head spin.

“Tai, this will sound crazy, but I need you to tell me exactly what happened between us tonight.”

“I don’t understand. Why?”

“Please. Humor me. Did I call you?”

“Are you saying you don’t remember?” she asked, with an irritated frown.

“Actually, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“Are you kidding? You don’t remember what we just did?”

“I wish I could explain it to you, but I can’t.”

Her expression turned to concern. “Are you okay?”

“I have no idea. I just need to know what happened.”

She hesitated. “All right. Yes, you called me.”

“What time?”

“I don’t know. Sometime after midnight, I guess. I wasn’t asleep yet. I know it was one in the morning when I got here.”

“One o’clock?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Yes.”

I shook my head. “Is there any possible way you made a mistake?”

“Dylan, I saw the clock in the lobby. I’m telling you, I got here at one o’clock.”

I checked my watch and then the clock on the nightstand. There was no mistake. Everything matched.

One in the morning. That simply wasn’t possible.

I was meeting Eve Brier at the fountain in the park at exactly one in the morning. At the very same time, I was also having a rendezvous with Tai back at the hotel.

“What did I say when I called you?”

“You said you were lonely, upset. You didn’t want to be alone. You asked if I’d come over. I said sure. I mean, we both knew what you wanted. We both knew what was going to happen. I dressed accordingly.”

“You came to the hotel room?”

“Of course.”

“And I was here.”

“Well, obviously.”

“So did we—?”

“Yes. We had sex. Twice, in fact, if you need the details. You don’t remember that, either? Is this some kind of game to make yourself feel better? Are you trying to pretend it never happened?”

I didn’t answer. “Tai, please, just go on. Then what?”

“We fell asleep. When I woke up, you were already awake. Dressed. You were staring out the window. I asked you to come back to bed, but you said you needed to go. Right away. And you left. So I went into the shower, and when I got out, you were back here again. That’s all, Dylan. It was like ten minutes ago. You’re freaking me out if you really don’t remember any of this.”

“I’m sorry.”

I thought about what Tai had told me, but I had no way to explain it. Nothing made sense.

This was not a delusion.

Not a missing memory or a split personality.

No matter what games my mind was playing with me, I couldn’t be in two places at the same time, and yet I’d been in the hotel room with Tai at the same time that I was in the park with Eve Brier and then in Wilmette with Karly’s mother.

I could only come to an impossible conclusion.

Two.

There were two of us. I wasn’t hallucinating. My doppelgänger was real.

There was a Dylan Moran out there stealing his way into my life. It was as if this other Dylan had decided to follow every hidden impulse in my head and unleash my darker soul. Kill Scotty. Sleep with Tai. He was my id come to life.

This Dylan Moran was not me, but even so, we were connected by some kind of shadowy line. Echoes of his memories, of what he’d done, were in my own brain, like ghost images in a photograph. I suspected that he could sense me, too. He’d felt that I was coming back to the hotel, and that was why he’d made a fast exit.

Tai spoke softly from the bed. “If this was a mistake, Dylan, just say so. You don’t have to pretend.”

“It’s not that. I mean — okay, yes, what happened between us was a mistake. My mistake, not yours. The last thing I would ever want is to see you hurt.”

“I’m a big girl,” she replied. Then she looked down at her lap. “You know, I’ve been in love with you practically since the day we met.”

I felt as if I’d turned a knife into her chest, and I realized again how horribly unfair I’d been to her. How I’d played with her emotions without meaning to do so. “I never meant to lead you on. I should have been more careful.”

“Hey, you were married. I knew I was playing with fire.”

I stood up from the bed. “I need to go.”

“Okay. Go.”

“I have one more question. Believe me, I know none of this makes any sense.”

“What is it?”

“A few minutes ago, when I told you that I needed to leave, did I say where I was going?”

Tai looked at me as if I were a crazy person, and maybe I was. “Home,” she said. “You said you were going home.”

Home. Back to our apartment in Lincoln Square. Our apartment, where I kept all of my memories of Karly. I’d avoided the apartment for days, but this other Dylan was drawing me back there. Only a few minutes had gone by. It was still not even dawn. If I went quickly, I could corner him before he had a chance to run.

I needed to find out how he could possibly be real.

I headed for the door, but Tai called after me. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“The sex. What was it like for you?”

“Tai, I wish I could tell you, but—”

“You don’t remember. Right. Sure.” She sounded cynical and angry, and I didn’t blame her.

“Tell me what it was like for you,” I said, because I knew she wanted me to ask.

Her face turned dark. “It wasn’t what I expected.”

“What do you mean?”

She tugged the sheet tighter around her shoulders, covering any hint of bare skin. “You weren’t tender with me like I thought you’d be. You were so raw, so... I don’t know... violent. Honestly, there were moments when it didn’t even feel like it was really you.”

Chapter 10

He knew I was coming. He could feel me. I was sure of that.

The neighborhood around River Park was dark, with only the occasional streetlight spilling a yellow glow on the ground. The cab let me off at the corner. I waited until it drove away before going anywhere, and I checked to make sure I was alone. I took the sidewalk beside the park, keeping an eye on the trees and empty benches.

If I was looking for him, then he was looking for me, too.

Halfway down the block, I stopped near one of the mature trees, its branches hanging down nearly to my face. From there, I could see my apartment. This was the place where I’d lived since I was thirteen years old. The building was two stories, tan brick, shaped like the rook on a chessboard. Upstairs, where Edgar lived, one large square of chambered windows faced the street. A matching set of windows was below, where Karly and I lived. I saw no lights anywhere, but I stayed where I was, watching for any movement.

It was a humid early morning, with a dank stench wafting from the river a few hundred feet behind me. The birds were starting to awaken and sing. A few traces of white fluff from the cottonwoods still clung to the grass, weeks after it had fallen. I wasn’t far from a children’s playground, and when the wind blew, metal groaned on one of the rusty swing sets. Parked cars lined the curbs on both sides of the street, but I saw no people.

I kept looking behind me, expecting him to stalk me from the rear, coming up on me with silent footsteps. I tried to embrace the madness of this situation, to listen to my senses and see the world through his eyes. I had to believe, had to accept, the reality that there were two of us. I needed to feel what he felt, receive the echoes of his presence as he was obviously receiving mine. I needed to connect with him, which was the same as connecting with myself.

Where are you?

Then I saw it.

A light came and went in our downstairs apartment. It lasted only for a moment, like a flashlight turning on and off, but it was enough to give him away. He was there. He was inside. Soon after, the shadows in the glass seemed to change shape. He’d gone to the window to look out. To look for me.

I backed away, still invisible. When I knew I was safely out of view, I ran to the corner of the street and down the block to the dead-end alley that led behind the buildings. Power lines dangled overhead. The concrete was riddled with cracks and weeds. I made my way slowly between the garages on both sides. A couple squares of light from early risers showed in the bedroom windows. One of my neighbors had a rottweiler that slept outside, and he must have smelled me coming, because he began to bark.

I reached my garage. My back fence. I let myself quietly into the yard, which was nothing but a strip of concrete patio with an old gas grill and a few plastic chairs stacked against the garage wall. Ahead of me, wooden steps climbed to our back door, then to the entrance to Edgar’s apartment above. Two buildings away, the rottweiler kept barking. I took the steps slowly, trying to avoid the squeal of loose boards. At the landing, the rear door led into the kitchen. I expected the door to be locked, but when I turned the handle, it gave way under my hand, and I felt the door opening inward. I slipped into the kitchen and eased the door shut behind me.

The air felt warm and stale, shut in for days with no windows open. The room wasn’t completely dark; a butterfly night-light cast a faint glow near the sink. I had to squeeze my eyes closed against a frontal assault of grief. Karly’s scent perfumed the kitchen. I expected to hear her humming and singing. The kitchen faucet leaked — it always did — and with each slow drip, I felt water pouring over my head, as if I’d dived into the river and was swimming through blackness.

Dylan, come back to me!

I had to force away my wife’s screams.

Where was he hiding? I listened, but wherever he was, he was frozen stiff, a statue, waiting for me to make the first move. Ahead of me was the unlit hallway. On the right was our bedroom, then the postage-stamp dining room that doubled as Karly’s office, and finally the living room, which faced the street, with a fireplace where we would sit with wine on winter nights and kiss as we watched the flames dance.

Stop it!

I couldn’t think about Karly now.

I needed a weapon. Something. Anything. I went to the kitchen counter and grabbed the butcher’s knife from our wooden block, but when I slid it out, I hissed in shock. When I held the knife high in the air, I could see that the blade was bathed in dried blood.

I knew what it was. Scotty’s blood. I was holding his murder weapon in my hand. Leaving my fingerprints. But wouldn’t they be mine anyway?

The grip of the knife was slippery. That was sweat. I started down the hallway, my eyes adjusting to the darkness. In here, I could have made my way blindfolded, because I knew every square inch of the house. As I approached the doorway to the bedroom, I looked inside, seeing the queen-size bed unmade, the way my hotel bed had been. I might leave a bed undone, but Karly never would. I realized that while I’d been staying in the hotel, he’d been staying here.

I kept going. I crossed into the dining room, where the ceramic tile changed to a hardwood floor. It should have been replaced years earlier; it had water stains and warped boards. With each footstep, I announced myself, but it didn’t matter. We both knew the score. We were both here. Strange glistening patches of wetness made the floor slippery. He was tracking water from somewhere. I continued past the dining room into the living room, all the way to the front windows. I looked outside, seeing no one illuminated under the streetlights. He hadn’t escaped. There were no places to hide in the rooms I’d checked, so that told me where he was.

I squeezed the handle of the knife even tighter in my hand. I retraced my steps and went back to the bedroom doorway. This room, so normal and familiar, now terrified me. I had to fight away memories again. Karly and I had made love in that bed hundreds of times, but it had been weeks since our bodies had joined together. First I’d been busy at work, distant, hassled, the way I usually was. And then, after her confession about Scotty, we’d avoided each other for days. I didn’t know the last time she’d been naked in my arms. I hated that I couldn’t remember. I hated that Scotty had been the last one to hold her, not me.

Inside the bedroom, a closed door led to our small closet, and a closed door led to our small bathroom. He had to be behind one of those doors. I thought about calling out to him, but I simply listened, trying to hear someone else breathing above the wild pounding of my own heart.

I approached the bathroom door slowly, expecting it to burst open as he charged me. I waited outside, listening again, hearing nothing. Finally, with the knife poised, I threw the door open and leaped inside, jabbing the blade forward as I did. He wasn’t there, but the shower curtain was stretched across the length of the tub. The floor was wet. Steam clouded the mirror and made the air in the tiny space close and damp. I pictured him, naked in the shower, dripping as he got out and ran to the front of the house. He could feel me coming.

I went to the tub and tensed as I threw the curtain back.

He wasn’t there. The bathroom was empty.

Which left one more hiding place.

I went back to the bedroom and stood outside the closet door. It was an old, heavy wooden door with a metal knob. The closet itself was small, not much bigger than a couple of phone booths. Karly was always complaining that she had no room for her clothes.

There was no point in pretending anymore.

“I know you’re in there,” I whispered.

This time, unlike in the park, he didn’t answer me. It made me think for a moment that I was wrong. That I was crazy. Then I slowly closed my hand around the doorknob, and with the knife ready in my other hand, I pulled hard.

The door didn’t open.

I yanked again, but as I put pressure on it, someone on the other side responded with an equal pressure in reverse. I couldn’t move the door. It stayed closed. He was every bit as strong as I was. In fact, if I thought about it, he was exactly as strong as I was. We were in equilibrium, with the door fixed like a wall between us. But he was inside, and I was outside. He had nowhere to go, no way to escape. I didn’t understand the point of this game.

And then I did.

Standing outside the closet door, trying frantically to get it open, I heard a voice from inside. It wasn’t my voice. This was a stranger’s calm voice, slightly muffled and staticky. A woman’s voice on a speakerphone.

“911. What’s your emergency?”

A long moment of silence passed, and the dispatcher spoke again.

“911. Hello? What’s your emergency?”

This time, the man in the closet replied, drawing out his words as if it were an echo in the canyon. I knew that voice. It was my voice. “Well, hello... ”

He was speaking to me as much as to her.

“Sir? Hello? What’s your emergency?”

“My name is Dylan Moran. You need to send the police here right away.”

He rattled off the address — my address — and said, “You need to hurry.”

“Sir? Can you tell me what the problem is?”

“I’ve been a bad boy,” he told the operator, drawing out the adjective with a smirk in his voice that was meant for me. “I need to be stopped.”

“Sir? Are you in danger? Is it someone with you who’s in danger?”

“Everyone near me is in danger. I kill people. I murder them. I stab them. I drown them.”

He put an emphasis on that last one, and I felt myself ready to be sick. I pulled at the door again, but it wouldn’t budge. I wanted to shout, to say something, but my throat felt paralyzed with shock. I couldn’t get out the words.

“Send the police,” he said again.

“The police are on their way. Sir, are you alone? Is anyone with you?”

“No one’s with me,” he said, with an irony for me to savor. “I’m alone. Just me. Dylan Moran.”

“Stay right there, sir. The police are two minutes out.”

“I need to be punished,” he said intensely.

“Sir? Stay on the line, sir.”

“My evil is limitless. My evil is... infinite.”

He used the word.

Eve’s word.

Infinite.

I was still pulling on the closet door, but all of a sudden, the counterpressure disappeared. The door flew open in my hand, and I lost my balance, stumbling backward. I could still hear the dispatcher speaking on the phone.

“Sir? Sir, are you there? Sir?”

I charged the closet, but no one was inside now. I yanked the chain on the bulb overhead and squinted at the bright light. The closet was empty, nothing but Karly’s and my clothes hanging on hooks and a cell phone on the floor, still broadcasting the voice of the 911 dispatcher.

“Sir? Sir? Stay right there. The police are on their way.”

I was alone, and my doppelgänger was gone. I was the only one here.

Dylan Moran, who’d just confessed to murder.

Dylan Moran, who held a bloody knife in his hand.

My fingers opened wide, and the knife clattered to the floor. I grabbed my head in wild despair and realized that I needed to get out of this house. To leave. To escape. To never come back. I ran from the bedroom, but as I did, I saw that I was already too late.

Sirens wailed. Flashing lights lit up the windows from the front and back.

The police were here.

Chapter 11

I met them at the building door.

Two burly Chicago cops stood on my front step, their squad car parked diagonally at the curb, its lights flashing. One had his hand close to the gun in his holster. The other was talking on a radio to another team of officers who’d obviously arrived at my house via the alley.

The cop who looked ready to shoot was six inches taller than me and about the size of a Hummer, with mottled black skin, a thin mustache, and hair trimmed on the top of his head to look like a skullcap. His eyes gauged whether I was any kind of threat.

“Sir? We received a 911 call from this address.”

I did the only thing I could think to do. I lied.

“911? From here? I’m sorry, officer, it must be a mistake. I’m the only one here, and I didn’t call about any emergency.”

“Can you give me your name, sir?”

I hesitated, and the cop obviously noticed. “Dylan Moran.”

The two officers glanced at each other. “Well, sir, that’s the name we were given on the 911 call.”

“My name? I don’t know what to tell you. It must be someone playing some kind of trick. I’ve heard about that kind of thing — you know, where people send the police to somebody’s house. What do they call it? Swatting?”

“Do you have some kind of identification, sir?”

“Of course.”

I dug into my pocket and found my wallet. I pried my driver’s license out of the slot and gave it to the cop. I’m sure he saw that my hand was shaking. When he handed it back to me, I needed a couple of tries to get the license back into my wallet.

“We’d like to take a look inside your apartment, Mr. Moran.”

“I understand, Officer. I know you’re just doing your job. But I don’t know anything about a 911 call, and I’m afraid I’m not prepared to let the police search my home for no reason. I’m sorry.”

I could see him looking over my shoulder through the open door, no doubt hunting for some kind of probable cause that would give them an excuse to come inside without my permission. Then he glanced at the stairs leading to the second floor.

“Is there another apartment upstairs?”

“Yes. My grandfather lives there. Edgar Moran.”

“We’d like to talk to him,” the cop said.

“Well, he’s ninety-four, Officer, and not in good health, so I’d really prefer if you didn’t bother him. As I say, this whole thing has to be some kind of weird joke.”

“A joke,” the cop said, chewing on the word like gum.

“That’s right.”

“The 911 caller said his name was Dylan Moran, and he was ready to confess to murder. That doesn’t sound like a joke.”

I didn’t have any trouble summoning anger to my face, because I was angry. Angry and desperate and losing my grip on the world I was in. “Well, that’s crazy, Officer. I’m not a killer. Obviously, I would never call the police and say anything like that.”

The cop was silent for a while. He didn’t believe me, but he also didn’t have any evidence to back up the 911 call. On the other hand, a bloody knife was still sitting on my bedroom floor, and I wasn’t going to let them inside to find it.

“Why would someone make an accusation like that against you, Mr. Moran? That’s a pretty serious thing to do.”

“I have no idea. All I can tell you is, it wasn’t me, and it isn’t true.”

I tried to hide my impatience. I needed the police to go away, and then I could take the knife and find somewhere to dispose of it. I could wipe down the entire apartment, not knowing what other evidence my double had left behind.

The two cops exchanged nervous glances. I could see them wondering if they’d made a mistake, but my hope that they would leave me alone didn’t last long.

On the street, a gray sedan pulled to a stop behind the squad car. A tall, emaciated man in his sixties got out and grabbed a bulging leather briefcase from the back seat. He wore a loose-fitting white dress shirt and pleated brown slacks, and I could see the gleam of a badge clipped to his belt. His thinning gray hair was as tangled as a bird’s nest, and his face had a cadaverous appearance, sunken around his eyes and hollowed out under his cheekbones. He looked as if he should be lying in a hospital bed instead of walking around the Chicago streets. But his unblinking eyes sized me up like a hawk as he came closer, and his mouth bent into the tiniest cocky smile.

“Guys, I’ll take over,” he told the uniformed cops. “Stick around, though, okay? I may need you.”

The two cops deferred to him as if he were a Mafia don. Without another word, they retreated to their squad car, where they leaned against the doors and watched us. The newcomer extended his hand, and I shook it. His grip was limp, and his skin felt as dry as dust.

“Mr. Moran? I’m Detective Harvey Bushing. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“I’m not in much of a mood to talk, Detective.”

“Well, when you made that 911 call, it sure sounded like you wanted to talk.”

“That wasn’t me,” I told him.

“Really?” Detective Bushing grabbed a phone from his back pocket, pushed a few buttons, and let me listen to a recording of the 911 call from a few minutes earlier. “That’s not you, huh? Because it sounds like you.”

“I don’t think it sounds like me at all.”

“Well, I know what you mean. My wife tells me I sound like that Ben Stein guy. You know, like in the Ferris Bueller movie? I don’t hear it myself. Anyway, here’s the thing, Mr. Moran. My partner is getting a search warrant for your apartment. I’m going to stick around, and so are my friends out there, until he gets back. You can invite me in or not, but we’re going to come inside sooner or later.”

“A search warrant? Based on a fake 911 call?”

“And other things,” the detective replied.

“Like what?”

“I’m happy to explain all of it to you, if you let me inside.”

“Detective, I swear, this is a crazy misunderstanding. I didn’t make that call.”

“Yeah, I heard you say that. The thing is, if it’s a misunderstanding, how about we clear it up? Because to be totally honest with you, Mr. Moran, I didn’t show up here because of that 911 call.”

“No?”

“No. I was already on my way. See, I’ve had a colleague of mine sitting in a car down the street all night, watching to see if and when you came back home. He got me out of bed a while ago to tell me you were here. And then, as I was driving over here from Glenview, what should I hear on my radio but a report about a really weird 911 call involving you. Funny coincidence, don’t you think? Oh, and believe me, it takes a lot for a 911 dispatcher to consider a call weird.”

“Am I under arrest, Detective?”

“Not at all. I just want to talk.”

“Well, I told you, I’m not talking.”

“That’s okay, too. How about I talk, and you listen?” He held up his briefcase. “I’ve got some things in here you’ll find pretty interesting, but it would be easier to do it inside. We don’t have to go farther than the nearest chair. I had my hip done in the spring, and it’s a bitch to stand for very long. Give me ten minutes. Any time you want me to go, I’ll go.”

I was under no illusions. I knew he was playing me, trying to lay out what he’d learned about me and Scotty Ryan and get me to talk. If he was being honest about the warrant, I also knew that I’d be under arrest as soon as they finished their search. The only thing I could do was run. But I couldn’t do that with the police staking out the front and back of the building.

Without saying anything more, I backed away from the door and let Detective Bushing into my apartment. When we were in the living room, I gestured at the sofa near the front window. I took a chair opposite him. My eyes did a quick survey of the room to make sure I hadn’t missed any other incriminating evidence that had been left behind. I noticed Detective Bushing’s eyes doing the same thing.

Then he reached into his briefcase and pulled out a photograph of Scotty Ryan. “Do you know this man, Mr. Moran?”

“I thought you were doing the talking, Detective. Not me.”

“Sure. Right. Well, of course you know him. He’s the man who slept with your wife.”

He was baiting me. I tensed and pushed my lips together.

“That’s your wife in the picture there, huh?” the detective said, pointing at the mantel.

“Yes.”

“Very pretty.”

“Yes.”

“I heard about your wife, by the way,” he went on. “That’s just awful. Talk about a coincidence, huh? Your wife dies in a car accident while you’re driving, and then her lover gets killed a few days later, right after you get in a fight with him.”

“If you think I killed him, you’re wrong,” I said, even though the knife used to kill Scotty Ryan was lying a few feet away on my bedroom floor.

“But you were there, right? A witness put you in the house with Mr. Ryan. She identified you right away. She heard shouting, and then you came running out with blood on your hands.”

“If I’d stabbed him, I would have had blood on a lot more than just my hands,” I pointed out, even though I was talking when I should have stayed quiet.

“I don’t recall mentioning that he’d been stabbed.”

“I talked to my mother-in-law,” I said. “I know you did, too. She told me what happened.”

“Ah, sure. Of course. But you admit fighting with Mr. Ryan?”

“I’m not admitting anything.”

The detective nodded. “Sure. I understand. What about your wife? Did you fight with her about her cheating on you?”

I still said nothing, but I felt my heartbeat take off again.

“I mean, if my wife did that to me, I’d break a few windows and probably some other things,” Detective Bushing went on. “And you’ve got a temper, right, Mr. Moran? I know about your assault arrests. People who mess with you get their faces bashed in, don’t they?”

“That’s not what happened.”

“Yeah. They probably all had it coming. I get it. Say, you work at the LaSalle Plaza Hotel, don’t you?”

My brow wrinkled with puzzlement at the shift in the conversation. “Yes, that’s right.”

“You handle their events?”

“Yes.”

“Nice place.”

“Yes, it is.”

“I went to a wedding there a few years ago.”

“We do a lot of weddings,” I said.

Detective Bushing dug his fingers into his open briefcase and pulled out a photograph, which he laid on the coffee table in front of me. The picture showed a pretty twentysomething blond woman in a jogging outfit. In the background, I spotted Lake Michigan and the planetarium.

“Do you recognize this woman, Mr. Moran?”

“No.”

He extracted another photograph from his briefcase. This one showed another young, attractive blonde, seated in a restaurant with a drink in front of her.

“How about her?” he asked.

“No.”

He dug into the briefcase again. Another photograph, another blonde.

“This one?”

“No,” I said again.

And once more. Again I told him I had no idea who the woman was. That was the truth. They were all strangers to me.

“None of these women look familiar?”

“No, they don’t.”

“It seems to me they all look a lot like your wife,” Detective Bushing said.

I glanced at the photographs again, and I realized that he was right. There was no denying the resemblance. The hair, the look, the smiles — they definitely all had a touch of Karly in them.

“A little, I suppose. Who are they?”

“They’re murder victims, Mr. Moran.”

I began to feel dizzy. “Murder?”

“Yeah. All four stabbed to death in the past few weeks. We figured the cases were connected, because the method was the same and the victims all looked so much alike. We couldn’t figure out what they had in common, though. Their homes, work, background — all different. It was driving me crazy, because I couldn’t find any overlap, nothing that would suggest how the same killer would have come into contact with them. Until very recently, that is.”

“I hope you don’t think the connection is that they look like Karly. Because they look like a million other blond women, too.”

“True. That’s true. No, that wasn’t the connection. I mean, it’s interesting, but only because of what else we found. Actually, I stumbled onto it mostly by accident. A witness mentioned something to me in passing, and that tied in with a restaurant receipt I remembered from one of the other victims. See, what links these women together is that they all attended an event in the ballroom of the LaSalle Plaza Hotel within a few days of when they were killed.”

I couldn’t stop myself. I gasped. “What?”

“That’s right. So I’m sure you see the problem here, Mr. Moran. Four women who look an awful lot like your wife got murdered right after they went to your hotel. And now your wife is dead, and so is the man who slept with her. Stabbed. Just like my other vics. To top it off, today we get a 911 call from someone calling himself Dylan Moran and saying he’s ready to confess to murder.”

I bolted out of the chair.

“You going somewhere, Mr. Moran?”

“I need to use the bathroom.”

I turned around and stumbled down the hallway. I went into the bedroom and closed the door behind me. My eyes were drawn to the knife on the floor. The faces of the women in Detective Bushing’s photographs smiled at me in my head. I didn’t know them. I had never met them. And yet, now that I was alone, something about them stirred echoes. I remembered them. Worse, the echoes in my head weren’t of these women alive. I could see them dead. Their faces drained and pale. I could see my hands, covered in their blood.

They all looked like Karly.

My stomach turned over. I didn’t need to fake it. I ran into the bathroom and locked the door, and I fell to my knees at the toilet and vomited, once, twice, three times. When my stomach was empty, I rinsed my mouth. I stared at myself in the mirror, but the man staring back was the stranger I had seen for days. Exhausted. Out of control, out of my mind. I didn’t recognize who I was anymore.

From outside the bedroom, I heard a pounding on the door. “Mr. Moran?” Detective Bushing called.

“I’ll be right out.”

As soon as I said that, I went to the bathroom window. I slid it open silently and studied the walkway between my building and the neighbor’s next door. I didn’t see any police. As quietly as I could, I slithered through the opening and dropped to the concrete below me.

I grabbed hold of the adjacent fence and threw myself over.

Somewhere close by, the rottweiler began barking again. I heard voices, saw streams of light coming my way. A man shouted.

“Stop!”

I took off running and didn’t look back.

Chapter 12

An early sunrise broke over the lake and made pink slashes in the clouds. I sat on a bench by the water at the far end of Navy Pier. The old brick pier building behind me was closed, and I had the boardwalk mostly to myself. On my left, overnight lights lingered in the downtown skyscrapers. The wind made whitecaps on the dark surface of the lake.

Physically, I was tired from running and from lack of sleep. I’d barely made it out of the neighborhood without being captured, but fortunately, I knew the area better than the police did, from my teenage days exploring the riverbank with Roscoe. I assumed they’d be looking for me throughout the city now. The serial killer, on the loose. Get him before he kills again.

A bus took me downtown. When I got off, I stopped at a twenty-four-hour convenience store to clean myself up. I assumed it wasn’t safe to use any of my credit cards, but fortunately, my wallet was flush with cash. I shaved and washed my hair and sponged off the sweat. I bought a pair of sunglasses, but the whole effect didn’t make for much of a disguise. From there, with my head down and my mind spinning, I walked the empty streets to the pier.

I’d been waiting for an hour now. I was getting nervous about staying in one place for so long. I’d called Eve Brier, but I didn’t know if she would come, or whether she’d send the police after me instead. But when I glanced down the pier, I saw her heading my way, her steps quick and determined.

She wore a knee-length navy-blue dress, which the fierce wind was playing with, plus the same dark trench coat she’d worn when we met in Grant Park. She had a beret tugged low on her forehead, and she had to keep it in place with one hand while her long hair swirled around her face. She sat down on the bench a couple of feet away from me, as if we were strangers, which we still were. At least to me. Her eyes were lost in the lake, but then she turned to stare at me with a passionate intensity.

“Tell me again what you said on the phone.”

“Because you don’t believe it?” I asked.

“That’s right. I don’t believe it, because it’s impossible.”

“Think that if you want, but there are two of me. Two Dylan Morans in the same world, sharing the same space. You brought him here.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because he used your safe word to get away. Infinite.”

“My treatment couldn’t possibly make that happen.”

“I think you’re wrong. I think your therapy opened the door, and somehow another Dylan Moran walked through it. He’s a killer. The police showed me photographs of the women he killed. Four of them — all of them look just like Karly. Now he’s gone somewhere else to do it again.”

She reached out her long arm to stroke my hair, invading my personal space as if I were a pet. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but maybe it’s all you.”

“I’m not a killer. I’m many things, but I’m not that. Not in this world.”

Eve took away her hand and looked off at the lake again. “If you’re right about this, the implications are... disturbing.”

“Why are you surprised? You said the whole point of this therapy was to create a bridge to other worlds.”

“Yes, of course, but what you’re talking about—”

“I’m talking about a Dylan Moran who is dangerous. Eve, you said that I came to you for treatment. If the Many Worlds theory is right, there are endless other Dylans going to you for the same treatment in other worlds. Imagine that this doppelgänger — this violent Dylan — became aware of what was happening. He interacted with one of your patients and followed him into a completely new world. Into a hunting ground. He could kill without worrying about getting caught, because all the evidence would point to the Dylan who really lived in that world. And he had an escape hatch whenever he wanted to leave. You. He’s been using you to come and go, Eve. Who knows how many times he’s already done this and in how many different worlds? It’s the perfect crime.”

Eve frowned. “What do you plan to do about it?”

“Follow him and stop him before he kills anyone else.”

“Into the Many Worlds?”

“Yes.”

She shook her head firmly. “You can’t. The rules say that even if you find him, all the choices come into play. That means you can never stop him. There will always be a world where he gets away.”

“Maybe, but the rules also say you can’t jump between timelines. He’s breaking the rules. For all we know, he’s the only Dylan who has figured out how to do that.”

“What if he stops you? What if you don’t make it back?”

I stared at the city around me. My city. My home. “I’m done here, Eve. There’s nothing for me anymore. Roscoe is gone. Karly is gone. When the police catch up to me, I’ll spend the rest of my life in prison. It doesn’t matter whether I come back.”

“This won’t work,” Eve insisted. “You can’t actually cross over to these worlds.”

“Well, if I don’t try it, some other Dylan will, right? You said that every choice comes into play. So it might as well be me. Did you bring the drugs?”

Eve glanced around the pier to make sure the two of us were alone. She reached into her handbag and extracted a small vial of clear liquid and a hypodermic needle. “This is what I use.”

“How does this work?”

“Once I inject you, I guide you into the Many Worlds with hypnotic suggestion. You won’t be aware of it happening.”

“What are you giving me?”

“It’s a cocktail of hallucinogens. I’ve been experimenting with the mix since college to find a balance that makes the brain most susceptible to alternate realities. That’s the key, you see. We all grow up convinced that we know what reality is, and the only way to cross over is to break down that certainty. To open the mind to completely new possibilities.”

“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” I said.

Eve gave me a tight smile. “In a way.”

“What will it be like?”

“The first time can be overwhelming,” she warned me. “Whatever it is you see with your eyes, what you’re really doing is going to the inner depths of your brain. Like you’re at a kind of Grand Central Station, where the various versions of yourself cross paths. I don’t know what you’ll see, but the sensory overload may well be too much for you. If it is, you know the safe word to get out.”

“Infinite.”

“That’s right. If you say the word, it should break you out of wherever you are and end the session.”

“And take me right back here?” I asked.

“It will take you somewhere. Beyond that, I don’t know. I’ve always assumed that the Dylan I sent out into the void was the same Dylan who came back to me. But now I don’t know if that’s true. For all I know, some other Dylan will end up here on the bench with me in a few seconds. I won’t be aware of it. And nothing else will seem to have changed.”

“I hate to think that I’d be handing my bad choices to someone else,” I said with a smile.

Eve’s face turned severe. “Don’t joke. You act like this situation can’t get worse for you, Dylan. It can. It can get much worse. And remember, wherever you go, another Dylan is already there. It’s his life, not yours.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning you should remember what I said before. You might find yourself tempted to stay. You might want to kill that other version of yourself and take over his world.”

“I’m not a killer,” I insisted again.

“Are you sure?”

I didn’t answer her. I stared at the sun, getting higher over the water. The city was coming to life. Soon people would be coming down the pier. Impatiently, I rolled up my sleeve. “Let’s get on with it.”

Eve readied the needle. She drew in the liquid from the vial and tapped the hypodermic with one of her fingernails. She slid closer to me on the bench and took hold of my wrist, pushing on the seam of my arm to find the vein. When she found it, she put the metal point against my skin.

“Last chance,” she said.

“Do it.”

I felt the puncture like the prick of a bee sting. She pushed the plunger down.

For a brief moment, the world stayed the same. Nothing happened. I was Dylan Moran, I was on Navy Pier, I was sitting on a bench with Dr. Eve Brier. A part of me was gripped by hesitation, wanting to hold on to this world, but it was too late to stop. My bloodstream carried the drug throughout my body, and it washed over me like a wave rolling across sand. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, I wasn’t on the pier anymore. Wherever I was traveling, I was far away.

I heard a chorus, like a billion whispers, each one soft, but together so loud that I wanted to clap my hands over my ears. I saw nothing at first. Whiteness. Blackness. Then something took shape in front of me. Something physical. Something familiar. I saw a diner on a clean city street. It was late, and I could see bright lights through the window. A man sat alone at the counter, a lonely urban stranger. Suit. Fedora. His back was to me. Near him, but not with him, were two others, a man and a woman. He was in a suit like the first man. She had red hair and a red dress.

This wasn’t real.

This was a painting that I’d seen thousands of times before.

I was in the Art Institute, staring at Nighthawks.

Chapter 13

“Sometimes I’ll look at this painting for hours,” a voice next to me said. “I don’t know what it is, but it just sucks me inside. Funny story, actually. This painting wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for my grandfather. When he was a kid, he accidentally bumped into the museum director and saved him from getting killed in a car accident. The director bought Nighthawks from Edward Hopper the next year.”

I glanced at the man who was talking. He had a casual smile, which was not like my smile at all. He wore a gray collarless T-shirt with a few buttons at the neck. His stonewashed jeans were frayed. He had a full beard in serious need of a trim, and his brown hair was wildly messy, sticking up in a dozen places. I wouldn’t have been caught dead looking like that, but regardless, it was me.

Me but not me. A double. A twin.

“I think I’ve heard that story before,” I told him.

He looked at me, but his face showed no reaction, as if he saw nothing strange about encountering an exact likeness of himself. Or maybe he didn’t even notice. “Oh, yeah? You’ve met Edgar? Well, he comes here a lot. He’ll tell the story to anybody he meets.”

“What about you?” I asked. “Do you come here a lot, too?”

“Me? Not so much anymore. I moved away from Chicago a couple of years ago. Too many people, too much winter. I tried to get Edgar to go with me, but he’s a stubborn old mule, wouldn’t leave the city. I’m on the sand near Cocoa now. Pick up odd jobs here and there, but it’s all about the waves.”

“Surfing?”

“Hell, yeah.”

“Well, that’s one way to live,” I said, absolutely horrified.

“Yeah. Best thing I ever did.” He stuck out his hand for me to shake. “Dylan Moran. Ex-Chicagoan turned beach bum.”

“My name’s Dylan, too,” I replied.

“Small world.”

“Very small.”

I looked around at the rest of the museum. Every detail matched my memory, every painting looking as vivid as the original, every window in the skylight and every angled floorboard under my feet looking unchanged. It seemed impossible to me that my mind could replicate the entire museum in an instant, but here I was. Except where were all the other versions of myself?

Surfer Dylan and I were alone.

“I’m looking for someone,” I said to him.

“Oh, yeah?”

“I was wondering if you’d seen him. Choppy dark hair, heavy five-o’clock shadow, mean smile. He likes to wear a beat-up old leather biker jacket with stains on it.”

The other Dylan’s smile disappeared. “Man, you don’t want to find him. He’s bad news.”

“Yeah? Why is that?”

“Word gets around. That dude’s trouble. Whatever you do, don’t let him follow you out of here.”

“Thanks for the advice.”

I heard footsteps behind me. When I turned around, I saw another Dylan Moran walk into the gallery. This one had a completely shaved head, wore a black turtleneck, and had silver circular glasses on his face. Everything about him was neat and orderly. He wandered past us without a word to a nearby painting, Peter Blume’s surrealistic The Rock. The centerpiece of the painting was a jagged sphere, like a pink geode cut open, around which men were laboring with hammers and stone slabs. A lone woman on her knees grasped for the sphere, as if worshipping it. Bald Dylan stood with perfect posture as he examined the painting, his hands folded together in front of him. Every now and then, he leaned forward to study a particular detail.

“This is a working man’s painting,” I said, joining him.

He studied me with a serious expression, but like Surfer Dylan, he showed no recognition that we were twins. “Yes, my father used to say this painting was about the ennoblement of the union man.”

“I can’t remember my father ever going to the museum.”

“No? My father worked here until he retired. He was an art historian. Actually, the museum runs in the family in a way. His father was the reason we got Nighthawks here.”

“Daniel Catton Rich? The car accident?”

“Oh, you’ve heard the story. Yes, that’s right.”

“Is your father still alive?” I asked.

“He is. We lost my mother last year, though. Cancer.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well, her dying brought my father and me closer together. I don’t think either one of us would have made it through that time without the other.”

I tried to imagine a world in which my father hadn’t killed my mother. A world in which they’d both been with me as I grew up, in which my father didn’t drink and took me places and made me a part of his life. I knew nothing else about this Dylan next to me, but I already knew that I envied him.

I began to understand what Eve Brier had warned me about.

You might be tempted to stay.

Around me, more Dylans arrived at the museum. Half a dozen. Twenty. Forty. I soon lost count. They were all completely different and yet all the same. They wore different clothes. Some had beards; some didn’t. Some were heavier than me, some skinnier. One was in a wheelchair. One had an artificial right leg. Some looked almost identical to me, just a few little changes to tell me that a part of their life was different from mine.

But I saw no Dylan wearing my father’s leather jacket.

I wandered through the museum as it got more and more crowded. We kept bumping into each other, all the Dylan Morans squeezed into every wing. Near the American Gothic display, I saw one Dylan stop in the middle of the gallery as others streamed around him. He was dressed exactly the way I was, in a slightly rumpled blazer, dirty slacks, and loose tie. Tears streamed down his reddened face, and his chest heaved with despair.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

His mouth fell open. He unleashed a guttural cry that was pure agony. He stared at me, consumed by pain. “Karly’s dead.”

The words nearly knocked me over. “Yes, I know. I’m sorry.”

“I can’t live without her. I can’t.”

Tragic Dylan reached into the pocket of his suit coat and removed an automatic pistol, which he armed by racking the slide. Instinctively, I took a step backward and put my hands up.

“Dylan, put the gun away.”

He shook his head and continued to sob. As I watched, he opened his mouth and closed his lips around the barrel of the gun. His hand quivered as he slid his finger onto the trigger. Mucus dripped from his nose, and drool leaked onto the barrel. His screwed-up face looked like a version of The Scream, as if he were one more painting in the museum.

“Dylan, no! No, don’t do it!” I looked around at the others; there were hundreds of them now. “Somebody help over here!”

But no one stopped. No one even noticed the drama playing out.

The Dylan in front of me squeezed the trigger. The bullet blew out the back of his skull, spraying the Dylans behind him with bone, blood, and brain matter. They didn’t react; they just kept walking with their clothes and faces covered with the remains of another man’s head. Tragic Dylan crumpled to the floor in front of me. The others walked on top of him as if he wasn’t there at all. Blood spread into a pool on the museum’s wooden floor, getting on everyone’s shoes.

I shoved through the crowd, because I had to get away from here. I needed air, but my surroundings grew claustrophobic as the room filled with more Dylans. I had to fight my way forward, wrestling people aside. All the Dylans around me did the same thing, each one seemingly oblivious to the others.

Finally, in the atrium near the museum’s grand staircase, I found a railing where I could lean and catch my breath. The marble statue of Samson and the Lion loomed immediately behind me. Blinding sunshine poured through the skylights overhead. The atrium was filled with a strange sound, a susurrus made up of tiny noises — clothing brushing together, heels tapping on stone — that combined into a deafening assault on my senses. I wanted to shut it out, because it was simply so loud, but covering my ears did nothing to quiet the tumult.

Eve had warned me about this part of the experience, too. The first time was overwhelming.

I was tempted to say it. Infinite. Say the word, and this chaos would be over. I’d go back to my version of reality, where there was only one of me. But it was a reality where Karly was dead and I was wanted for murder.

Then I looked down.

I saw him.

Where the four staircases from the museum’s top floor converged on a square landing below me, I saw a single Dylan among a thousand others, standing absolutely motionless. The others yielded to give him space. The sea of doubles parted around him.

He wore my father’s jacket.

As I stared down at him, he looked up and saw me. His sea-blue eyes were clear and cold. His lips formed a smile of cruel, violent intent as he recognized me. We knew each other. A wave of sadism engulfed me, and I knew this was the man who’d whispered to me near the river, who’d hidden inside my bedroom closet and confessed his crimes to the police, who’d stabbed the hearts of at least four women who looked like Karly.

Not an endless number of killers named Dylan Moran.

Just one man. This one. The man who’d figured out how to break the rules.

I shouted. “Stop him! Hold him!”

No one did. He headed down the steps, as a new path opened up in the crowd ahead of him. I tried to run, to follow him, to chase him, but I was trapped and couldn’t move. The crush of Dylan Morans held me where I was, and they showed no reaction as I screamed for them to get out of my way. The staircase, like the railing where I stood, teemed with doubles. I had nowhere to go. Below me, my doppelgänger disappeared from view. If I didn’t get to him now, he’d be gone, out the door into another world, where I would never be able to find him.

I took hold of the railing with both hands. To free a tiny bit of space, I kicked hard to my right, driving the other Dylans back, and then I did the same on my left. When I had a few inches in which to move, I swung my legs over the second floor railing and jumped. It wasn’t far, but far enough to feel as if I were diving from a cliff. My body accelerated, and then I landed hard on the crowd below me, scattering Dylans like bowling pins. They cushioned the blow. I fell, got up, lowered my shoulder, and charged down the last few steps like Walter Payton.

Over the heads of the others, I saw the museum doors. Through the glass, the sun let in a blinding light. I didn’t know if the doors led to Michigan Avenue and the sculpted lions guarding the museum entrance, or to someplace else entirely. But the doors led out of here. They were the gateway out of the many minds of Dylan Moran, and like a vast parade, my doubles were leaving one at a time. The doors opened. The doors closed. One by one, they headed to different worlds.

I could see him. Waiting for his moment.

He stood beside the doors, watching each person leave, studying them up and down, as if he were trying to judge the perfect Dylan for the next perfect crime.

I thrashed toward him, shouting across the mass of people who blocked my way. He saw me coming, but he made no effort to escape. He watched me with stoic, evil curiosity, a wolf puzzled by the charge of a dog. I got closer and closer. I didn’t care about the others around me. I pushed, kicked, swung my fists, and opened up a trail like a pioneer chopping down one tree at a time.

When I was six feet away, with only a few bodies left between me and him, everything happened at once.

One of the Dylan Morans reached the glass doors. This Dylan looked a lot like me: same haircut, same blazer, as if he’d come to meet Edgar in front of Nighthawks and was now heading back to the LaSalle Plaza Hotel. The only real difference I could see between us, when he lifted his arm to open the door, was that he wore no ring on his right hand. Me, I’d worn Roscoe’s high school class ring there ever since the accident.

I wondered where our choices had split.

I wondered what road he’d taken in life that diverged from the one I’d traveled.

I didn’t have time to think about it. The door opened, and a wave of fresh air blew inside, along with noises of the city. Somewhere out there was Chicago. The Dylan without Roscoe’s ring disappeared into the white light, and as he did, the Dylan in the leather coat winked and stepped across the threshold in the wake of the other man.

Whatever you do, don’t let him follow you out of here.

The door began to swing shut behind them. I knew, somehow I knew, that when the door closed, the world on the other side of it was sealed off from me forever, just one universe among billions, and I’d never find it again.

I sprinted across the remaining space and left my feet in a desperate leap. My body tumbled through the door just as it closed, and the light around me got brighter and hotter, as if I were diving into the sun.

And then there was nothing. No city. No Chicago.

Nothing at all.