Infinite

Chapter 14

“Hey, buddy.”

I heard the words through a fog in my head, but I didn’t want to wake up. I was caught in a dream.

“Hey, buddy, come on, get up. You can’t sleep here.”

My eyes blinked open slowly, and I tried to focus. Gradually, my senses caught up with my mind. I lay on my back, outside, with the summer sun high in the sky. Somewhere close by, I heard the screech of seagulls and a clamor of children’s voices. The air around me had a strange, sick-sweet smell of body odor and cotton candy. As I turned my head and my face got close to my clothes, I realized that the source of the body odor was probably me.

A man leaned over me, blocking out part of the sky. “Up, up. Come on, let’s go.”

I pushed my stiff limbs until I was sitting up, fighting off a wave of dizziness. My muscles ached, as if I’d been motionless for hours. I winced as I massaged my neck, and I looked around with a terrible feeling of disappointment. Nothing around me had changed. I was still on the same bench at Navy Pier.

Even worse, the man standing in front of me was a Chicago police officer. He was medium height and stout, with wiry red hair and florid cheeks. “You got some ID, buddy?”

My mouth felt gritty. I tried to talk through the dryness. “Um, yeah. Yeah, sure.”

I dug around in my pockets and found my wallet, and rather than fumbling for my driver’s license, I simply handed him the whole thing. He opened it, and I tensed as he read my name. I didn’t know if the search for Dylan Moran had made its way to every street cop yet.

The police officer made no effort to pull his gun or his handcuffs. His mouth mushed into a frown as he tried to make sense of me. I probably had the hygiene of a vagrant, but my wallet contained the identification and credit cards of a downtown professional. “Dylan Moran? Is that you?”

“Yes, that’s me.”

“You okay, Mr. Moran? You don’t look like you’re having a good day.”

“You’re right. I’m not.”

“The thing is, parents don’t like to see homeless people sleeping on benches when their kids are around here. You made them nervous. A couple folks thought you were dead.”

I tried to smile. “I’m not dead.”

“You need help or anything? A doctor?”

“No, thanks. It’s just the aftereffects of a rowdy office party, I guess. I don’t remember a lot of it.”

“Well, next time you want to tie one on, party on the buddy system, okay? You get drunk, make sure somebody knows where you are. When you crash out on a bench down here, you’re likely to get rolled, know what I mean?”

“I do. Thank you, Officer. I’ll be heading home now.”

“Good plan. A shower might not be the worst thing, either.”

“Yeah.”

I got to my feet, wobbling as I did, and offered the cop a weak smile. I wasn’t really ready to move, and I didn’t know where to go, but I didn’t want to linger in case he got the idea of calling in my name and having it bounce back with a red flag. A few tourists on the pier looked at me curiously. Suspicious mothers tugged their children a little closer. I tightened my tie for whatever good it did, wiped some of the dirt off my sleeves and pants, and headed toward the city. When I checked my watch, I saw that it was already past noon. Several hours had passed since my early-morning rendezvous with Eve Brier.

As far as I could tell, having Eve inject me with her hallucinatory drugs had accomplished nothing, other than giving me a weird dream and a splitting headache. I didn’t know why I’d expected anything else. In the harsh light of day, the idea of jumping between worlds inside my head sounded like what it was. Impossible. And yet if I was wrong about my doppelgänger, I also couldn’t explain the murders of Scotty Ryan and four innocent women.

Meanwhile, Eve herself was nowhere to be found. She’d injected me and then left me alone, which made me wonder if she’d hoped that I would never awaken. I dug out my phone and dialed her number. I wanted to tell her I was still here, still in trouble. However, the call didn’t go through. I didn’t get her voice mail; instead, a recording told me that the number was out of service.

Eve had disconnected her phone.

Her message couldn’t be more obvious: she didn’t want me anywhere near her.

When I got to the end of Navy Pier, I stayed by the water, heading toward the downtown skyline. The trouble was, I didn’t know what to do when I got there. Wherever I went, the police would be looking for me. A part of me thought about turning myself in, but I had no idea what to tell them. I had no way to prove that I wasn’t what they thought I was.

A killer.

As I stared out at the water, debating my next move, my phone rang in my hand. When I checked, I saw Edgar’s name on the caller ID. I answered the phone hesitantly — Edgar almost never called me — but I heard my grandfather’s unmistakably raspy voice on the other end.

“Hey, where are you?” he demanded.

“Why, what do you need, Edgar?”

“I’m here at the Art Institute. Where are you?”

“Edgar, we just did that yesterday. We meet on Thursdays, remember?”

“It is Thursday.”

I sighed. It wasn’t uncommon for my grandfather to get his days mixed up. On the other hand, I was also suspicious that the police had arranged this call for me as a trap. “Stay put, I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” I told him. Then I added, “Was anything happening at home when you left?”

“Like what?”

“Like police in the neighborhood.”

“Well, yeah, a cop said they were trying to find you.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I told them I didn’t know where you were.”

“Did you say you were going to meet me?”

“No. What you do is your business, not mine. You’ve made that pretty clear over the years.”

He wasn’t wrong about that.

“Okay, Edgar. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

I hung up the phone.

Meeting Edgar felt like an ordinary day in an ordinary life, but nothing about my world was ordinary anymore. I walked briskly toward the museum, along sidewalks I’d taken throughout my life. It would have been faster to take a cab, but I wanted to preserve my cash for when I really needed it.

When I was back in the heart of the city, I cut through Millennium Park, passing the Pritzker Pavilion, where the wide-open stretch of green grass was crowded with people eating picnic lunches. On the sidewalks, every bench was taken. I passed an old man who was reading a copy of the Chicago Tribune, and he’d left the front section on the bench next to him. My eyes went to the headlines automatically, and I spotted a notice on the very top of the page about the Cubs completing a three-game home sweep of the Phillies. That made me stop in surprise. Not just because the Cubs had swept anybody. No, if there’s one thing I keep a close eye on, it’s Cubs baseball, and I knew they weren’t supposed to be hosting Philadelphia until next week.

Then I glanced at the date on the paper and saw that it was next week.

It was Thursday, just as Edgar had said. I didn’t understand how that was possible. Somehow, I’d lost almost an entire week of my life after my encounter with Eve, and I remembered none of it.

I thought about her question: Have you been having blackouts, Dylan?

Up until that moment, I would have said no, but I’d sat next to Eve Brier on Navy Pier in the early hours of Friday morning. Now it was six days later, and I had no idea what had happened in between.

The old man on the bench looked up from the sports pages. “Help you?”

“I was wondering if you’d finished the front section of the paper.”

His eyes narrowed as he studied the state of my clothes, but then he shrugged. “Yeah, take it. I’d just throw it away.”

“Thank you.”

I took the front section with me and kept walking until I found an empty bench. I sat down and ripped through the pages, not even sure what I was looking for. Somehow, I wanted to believe that I’d made a mistake. Or maybe I hoped I would see a news article that would trigger my memories of the past several days. Instead, the stories confirmed that events in the world had gone on without me. Nearly a week had passed, and I hadn’t been here to see it.

With my headache getting worse, I closed the paper.

That was when I noticed an article in the lower left corner of the front page. The headline jumped out at me:

I didn’t have to read far to discover that the murder had taken place two days ago, barely a hundred yards from my apartment. The body had been found in the dense trees on the riverbank by a couple of teenagers who were exploring the trails, the way Roscoe and I used to do.

The victim’s name was Betsy Kern. Twenty-seven years old. She was an IT programmer who’d gone out for a nighttime run and never come back. The boys had stumbled upon her body the next day.

There was a picture of Betsy Kern accompanying the article. I didn’t know this woman, but I spotted the resemblance immediately.

She looked just like Karly.

I felt a strange nervousness walking into the Art Institute. Part of me expected to find a seething mass of Dylan Morans inside, the way I had in my drug-addled dream. Instead, all I found was the usual crowd of visitors. Even so, when I climbed the grand staircase to the second floor, I had a vision of jumping from the balcony that felt so vivid it seemed like more than a nightmare. I even noticed that I felt a sharp pain in my ankle, as if I’d sustained some kind of fall in real life.

Upstairs, Edgar was waiting in the gallery. He had his hands cupped behind his back, holding his cane, his pants hiked high on his waist, in the way that old men do.

“Hey, Edgar,” I said.

He harrumphed at my late arrival, and we both stared silently at the characters populating Edward Hopper’s diner. After a while, Edgar’s mood improved enough that he told me his usual story about Daniel Catton Rich, which I listened to as if I’d never heard it before. As we stood there, other people came and went to admire Nighthawks.

“So you said the police were looking for me?” I murmured when we were finally alone again. “Did they tell you why?”

“Nope. They just said that you were missing. I wasn’t worried. I figured you’d turn up sooner or later.”

“Did they say how long?”

Edgar shrugged. “Couple of days.”

My brow furrowed. “That’s all? Not like a week?”

“How could it be a week? We had dinner on Monday.”

“You saw me on Monday?”

Edgar stared at me through eyes that were sunk into the bags on his face. “You got bats in your belfry, kid? Of course I did. You brought in fried rice and chop suey from Sam Lee’s.”

I shook my head. “Edgar, Sam Lee’s closed six years ago.”

“Well, wherever, some Chinese place. I thought it was Sam Lee.”

“You’re sure it was Monday? Three days ago?”

“I know you think I’m losing my marbles, but yeah, it was Monday. Shit, Dylan, what’s wrong with you?”

I ignored his question, even though I was wondering the same thing. “Was I acting normal? Did I tell you about anything strange going on?”

“We didn’t talk. You and me never talk, remember? We watched the Cubs beat up the Phillies and ate chop suey. I got a fortune cookie that said, ‘Love is a four-letter word, but so is hell.’ I laughed so hard I snorted.”

I shook my head. Three days ago.

Three days ago, I was awake, conscious, and having dinner with my grandfather. If the police were looking to pick me up, why didn’t they do it then? Why didn’t I remember any of it?

And where had I been for the past two days?

I was quiet for another long stretch. More people came and went to stare at the painting. I thought about what Edgar had said: We didn’t talk. You and me never talk. That was true. We’d been hostile strangers since I was a teenager.

“Can I ask you something?”

Edgar didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no, either. So I plunged ahead.

“What happened to my dad? Did you see it coming?”

Edgar looked at me as if I’d started speaking a foreign language. We never talked, and we definitely never talked about that. He chewed on the question like it was a bad shrimp, and I didn’t know if he’d actually say anything or just pretend that I’d never even brought it up.

“No,” he told me finally. “No, I never saw it coming. Your dad was an angry drunk, I knew that. And things were bad between him and your mother. But I never thought he’d go that far. Definitely not.”

“Do you hate him for it?”

Edgar sighed. “Hating my son’s not in the rulebook for parents. No matter what he did.”

“Well, I hate him. I hate that I’ve lived my whole life afraid of becoming him. Every time I get angry, I think, ‘This is the moment when I snap.’”

“You? Snap?” Edgar snorted. “I’d like to see that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, a turtle’s more likely to walk out of his shell than you.”

“Are you kidding?” I practically laughed at the absurdity of that comment. I couldn’t imagine Edgar saying something like that about me. The kid who’d argued with him at the top of his lungs practically every day of his teenage life. The kid whose fighting nearly got him kicked out of school half a dozen times. If I was afraid of my temper, it was only because it had gotten the best of me so often.

“Kidding?” Edgar retorted. “Hell, no. Yeah, it was awful what your father did, but I think the worst thing was that it turned you into a goddamn robot. Face it, Dylan, you run away from emotion before it has a chance to get anywhere close to you. I thought maybe you’d change when you got married, but you froze her out, too.”

“That’s not true. I only froze her out over the affair, and that’s because I couldn’t stand the idea of being angry with her.”

Edgar shook his head. “Affair? What affair?”

I realized I had never told him what Karly had done. “It’s not important. Not anymore.”

“Look, Dylan, you feeling sick or something? You’re not looking good.”

“Yeah, I’m a little out of it. Sorry.”

I shut up at that point. My experiment in opening up to Edgar hadn’t exactly gone smoothly, and I didn’t need to argue with my grandfather on top of everything else that was going wrong in my life. I let him go back to Nighthawks.

That was when I felt my phone buzzing in my pocket. A text had come in. I checked it and saw that there was no caller ID associated with the number. Whoever was reaching out to me was anonymous.

I read the message and didn’t like it.

Chapter 15

The house across from Horner Park, where the police thought I’d killed Scotty Ryan, looked deserted. I stayed in the back of the park’s baseball field, which gave me a view of the entire street. No one watched the house from any of the parked cars, and I saw no one who resembled an undercover cop. If this was a trap, they’d done a good job of concealing it.

There was no police tape around the house, which surprised me. Then again, a week had passed since the murder, and no doubt the owners wanted to get back inside their house. They’d also taken down the FOR SALE sign; there was no large poster for Chance Properties outside. Crime scenes didn’t exactly fly on the Chicago real estate market.

I waited to make sure I was right about the lack of surveillance. Then I made my way across the street, still on the lookout for police, still ready to run. As I approached the house, I cursed silently, because of all the people I could meet, I spotted the same elderly woman walking her Westie who’d seen me after the fight. I doubted that she’d forgotten me or the blood on my hands. There was nothing I could do, so I gave her my friendliest I-am-not-a-serial-killer smile. We both stood outside the house’s white picket fence.

She smiled at me with no obvious recognition. “Hello.”

“Hi,” I replied. “That’s a sweet dog you’ve got there.”

“Thank you, yes, he’s a doll. Did you buy this house? Are you the new owner?”

“Me? No.”

“Oh, well, we all heard it was a young man. I wanted to welcome him to the neighborhood.”

“No, sorry, it wasn’t me.”

“All right. Well, you have a nice day.”

“You too.”

That was that. She waited while her dog lifted his leg at the boulevard tree, and then she continued down the street. I watched to see if she would look over her shoulder at me, but she didn’t.

New owner? The house had already sold?

I didn’t know what to make of that.

I let myself in through the gate. On the walkway, I studied the windows, but no one looked out at me. I checked the street again and then went up to the front door and rang the bell. There was no answer, even when I rang twice more and pounded on the door. With my apprehension growing, I turned the knob. The door was open.

“Is anyone home?” I called. “Hello?”

I got no reply.

The house still smelled as it had when I was last here, of sweet cut wood. A fine layer of sawdust coated everything. I went into the living room, where Scotty and I had argued. Somehow I expected to see a chalk outline marking the location of a body, with bloodstains dried on the plastic sheeting, but there was nothing like that. I saw no evidence that a crime had been committed here.

“Hello?” I called again. “It’s Dylan Moran. I got a note to meet someone here.”

Still no response. The house was empty.

I ventured deeper inside. There was no furniture. Everything had been removed. With each step, I listened for a noise to suggest that someone was hiding, but I heard nothing. I checked every room on the ground level, and then, with only the slightest hesitation, I went upstairs to the second floor.

The door to the master bedroom was closed.

I approached it with soft footfalls and knocked. “Is anyone there?”

I tensed, then opened the door. For some reason, I had visions of finding a body inside, but I was wrong. No one was here. However, the bedroom, unlike the rest of the house, showed signs of life. Someone was living and sleeping here. There were open moving boxes strewed across the floor, and a mattress with a rumpled blanket lay below the windows. When I glanced in the bathroom, I saw a towel bunched over the shower rod and a lineup of male toiletries on the sink.

It was time to go. I’d stayed here long enough.

I headed to the stairs, but before I got there, I heard the front door open below me. Seconds later, footsteps crinkled on the plastic sheeting in the living room. I tried to decide what to do. Announce myself, or slip downstairs and get away. I put a foot on the top step, but when I shifted my weight, a loose nail squealed, sounding loud in the quiet house. Immediately, I heard more footsteps heading my way.

The foyer below me was in shadow. A man emerged from the downstairs hallway, and I couldn’t identify him at first, but when he got to the bottom of the stairs, he turned around. Seeing who it was shocked me into silence.

Standing at the base of the stairs was a dead man.

Scotty Ryan.

He didn’t look at all surprised to see me, and his face broke into an easy smile. “Hey, buddy, you got my message? What do you think of the place?”

“Scotty,” I managed to choke out from my chest. I thought about saying something stupid: You’re alive. But I held my tongue even as my mind whirled.

“Come on down, I’ll get you a beer,” he said.

Whistling some kind of country song, Scotty disappeared toward the kitchen. I steadied myself and continued downstairs. I went back into the living room and examined it all over again. There comes a time in most dreams when you realize you’re dreaming, but that wasn’t how this felt. I almost said the word out loud to see what would happen.

Infinite.

But I didn’t. I needed to see what came next.

Scotty returned with two bottles of Goose Island in his hand. He gave me one and clinked the neck of his bottle against mine. “Cheers. Good to see you, man. So where were you last night? I kept texting you from the bar. Hell of a game, huh? Ten to one. Suck it, Phillies.”

I looked into Scotty’s eyes to see why he was pretending that we were friends. Pretending that nothing had happened between us. Pretending he hadn’t slept with my wife. I glanced at my hand and saw the raw bruises and scrapes on my knuckles where I’d swung my fist into his face. Then I realized: His face had no damage at all. His lips should be cut and swollen. He’d lost a tooth. I was sure I’d broken his nose. But there was no evidence of a fight.

Scotty swigged his beer and gestured around the house. “Can’t believe it’s all mine. Never thought I’d be able to afford a place in the city. I mean, it needs work, but it’s nice to be able to remodel my own house for a change.”

“It’s great,” I said, because I had no idea what to say.

“Isn’t it? Total fluke that I found it. I was redoing a kitchen down the street, and I noticed the FOR SALE sign over here. Went in and looked around, and I thought, perfect. Love the location, love the park. With the money my uncle left me, I had enough for the down payment. So now we’re neighbors, sort of. What is it, half an hour’s walk to your place?”

“Yeah.”

Scotty’s face scrunched with puzzlement, as if he was noticing my condition for the first time. “Everything okay? You seem kind of out of it today.”

“I’m fine.”

“Why’d you miss the game last night?”

“I was pretty tired.”

Scotty drank his beer and eyed me thoughtfully. “That all it is?”

“What else would it be?”

“I don’t know, there’s something different about you today. I can’t put my finger on it. You’re not acting like yourself. You and I have been friends a long time, Dylan. If something’s going on, you can tell me about it.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” I replied.

But I wanted to say: No, we haven’t been friends for a long time. I barely knew Scotty Ryan. We’d met a handful of times when I was visiting Karly at one of her listings and Scotty was doing construction work for her. He and she went back for years, but he and I didn’t. I didn’t watch Cubs games with him at the bar. I didn’t even particularly like him. In fact, at the moment, I had every reason to hate him.

There’s something different about you today.

I thought about Edgar telling me that I’d spent my whole life with my emotions shut off, when in reality, the opposite was true.

I thought about the old woman with her dog on the street, who didn’t remember me, even after telling the police that I’d killed a man.

Most of all, I thought about Scotty and the fact that he was supposed to be dead. But he wasn’t. There had been no knife plunged into his heart. There hadn’t even been a fight between us. I hadn’t changed, but everything else had. I’d been slow to realize it, but the world around me was different. I wasn’t in the Chicago I’d left behind. I was somewhere new.

I’d gone through the door at the Art Institute into the life of an entirely different Dylan Moran. A man the police were looking for. A man who had been missing for two days.

Where was he?

“What did you want to talk to me about?” I asked Scotty, remembering his message.

He put down his beer bottle in midswallow. “Oh, yeah. I finished up the drawings for the remodel on your bathroom. You’re going to love it. Travertine tiles, body sprays in the shower, recessed lighting. All I need are some decisions on the cabinetry, and I’ll be ready to get started.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“I pulled pages from the catalog to give you an idea of your options. Doors, knobs, roll-out trays, that kind of thing. I can do all the drawers with a soft close, too.”

“Sure.”

“Take it home and talk to the missus, and then let me know what you guys want to do.”

I almost stopped breathing. “My wife.”

“Right. I can start next week if you want. My job in Oak Park finished early.”

I heard it in my head again: My wife.

“Dylan?” Scotty said, his voice sounding far away.

My wife, my wife, my wife...

“Jesus, buddy, you’re white as a sheet,” he went on.

“Scotty, I have to go.”

“Sure. Okay. Let me gather up the plans and catalog, and you can take everything with you.”

I pushed the bottle of beer into his hand and backed away. “No, I have to go now,” I said again. “Right now.”

“Dylan? Hey, what’s up?”

But I was already out the door.

My head throbbed. I felt a tightness in my chest, and my breath came in sharp, ragged bursts. I kept repeating a mantra to myself that this was real, that this wasn’t a dream, but I didn’t dare allow myself to believe it. I didn’t even want to blink, because I was afraid that closing my eyes would take me back to my old life.

I wanted it to be true.

I wanted that more than anything else I’d ever prayed for in my life.

I started walking, but the pace of walking felt glacial. I pushed past people who were going too slowly, ignoring their comments when I bumped into them. Soon I was running. I sprinted north past the park and then into the quiet, leafy streets of Ravenswood Manor. I ran full out all the way until Lawrence Avenue, where I finally had to stop and bend over, gasping for air. When I could breathe again, I crossed the river.

I was only a few blocks from home. This time, I didn’t run. I measured out each step, because I wasn’t sure what I would find when I got to my door. I didn’t want to face the reality of being wrong.

My wife.

I walked through a neighborhood I’d known my entire life. Nothing looked different. The buildings were all the same. I could tell you the names of most of the people behind those doors, and I wondered if they’d led identical lives to what I remembered or whether they’d taken different paths in this world.

Ahead of me, I saw the green lawn of River Park, half a block from my apartment. Our apartment. Only one dark cloud passed quickly through my mind. I remembered the headline in the newspaper about a young blond woman on the trails there two nights ago, the last night of her life. Someone had put a knife in her heart and murdered her.

The Killer Dylan I was chasing was already here. My doppelgänger in the leather jacket had struck again. He’d killed a woman who looked just like Karly.

I thought: Or was it me?

I didn’t remember this woman, but I remembered nothing from those missing days.

There was our building. I stopped, cupping my hands in front of my face, breathing hard. I walked up the sidewalk the way I had thousands of times, since I was a teenager. I wondered if I could simply use my key and let myself inside. Would the locks be the same? My phone still worked, so it seemed as if some of the little details followed me across worlds.

But I rang the doorbell anyway. I wanted her to come to the door.

I wanted to see her face.

Seconds passed. Interminable seconds. Then I saw a shadow on the other side of the glass.

The door opened, and there was my wife.

It wasn’t Karly. It was Tai.

Chapter 16

“Oh, thank God!” Tai exclaimed, throwing her arms around me. “Dylan, I was so worried. Where have you been?”

I tried to hide my crushing disappointment. My body was stiff as I hugged her back. She went to kiss me, and instinctively I turned my face, making her kiss my cheek instead of my lips. I saw confusion in her eyes, but she let it go, took my hand tightly, and pulled me into our apartment.

It looked nothing like I remembered. None of the furniture that Karly and I had bought was here. No more sleek grays and blues on the walls, no more gliders where we’d drink wine and coffee, no more plush rug by the fireplace to make love. The style now reflected Tai’s taste, with enough ferns and hanging planters to turn the apartment into a rain forest. A handwoven mat with a geometric pattern lay in front of the hearth, looking hard and uninviting. The chairs were made of wood and wicker. If I hated anything when it came to furniture, it was wicker.

This was not my home. And yet it was. Photographs crowded the mantel, all of them showing me and Tai in places I couldn’t imagine being. The two of us side by side in front of Cinderella’s castle in the Magic Kingdom. The two of us wearing leis near the firepit of a Hawaiian luau. Me in a tux, her in a wedding dress. Husband and wife. Instinctively, I shook my head at the idea of any of this happening. Tai was smart and sweet, and she was a friend, and I wanted her to be happy. But I couldn’t imagine a world where I’d fallen in love with her and married her.

Except I was in that world right now.

When I didn’t say anything, Tai put both hands on my face. “Dylan, are you okay? Do you have any idea how terrified I’ve been? You’ve been gone almost two days.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Not a call, not a text, nothing. You didn’t show up at work. Your phone was off. I’ve been trying to reach you. I had visions of you being dead somewhere.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Do you need a doctor? You look terrible.”

“No, I’ll be all right.”

“Dylan, what happened to you? Where have you been?”

I didn’t have time to formulate a lie. A knock on the door interrupted us. Tai kissed me quickly, on the lips this time, and then she hurried to the outside door. I heard voices, and when Tai returned, she was with a man I recognized immediately. I couldn’t let on that I knew who he was, because in this world, we were strangers.

The tall skeletal man was Detective Harvey Bushing. He didn’t seem to have changed. When he looked at me with those sunken eyes, I thought he could see right through me and guess everything that I was hiding. I felt like running, the way I had when we first met, when he accused me of multiple murders. I had to remind myself: He doesn’t know about any of that. For him, in this place, none of that had actually happened.

Except for a murder a hundred yards away in River Park.

I was no fool. I’d been missing for two days, and a woman named Betsy Kern had been killed near my house two nights ago. Detective Bushing wasn’t going to consider that a coincidence.

He introduced himself, and we shook hands again, his grip as dry and limp as it had been the first time.

“It’s good to see you home safe and sound, Mr. Moran,” Bushing told me. “I was just coming over to see if your wife had heard from you, and here you are.”

“Good timing, Detective. Yes, here I am.”

“I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that your wife was pretty panicked.”

“Of course she was.”

He smiled at both of us, showing yellowed teeth that could have used a good orthodontist when he was a kid. “How about we all sit down? I’m very curious to know where you’ve been.”

“I’m actually pretty tired, Detective, and I could use a shower. Could we do this tomorrow?”

“This won’t take long, Mr. Moran. Please.” He said it in a way that didn’t give me any room to say no.

The detective took a seat on one of the wicker chairs. I sat uncomfortably on a sofa near the window, and Tai sat beside me and put her hand over mine. As she caressed me, her fingers rolled over Roscoe’s ring on my hand, and I saw her glance at it with surprise.

“Since when do you wear that?” she asked.

I shrugged. “I found it in a drawer. It’s from high school.”

An unsettled look passed across Tai’s face. She was the kind of woman who noticed things like jewelry and clothes; her eye for detail was what made her a good events manager. I’m sure she was thinking that she would have spotted that ring on my finger long before now.

“So Mr. Moran,” Detective Bushing said. “Fill us in. Where have you been for the past couple of days?”

I needed to sound convincing as I made up a story, so I used a story that was at least partly true.

“To be honest, Detective, I don’t know. I woke up a few hours ago on Navy Pier, and I have no idea how I got there. I was shocked to discover that I’d been gone for so long. I have no recollection of what happened in between.”

“Navy Pier?” Bushing asked. “Really?”

“Yes. I was sleeping on a bench. Actually, a police officer woke me up. I’m sure he made a note of it.”

“Navy Pier is more than ten miles from here. How did you get there? Did you walk? Take a bus? Did someone take you there?”

“As I said, I don’t remember.”

“Well, what’s your last memory?” Bushing asked.

I hesitated, because nothing that had actually happened in this world meant anything to me. “Everything is pretty blurry. I remember I had dinner with my grandfather on Monday night. Chinese food.”

“But nothing after that?”

“I don’t think so.”

Bushing focused on Tai. “When did you say your husband left home?”

“Tuesday evening around nine. He was going to take a walk in the park.”

He turned to me again. “You don’t remember that, Mr. Moran?”

“No.”

“Do you remember anything at all from that evening?”

“Not a thing.”

“Have you ever had a blackout like this before?”

“Never.”

“Were you drinking that night?”

Tai interrupted. “My husband rarely drinks. The occasional beer or glass of wine, and that’s all. On Tuesday, I made Filipino food for dinner, and we had salabat with it. That’s ginger tea.”

I was surprised to learn that, in this world, Dylan Moran had no problems with alcohol. He’d also shut down his emotions and his temper. And he’d married Tai. Different man. Different choices.

“Do you usually follow a particular route when you walk?” Bushing asked.

“No, not really.”

“Did you see anyone?”

“I already told you, I don’t remember. If Tai says I left the house to go for a walk, that’s what I did. But after that, I have no memory until I found myself on that bench near the lake.”

Detective Bushing dug into the inside pocket of his ill-fitting sport coat and extracted a piece of paper. He unfolded it and handed it to me, and I saw a photograph that matched the picture I’d seen on the front page of the Tribune. It was the woman who’d been killed in River Park.

“Do you recognize this woman?” he asked me.

I shook my head. “No.”

“She doesn’t look familiar at all?”

“No.”

“Have you ever seen her around the neighborhood?”

“I told you, no. Who is she?”

Tai murmured near my ear. “She was murdered.”

I pasted surprise on my face. “Murdered? That’s terrible.”

“In fact, she was stabbed to death in River Park on Tuesday night, Mr. Moran,” Detective Bushing went on. “Her roommate said she went out for a run, right around the same time that you took a walk. Same time, same night, same park. Her body was found the next morning. You can understand why your disappearance was of considerable concern to us, Mr. Moran. Two people in the park, one dead, one missing. I can’t help but wonder if whatever happened to you was somehow connected to the murder.”

“I wish I could help you, Detective. I didn’t know this woman, and I don’t remember anything about Tuesday night.”

The detective’s eyes shifted to my left hand. He took note of the purplish bruises. “What happened to your hand, Mr. Moran?”

I wiggled my fingers, because they still hurt. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t remember how you injured yourself?”

“No.”

“It looks like you hit someone.”

Next to me, Tai laughed. “Dylan? Hit someone? That’s ridiculous.”

“I wish I could tell you what happened, Detective, but I can’t.” Then I added impatiently, “Is that all?”

“Yes, that’s all I have for now. If you do remember anything, please call me right away. Oh, and I wonder if you’d mind if I bagged the clothes you’re wearing and took them with me for analysis.”

“My clothes? Why?”

“Well, I’d like to run forensic tests that might fill in some of the blanks in your memory. For all we know, you may have seen the murder taking place and tried to intercede. If you were involved in some kind of fight in the park, perhaps the person you struggled with left behind traces of DNA on your clothes. Whoever that person is could be a killer.”

His hawk eyes stared at me, and I knew what he was thinking. Or maybe Betsy Kern left her DNA on your clothes. I was pretty sure that he didn’t believe my story of having no memory of the past two days. He thought I was lying, and he wanted me to know it.

“I’m sure my husband won’t object to any tests you want to run,” Tai said. “We both just want to find out what happened to him.”

I interrupted her politely but firmly. “Actually, Detective, I do object. Sorry. No warrant, no clothes. I’ve read about too many innocent people who got railroaded by the police while trying to do the right thing.”

“Dylan,” Tai said, her voice shocked.

Detective Bushing shrugged his bony shoulders as he got out of the chair. “That’s all right, Mrs. Moran. Your husband is within his rights. The fact is, we already have a DNA sample for Betsy Kern’s killer. He hit her while he was trying to subdue her, and he left some of his blood on her face. We’ll find a match.”

“He hit her?” Tai murmured, with an uncomfortable glance at my hand.

Detective Bushing curled his fingers into a fist and tapped it against his own chin. “Yup. Right in the jaw. You sure you don’t remember how you hurt yourself, Mr. Moran?”

I stared back at him without blinking. “I have no idea.”

I took a pounding shower to wash away days of dirt, but the water on my body was a kind of torture. Instead of clean, hot water from the tap, I imagined the slime of the river coating my skin like an oily film. When I closed my eyes, I was back in the blackness, assaulted by waves of debris whipped along by the swollen current. I held my breath as I dove to find Karly. Somewhere, lost in the river, was her voice. I swam hard, but her scream kept getting farther away.

Dylan, come back! I’m still here!

I shut off the water and crumpled into the shower wall. I pounded a fist against the tile in frustration, and the searing pain reminded me that my hand was probably fractured. The dripping water felt like cold fingers scraping down my back.

Outside the shower, I dried myself with a pink towel. Karly would have hated the idea of pink towels. I went back into the bedroom and stood in front of our open closet, which was now neatly organized to reflect Tai’s OCD tendencies. As I looked at the clothes, I was reminded of the fact that they weren’t mine. They belonged to someone else. Obviously, Tai had picked out my shirts, my ties, my pants. A few items matched things I’d bought in my single days, but Goodwill had apparently made out well after my marriage.

I wondered how long she and I had been married. How had I proposed? Where? What had led me to think that Tai was the one?

On my nightstand, I saw monogrammed cuff links, something I’d never owned. There was also a bottle of cologne, something I never wore. The Dylan who lived here had the same kind of computer tablet I had in my other life, but when I opened it and tapped in my pass code, it didn’t work. Of course not. My pass code had been Karly’s birth date, and there was no Karly in this life. However, I knew Tai’s birth date, and when I entered it, I found myself on the tablet home screen. I scrolled through a few photographs, staring at pictures of Tai, photos taken inside the LaSalle Plaza ballroom, and a few selfies of us near the lake. It was painfully obvious that the person in those pictures wasn’t me. The expressions weren’t the same: no joy, no anger, no life. There was a bland nothingness in my eyes.

I didn’t think I’d like this Dylan Moran. He seemed like a sanitized version of myself, someone who’d learned the wrong lessons from the death of his parents. Not that I was proud of the things I’d done, the drinking, the fighting. But at least I’d lived. I’d fallen in love, head over heels in love with Karly. Even if I’d made mistakes, even if I’d lost her in the river, I’d still had her in my life. I found it hard to imagine that this Dylan even knew what love was.

At the same time, I also wondered: Where is he?

This was his home. He lived here with Tai. He was the one who’d been missing for two days, not me. He’d gone into the park on the same night as Betsy Kern, and he’d never come back. I realized that any moment, he might return home, and it would be matter and antimatter meeting face to face.

“Dylan, what’s going on?”

I turned and saw Tai in the doorway. I was naked, and my first instinct was to cover myself. But she was my wife, so I let her see me that way.

“Nothing’s going on,” I said.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Tai, I wish I could explain, but I can’t.”

“Are you cheating on me? Is there someone else? Is that where you were?”

“I’m not cheating on you.”

She was silent for a while, and then she came and sat on our four-poster metal bed, which was covered by a frilly lavender comforter. “Did you hurt that woman?”

“Are you serious? How can you even ask me that? No.”

Tai shook her head. “You’re so closed off. Sometimes it makes me wonder what you’re hiding. You’re like a pressure cooker that’s ready to explode.”

“That’s not me,” I protested, but maybe it was me. The me who lived here.

“I just wish you’d open up, Dylan. You tell me you love me, you marry me, you sleep with me, but you never tell me anything. I’ve always accepted that you are who you are, and I loved you regardless. But now you’re making me feel like I don’t even know you.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not trying to make you feel that way.”

“Roscoe warned me about it, you know,” Tai went on. “He talked to me before the wedding. Just him and me. He told me if I wasn’t happy with who you were, I shouldn’t go through with it. He said if I thought that getting married would change you, I was going to get my heart broken. The thing is, I was willing to take that risk, because I loved you. Now you have to be honest with me. Was I wrong?”

This was one of those moments where a relationship teetered on the brink and could swing one way or another depending on what you said next. By not answering her, I was at risk of blowing up this other Dylan’s life with Tai. That was terribly unfair of me to do, but I couldn’t focus on anything other than the name she’d said.

“Roscoe.”

“I know he’s your friend, but he was trying to help me. Even so, I never doubted my decision about marrying you. That’s the truth.”

I grabbed clothes and began putting them on. A burgundy dress shirt that I left untucked. Black slacks. “Tai, I have to go.”

“Now? Dylan, no, don’t walk away from me.”

“I have to talk to Roscoe.”

“You can see him anytime. You need to talk to me.”

“I told you, it’s hard to explain, but I have to see him right now.”

I spotted car keys on the nightstand and put them in my pocket. I was on my way to the back door when I stopped at the noise behind me. Tai was crying. Her eyes were closed, her head down. I froze with indecision, then went and knelt in front of her. I caressed her cheek.

“I’m sorry,” I said again. “I know you want answers. I wish I could give them to you.”

“Do you love me?” she asked, looking up and wiping her face. “Have you ever loved me?”

I didn’t say anything, which was the worst thing I could do. I wanted to tell her what she needed to hear, but I couldn’t lie. In the silence, she hung her head again and kept crying.

“It’s not you, Tai,” I murmured. “It’s me. Believe me, I’ve never known who I am, either. But I’m trying to find out.”

Chapter 17

The South Side Catholic church where Roscoe served as a priest was a century-old redbrick building with a massive rose window built into its face. I’d been here many times to help him with raffles, book fairs, and food parties, but I hadn’t been back since the day of his funeral four years ago. I wasn’t a churchgoer anyway, and I found it hard to stand in the shadow of all those monuments to God after he had taken away my best friend.

It was early evening by the time I got there, with the summer sun barely hanging on above the trees. I let myself in through heavy double doors. The interior was cool, as it always was, and the tap of my shoes echoed from the high ceiling. As I walked down the center aisle, I was alone in this place, just me and the spectacle of the church. White columns soared over my head. The multicolored stained glass glowed darkly in the walls, and candles flickered in the shadows. Jesus was backlit on the altar, arms spread wide, welcoming me.

I took a seat in one of the pews near the crossing. This was where I’d been seated for the funeral, close enough that I could go up to the lectern under the watchful eyes of the saints and angels to give Roscoe’s eulogy. I was on crutches from the accident then. Karly had helped me. I could still remember the things I’d said through my tears, about the utterly selfless man Roscoe was, about the many ways he’d tried to save his best friend even when I had no interest in being saved.

I missed him so much. He’d left an emptiness behind in my life that I could never fill.

And then, risen from the dead, there he was. I saw him. Roscoe came from the north transept in his black suit, a Bible and a small leather notepad in one hand. It was the first moment that I believed, truly believed without any doubts, that what was happening to me was real.

He crossed in front of the altar and knelt, and then he went to the pulpit, where he stood on a platform to give himself more height and began making notes as he flipped through tissue-thin pages in his Bible. No doubt he had a sermon to give that night. He had his head down in concentration, and he didn’t see me. I tried to call to him, but my throat choked up, unable to form words. He’d barely changed from the man in my memory. Maybe he’d put on a couple of pounds and lost a little more hair, but that was all. His thick glasses were in the same black frames. His beard made a trimmed square around his lips and mouth. He hummed as he worked, the way he often did, a tuneless grumble that was easy to hear in the acoustics of the church.

As he considered his sermon, he tapped a pencil against his mouth and then looked up pensively. That was when he finally saw me sitting in the pew. His face broke into a warm smile, and I tried to hold it together, to not cry. To him, this was an ordinary moment, his boyhood friend paying him an unexpected visit. To me, it was a gift that only came for a few moments in the occasional dream. My companion, my anchor, my confidant, was here with me again.

“Dylan, what a nice surprise,” Roscoe said, in a voice that was much deeper than anyone would expect from his size.

He came down from the pulpit. For a small man, he always walked quickly. I stood up, and he pulled me into a hug. His hugs were long, he said, because life was short. Then he took the back of my head in his hands and kissed both of my cheeks. It was a habit he’d picked up on a summer trip to Italy, and he never let go of it. That greeting from him was something I’d never thought I would experience again.

The two of us sat down next to each other in the pew. I stared at him like he was an old photograph come to life, and he stared at me with an equal intensity. His keen eyes narrowed with surprise as he took a close look at my face. Somehow, I’d known that I wouldn’t be able to hide the truth from him. This man knew me better than anyone other than Karly, and like a parent with identical twins, he could tell immediately that the man in front of him was different from the man he knew.

I was not the Dylan Moran that this Roscoe Tate had grown up with. He couldn’t explain why, but he knew that something was wrong.

“This is very odd,” he said.

“What is?”

“Well, you’ve changed. I can’t put my finger on how.”

“It’s just me, Roscoe.”

He shook his head. “No. No. There’s definitely something new.”

“When did I last see you?” I asked.

“Two months, I think? Too long, for sure. But it’s not that.”

“Then, what is it?”

Roscoe stroked his neat beard and considered his answer seriously, the way he always did. “I have a one-hundred-year-old Chinese man in the parish. We’ve had the most amazing talks. I’ve learned some incredible things from him. I think he would say that your qi is different.”

“Better or worse?”

“Neither. It’s just not the same.” Roscoe shrugged, as if some mysteries had no explanation. “Anyway, that isn’t important. I’m glad you’re here, but why are you here? What’s wrong?”

“Does something have to be wrong? I just wanted to see you.”

He chuckled. “Never play poker with me, my friend. I can always read your face. It’s not just your qi. In addition to everything else that seems off about you, I can tell you’re struggling with something. Talk to me.”

I had no idea what to say.

I was still overwhelmed by the fact that I was really here, talking to my best friend, four years after he’d died next to me behind the wheel of a car. Part of me wanted to confess everything, because after all, that’s what you do with priests, isn’t it? Confess. But if I told him what was happening to me — or what I believed was happening — he’d think I had gone insane. I couldn’t expect him to take me seriously with a story like this. And yet I also needed the counsel that Roscoe had always given me. When I veered off course in life, he steered me back. Right now, I felt like a stranger in a strange land, and even though I knew this was not my Roscoe, he was still my best friend.

I also knew that I could not, would not, lie to him. That was a pact we’d made with each other years ago. Never judge, never lie.

“I don’t even know where to begin,” I said.

“Well, are you okay? Is it your health?”

“No, I’m fine.”

He leaped to the next obvious conclusion. “Is it Tai? Or rather, you and Tai? You’ve been married more than a year now. The two of you are past the honeymoon and into real life, which is much harder.”

“Tai’s not the problem,” I replied. “It’s me. Things are happening to me that are very difficult to explain. It has nothing to do with her, but to be honest, I have to know. Did it surprise you when she and I got married?”

Roscoe never pulled punches. “You mean because you didn’t love her?”

“You knew?”

“Of course I knew. If you’ll recall, I told you exactly that. I told you that she loved you fully and passionately, and she deserved a man who loved her just as much. Which you didn’t. You said you’d grow to love her with time, and I told you that was about the stupidest thing I ever heard you say. On the other hand, let’s not sugarcoat the truth. You’ve never been in love with anyone, Dylan. You don’t feel anything. You’re shut up inside a world that must be awfully dark and lonely sometimes. I’ve tried to pull you out, and so has Tai, but ultimately, you have to make that choice for yourself.”

I couldn’t stay quiet. If I didn’t say something, if I didn’t let out the secret of what was going on, I’d drown.

“Actually, you’re wrong. That’s not who I am.”

“Come on, Dylan. Let’s not kid ourselves. We’ve talked about this many times. You’re like a radio whose plug got kicked out of the wall when you were a boy. I’m not blaming you for that, or saying you don’t have a right to be who you are, but you can’t pretend with me.”

“I’m not pretending, Roscoe. I’m saying I’m a different man than who you think I am. If anything, what scares me is how deeply I do feel things. I lose control too easily.”

“You? Out of control? I can’t remember a day in your life when I’ve seen you like that. And I know you pretty well.”

“That’s the thing. You don’t know me at all.”

“Dylan, what are you talking about?”

“You were right about what you said before. I’ve changed. I’m not Dylan. I mean, I am, but I’m not. Not the Dylan you know.”

Roscoe shook his head. “What are you saying?”

I put my hand on his shoulder and squeezed. He was real; he was flesh and blood. “For starters, you’re supposed to be dead.”

It took me an hour to tell him the story. When I was done, Roscoe sat motionless in the pew, with nothing but his breathing to tell me he was alive. His face had no expression, and he hadn’t said a word the entire time. People confided their worst sins to him every day, so he’d developed a stony poker face to hide his own feelings. If he thought I’d gone crazy, he was kind enough not to tell me.

“Parallel worlds,” he murmured finally.

“That’s it.”

“And you come from a different one.”

“Yes, I do.” I added after a moment, “I know this seems impossible. I’m asking a lot for you to believe it.”

Roscoe gave me a little smile, and I saw his eyes drift to the altar. “Dylan, my faith tells me that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Many people consider that impossible, but the doubts of others don’t shake what I know in my heart.”

“Does that mean you think I’m telling the truth?” I asked.

“I’m saying it doesn’t matter what I think. It’s whether you believe it yourself. Obviously, you’re convinced something extraordinary is happening to you.”

“It is. I know how it sounds, but it’s real.”

“Well, I was the one who said you seem like a different man,” he told me. “There’s no doubt of that. Something has caused a profound change in you, whatever that may be.”

I still felt the need to prove what I was saying. I reached for my right hand and slipped the silver class ring off my finger. “This is your ring, Roscoe. See the engraving? I’ve worn it ever since the accident. I’m telling you the truth about my world. I haven’t seen you in four years.”

Roscoe put the ring on the tip of his thumb and studied it. “Yes, you’re right. I’ve never seen you wearing this.”

“But?”

“But your Many Worlds must come with a sense of humor. In this world, I lost my ring to you in a bet the summer after our high school graduation. You’ve had it ever since. Apparently fate has a way of making even the smallest parts of our lives converge.”

I shook my head as he gave me back the ring. “Roscoe, I’m not making this up. You died.”

“I heard what you said. A car accident after I bailed you out of a police station. Dylan Moran in a bar fight — now that’s truly a miracle. You’re far too stoic and practical for anything like that. I don’t recommend violence, but actually, it would be nice to think you’re capable of losing control once in a while.”

“That night changed my life,” I told him.

“So I gather.”

“I lost you, but I met my wife because of it.”

Roscoe steepled his fingers in front of his chin. “I rather like the idea of me dying to help you find the love of your life. You must know that I wouldn’t have hesitated over that kind of sacrifice.”

“I do know that.” Then I looked around at the church, which was like seeing Roscoe back home where he belonged. “But in this world, there was no accident. No bar fight. No car wrapped around the tree. You never died, and I never met Karly.”

He gave me a strange look that I couldn’t interpret. “I doubt it would have made a difference if you had. You don’t believe in the idea of love at first sight.”

“That’s your Dylan,” I insisted. “Not me. I fell for Karly as soon as I saw her.”

“My Dylan,” Roscoe murmured.

I could tell that he still had his doubts. Around us, night was setting in, which made the dangling lanterns overhead glow brighter. The stained glass deepened into shadows on the walls. We were alone, but even so, I felt a strange shift in the environment around me. The air changed, as if a door had opened and closed somewhere.

“I know you’re humoring me,” I told him.

Roscoe sat where he was, his lips pursed in thought. “Well, it’s a lot to take in, I won’t deny that. For the time being, let’s assume this is really happening to you. That you’re a different Dylan Moran, someone I haven’t met before. If that’s true, where is the Dylan that I grew up with? The one who belongs in this world?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did he somehow disappear when you arrived?”

“I have no idea. The other Dylan I told you about — the serial killer — he shared my world, so I can’t understand where your Dylan is. He should be here, too, but he’s been missing for two days.”

“In which case, I’m worried about him.”

“Yes, I understand.”

“I love him. He’s my closest friend. I’m sure your Roscoe felt the same way about you.”

“He did.”

Roscoe stood up from the pew and gave me one of his penetrating stares that meant he was going to say something that I didn’t want to hear. “Dylan, can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“If you are who you claim you are, then why are you here?”

“I needed to see you again. To talk to you. I knew if anyone would believe me, you would.”

“Yes, I get that. And I’m glad you came. What I want to know is, why are you here in this world and not your own?”

“I told you. I need to stop this other Dylan. He’s a killer.”

“That’s a job for the police. In any world. It’s not your job.”

“The police don’t know what’s going on. They have no clue. Roscoe, this other Dylan has already killed again. The woman in the park, Betsy Kern. Another woman who looks just like Karly—”

I stopped.

Restlessly, I got up from the bench and paced back and forth in the aisle under the long sweep of the arched ceiling. My sharp footsteps sounded like the crack of bullets. I understood what was happening now, and my terror increased a thousandfold. My doppelgänger was here. He knew I was following him. By killing Betsy Kern, he was sending me a message.

“Oh, my God. He’s going to kill her.”

“Who?”

“Karly. That’s what this is about. That’s his plan. I need to stop him before he finds her. I’m the only one who can save her.”

Roscoe shook his head sadly. “Is that what you’re trying to do? Save her?”

“Of course it is. Don’t you see? I’m the only one who even knows she’s at risk.”

“I know that’s what you’re telling yourself. But it also gives you a convenient excuse to meet her again, doesn’t it? You can meet her and make her fall in love with you. You can have the life you lost. That’s what you really want.”

“That’s not what this is about.”

“Isn’t it? Dylan, whether or not your story is true really doesn’t matter. You can’t live two lives at the same time. No good will come of it. You’ve already hurt people. The longer you stay on this path, the worse it will get. If any of this is real, then the best thing you can do is say the word infinite right now and go back home. Let us worry about our own world.”

I put my hands on Roscoe’s shoulders. “I can’t do that. I failed Karly in my other life. I let her die. I should have been the one who died, not her. I’m not going to fail her again. This time, I’m going to keep her safe.”

“That was your responsibility in your own world,” he replied firmly. “Not here. In this world, you have no connection to her at all. Wherever Karly is, she has her own life, and you don’t belong in it.”

Roscoe knew me well, but I knew him, too. The truth always showed in his face.

“My God. You know her, don’t you? You know Karly. You know where she is.”

“I don’t.”

“Well, you know something about her. What is it?”

“This is a mistake. You should let it go.”

“Roscoe, please. You have to tell me.”

My friend sat down in the pew again. He exhaled with a heavy sigh. “I can see you’re not going to give up. One thing is consistent about every Dylan Moran. They disregard all of my good advice.”

I waited impatiently, but Roscoe could never be rushed.

“Almost ten years ago, I set you up on a blind date,” he went on. “Do you remember that?”

I thought back. “Yes. You had a married friend who was a religion major at Northwestern. I met her and her husband at Thanksgiving dinner at your mother’s house. Afterward, she told you that she had a girlfriend who’d be perfect for me.”

“Did you meet up with her girlfriend?”

“No. I said thanks, but no thanks. I had no interest in blind dates. Why?”

“Because in this world, you did go,” Roscoe told me. “The two of you went out to some dance club, and she didn’t like you. There was no chemistry. That was it. The two of you never went out again. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but so far, there don’t seem to be a lot of coincidences in your worlds, Dylan. The thing is, I remember the woman’s name, even after all this time. It was Karly.”

Chapter 18

I drove to the north side of the city, where Karly’s parents had their house. When I got to their upscale neighborhood in Wilmette, it was obvious that they’d never lived there. There was no dollhouse in the back of the estate where Karly had nursed me back to health after the accident. The mansion itself was unchanged, but it was no longer a testament to the real estate empire built by Susannah Chance. The woman who answered the door was a stranger who had never heard of the Chance family and who had owned the house since the 1980s.

When I did research on my phone, I learned that Chance Properties didn’t exist. In fact, I couldn’t find any indication that it ever had. Whatever Karly’s mother had done with her life, she wasn’t in the local real estate market. I searched for Karly herself, but I got listings for different women all over the country, and nothing gave me a clue about how to find the Karly I wanted. I didn’t know where she was living or working or whether she was still in Chicago at all. In fact, I didn’t even know whether Karly Chance actually existed in this world. The blind date I’d had ten years ago might have been with a different person who just happened to have the same first name.

But I didn’t think so. I thought Roscoe was right. Fate had a way of making our lives converge across different worlds.

Finally, I called Roscoe’s friend Sarah, the Northwestern alum who’d originally suggested I meet Karly. She was now a homeschool mom living in Elgin. As I dialed her number, I tried to think of a way to explain my interest in finding a woman with whom I’d had a single disastrous date nearly a decade earlier. The truth was clearly not an option.

When Sarah answered the phone, we exchanged pleasantries, which didn’t take long. Roscoe was the only thing we had in common, so we talked about him and his parish work for a minute or two, and when that well ran dry, I explained the reason for my call. I hoped she’d believe the lie.

“This is a total fluke, Sarah. You may not be able to help me, but you’re my only lead. I’m the events manager at the LaSalle Plaza Hotel, and my assistant took a call today from a woman named Karly Chance who was interested in booking our ballroom for an event next spring. Unfortunately, my assistant must have gotten the number wrong, because my calls won’t go through. The thing is, I remembered that you set me up on a blind date with a woman named Karly Chance a long time ago. I have no idea whether it’s the same person, but I figured it was worth a try. If you were still in touch with her, I thought you might know how I could reach her.”

Sarah had no problem believing my story, but she didn’t have much information to offer. “I’m sorry, Dylan. Karly and I lost touch after college. I haven’t talked to her in years. I’m afraid I have no idea how to get hold of her.”

“Sure. I understand. Am I right about the name of your friend, though? It was Karly Chance?”

“Yes, that was her.”

“Do you know if she stayed in Chicago after school?”

“Well, if I remember correctly, she was planning to continue at Northwestern and do graduate work in English. I don’t know if she did, but you could probably check with the university. They might have a way to track her down.”

“I appreciate it, Sarah. I’ll let you go. Roscoe says hi.”

I hung up the phone. I did another online search — this time adding the word Northwestern to the name Karly Chance — and not only did I find a record for her, I discovered that she was a junior member of the Northwestern faculty. The idea of Karly teaching English didn’t seem far fetched to me. Her father had been a poet and high school teacher, so it seemed as if she’d followed in his footsteps in this world rather than in the footsteps of her mother.

The online biography didn’t include a photograph, but the website listed her office location on the third floor of University Hall. That was only about five minutes away from where I was.

I could feel my heart racing as I drove to the campus. It was late, but being so close, I couldn’t wait until tomorrow to get an answer. My instincts all told me it was her. My Karly. My wife. She was leading a different life here, and for all I knew, she was married to someone else. The one time we’d met in this world had gone poorly. But none of that mattered. I needed to see her again.

At night, I had no trouble parking. I walked along Chicago Avenue toward Sheridan, and I shivered a little in my thin red shirt, because the lake breeze had cooled the air. The serene stone buildings of the university surrounded me. I crossed under the black arch that led into the heart of the campus and saw the clock tower of University Hall down the path in front of me. The closer I got, the harder it was to breathe. Just by seeing her, even for a moment, I felt as if I could get a little bit of my life back.

The doors of the white, rough-stone building were unlocked. Inside, I heard muffled voices. From somewhere nearby came the acrid smell of an illicit cigarette. The building stairs were ahead of me, and I climbed to the third floor. In the corridor, I passed a long lineup of offices, a few with doors cracked open. I could see a couple of faculty members tapping at their keyboards. Otherwise, the hallway was empty and museum quiet.

I found the room number listed on her online bio. The door was closed and locked. There was no window to see inside. But there was her name. Karly Chance. She’d posted no photograph on the door, but it was her. I saw a handwritten listing of her office hours pinned to a bulletin board, and the handwriting was unmistakably Karly’s. I’d found her. She came and went day by day down this same hall. She worked on the other side of this door. I thought about breaking in, just so I could smell the fragrance inside, because I knew it would smell like her.

“May I help you?”

I turned around and saw a slight Indian man studying me suspiciously from behind a pair of red glasses. He was one of the faculty members I’d seen working in his office.

My mind was getting accustomed to lying. “Oh, I was supposed to meet Karly here, but we must have gotten our signals crossed. I tried texting her, but my messages aren’t going through.”

“Are you a student?” the man asked, even though I obviously wasn’t.

“No, no, I’m her cousin. I’m in town from Seattle on business, and I was supposed to take her out for a late dinner. Do you know Karly?”

“Of course.”

I took a chance that the world had only changed so much.

“I’ve been looking forward to seeing her,” I went on, inventing a new story. “I don’t get out this way very often. Her dad is my favorite uncle. I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Tom’s a teacher, Karly’s a teacher. I used to really like Tom’s poetry, too. I loved listening to him read his poems when they’d come out to Washington for Christmas dinner.”

The faculty member visibly relaxed. He was obviously protective of his colleague, but I’d passed the test by talking about her family. “Yes, Tom is an accomplished poet. As is Karly, of course.”

“Yes, she’s incredibly talented.”

“Great trauma can bring that out in a person,” he added.

I stuttered with surprise. “Yes.”

Trauma.

It scared me to hear that word, and I wondered what it meant. He assumed I knew something about Karly that I obviously didn’t. Something terrible. I realized that the more I said, the more it would become clear that I didn’t actually know her. Not in this world.

“Well, there’s not much I can do but head back to my hotel,” I said. “Nice talking to you. I’m sorry I missed Karly. Hopefully she’ll check her phone soon.”

“You know, she doesn’t live far away. She’s the faculty rep in Goodrich.”

“Goodrich? Is that one of the dorms?”

“Yes, it’s just a few minutes’ walk up Sheridan. If you go up there, one of the students can probably let her know you’re outside.”

“I’ll do that. Thanks a lot.”

I left the building and went back to the street. The wind whipped through the trees, and I shoved my hands in my pockets as I took the sidewalk north. As excited as I was at the idea that Karly was close by, I also found myself confronting an unhappy truth. I was trying to find a stranger. More than that, I was trying to find a stranger who’d gone through something dark in her past. Trauma.

In my mind, I couldn’t escape the idea that Karly knew me. I’d see her, and she’d be my wife, and she’d be in love with me. But none of that was true. If I simply showed up at her door, a man who’d met her once on an awful blind date years earlier, she’d wonder why I was there and what I wanted.

What did I want?

Honestly, I had no idea. I needed to protect her, but I didn’t know how to warn her of the danger from someone who was actually me.

When I got to the residence hall, I hesitated at the alley. A few lights were on inside the building, and I could see a handful of summer students through the open curtains and hear music through their windows. I debated whether to stay or just leave. What would I say if I found her?

Then, not far away, a door opened. A woman emerged from inside the dorm, lingered briefly under the lights, and then turned away toward the gardens in back. She was visible for only a moment, and all I could see was a hint of blond hair and the curve of her jaw.

The woman looked like Karly, but I couldn’t be sure. Maybe I just wanted it to be her.

Even so, I followed. I took the alley to the back of the building, where the dormitories and fraternities came together in a kind of quad. It was almost impossible to see in the darkness back here. Trees crowded the open lawns and blocked my view. Ivy-covered walls butted up to the cobblestoned sidewalks. I didn’t see Karly — if it really was Karly — but she couldn’t have gone far. I heard the tap of her heels on stone, but the noise bounced between the walls and made it hard to tell where she was.

I crossed beside a building with Greek letters engraved over its doorway. Bike racks were crowded near the rear door, and I smelled weed through one of the windows. I stopped by the dense, overgrown hedges and listened again, hearing no footsteps this time. Then, on the far side of the lawn, I spotted a flash of her blond hair as she passed under the glow of a lamppost. She disappeared into a narrow corridor between two buildings. I changed direction to go after her, navigating between the trees. The branches dangled low to the ground, scraping my face as I hurried through the damp grass.

When I was halfway across the lawn, I stopped.

A stab of horror ran through my body. Ahead of me, a silhouette detached itself from the thick trunk of an elm tree. It was a man. He stood on the fringe of the grass, framed in darkness by the lamppost. I recognized the outline of his body, because I’d seen it in photographs throughout my life. That was how I looked, with my lean, small frame, with my shock of wavy hair. It was me. It was him. He headed after the blond woman with a determined stride, and as he crossed under the light of the lamppost, I saw the dirty leather of his coat. My father’s coat. I also saw a glinting reflection of something metal in his hand.

A knife.

He was carrying a knife.

I tried to run, but the slick mud under my feet slowed me down. When I got to the walkway between the buildings, the corridor was already empty. I sprinted to the far side and found myself in a wooded area where four sidewalks met in a cross, with more ivy-covered walls on every side. My doppelgänger was gone. So was Karly.

Was it Karly?

Was I going to lose her again?

I didn’t know which way to go — left, right, or straight. In front of me, the cobblestones led beneath an archway between two buildings, and I ran that way, finding myself in another dark quad where brick walls loomed around the square. The area was silent, except for the noise of the tree branches rustling together. I saw no one, and I turned around to reverse my steps.

There she was. Right behind me. Staring right at me.

She was fit, young, and attractive, with bobbed blond hair, but she wasn’t Karly. They looked similar, but this woman was a stranger. In her hand was a small canister that she pointed at my face.

“Freeze, shithead. This is pepper spray. One more step, and you’ll be choking on the ground, and I’ll be kicking the crap out of you. Got it?”

I backed away and held up my hands. “Hey, I’m sorry. I saw someone following you, and I was just trying to help.”

“Yeah, you were following me. And now you’re done. I’m calling security, so unless you want to explain why you’re on campus stalking women, you better get the hell out of here and not come back.”

She didn’t take her eyes off me. With the can of pepper spray still poised, she backed to the doorway of the nearest building and disappeared inside. I didn’t want to be around when campus security arrived, so I walked quickly back the way I’d come.

Even so, when I reached the alley that led toward Sheridan, I stopped.

No one was in sight, but the shadows offered plenty of hiding places.

I waited to see if he would show himself, but he didn’t. Regardless, I knew he was here. Our minds were linked, and I could feel him watching me from the blackness. I’d stopped him tonight, but this wasn’t over. We both knew the stakes.

He was in this world, and he was hunting for Karly.

I had to get to her first.

It was after midnight when I finally made it back to the apartment near River Park. I had nowhere else to go. It occurred to me that the Dylan who really belonged here might have come home while I was gone, but I had to take that chance, so I let myself inside. Moonlight stole through the windows, giving me enough light to see. I made my way to the bedroom and saw that Tai was alone in bed. I took off my clothes, feeling a wave of tiredness. I slid under the covers next to her. She faced away from me, her breathing steady. I knew she’d heard me arrive; I knew she was awake. I lay on my side, and the room was quiet.

“Where were you?” Tai said softly from the other side of the bed.

“I told you. I needed to see Roscoe.”

“You left the church hours ago. I called him. Where did you go?”

“I drove around.”

Tai turned over, just inches away. We were eye to eye. Her long hair spilled across the pillow. I could see her bare shoulders and breasts where the blanket slipped down.

“What are you not telling me?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

She stayed silent for a while, watching me. “I’m glad you’re safe. Those two days without you were hell. I was worried about you.”

“I know.”

“Why don’t we go away this weekend? We could drive to Lake Geneva, find a little B and B.”

“I can’t.”

“Oh. Okay. Whatever.”

I heard her disappointment and regretted the harshness in my voice. She didn’t deserve that. She had no way of knowing she was in bed with another man. “Tai, I’m sorry.”

She nudged closer and put her lips on mine. “You know, I can’t fix something when I don’t know what’s broken.”

“I already told you, it’s not you. It’s me. It’s all me.”

She kept kissing me. My lips. My chin. My eyes. Her taut nipples brushed against my chest, and her long hair caressed my skin. Her hand slid between my legs and began to tease an erection from me.

“Tai, it’s not a good night for that.”

“I don’t care.”

Her motions grew more urgent, her fingernails working on me with long, gentle strokes, and I responded to her touch despite myself. Yes, it felt good, but my body and mind were in two different places. I was thinking about the first time Karly had touched me, when I lay on the bed in the dollhouse, still in casts and mostly unable to move. She’d given me a sponge bath, and we made jokes to defuse the awkwardness of the effect it was having on me, which was impossible to miss. When we ran out of jokes, she giggled and said, “Oh, what the hell” and made me come harder than I ever had in my life.

That’s what I was remembering when Tai took hold of my shoulder. “Make love to me.”

I should have put her off, but I didn’t. I rolled on top of her, and she spread her legs wide, and I sank inside her. She cried out a little, then moaned. I thrust in and out slowly, feeling the heat of her response, and I tried to be in the moment. I tried to take pleasure in this, but every touch and every sound she made reminded me that our bodies were strangers. Seeing her face below me, not Karly’s, felt wrong, as if I were somehow cheating on both of them at the same time. I kept dreaming of making love to my real wife, but this wasn’t her. I rushed to finish, and the more I tried to climax, the more my body betrayed me. My arousal vanished. Tai wrapped her legs around me and tried to coax me back to life, but we were done. I couldn’t do this.

I pulled out of her and collapsed onto my back. “I’m sorry.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I have a lot on my mind.”

“So tell me about it. Talk to me.”

“I don’t even know where to start.”

She stared at the ceiling, and the dim light gave away the shine of tears in her eyes. “You’ve always been distant. I never blamed you for that. But I thought we were making progress. I thought you were learning to love me. Now you’re going backward.”

“I know.”

“You can’t go on like this,” Tai said. “Something’s wrong with you. If you won’t talk to me, then talk to Roscoe, or talk to a shrink. You need help. Please, sweetheart.”

She reached out a hand to me, but I pulled mine away. My body was damp with sweat, my heart still racing. I didn’t say anything to Tai, but she was right. I needed help, and I could only think of one person who would understand what I was going through.

I had to find Eve Brier.

Chapter 19

I awakened before dawn. Tai was still asleep, or pretending to be asleep so she didn’t have to deal with me. I stood over the bed and watched her silently, feeling guilty about what had transpired between us overnight. My instinct was to wake her up. Tell her everything. But I waited. Somehow I managed to convince myself that I was protecting her with my silence.

I showered in the darkness. The water brought me right back to when I was trapped in the river. It didn’t matter what world I was in — that helpless sensation never left me. I struggled through the claustrophobia, then went back into the bedroom to get dressed. There wasn’t much in the closet of this other Dylan that appealed to my own tastes. I looked for the blazer I’d seen him wearing when I followed him from the Art Institute, but I didn’t see that coat on any of the hangers. Instead, I chose the least offensive patterned shirt I could find and a pair of Dockers.

It was too early to head downtown, so first I took a walk on the trails of the park to clear my head. I crossed the open grass, passing the jungle gyms and the community pool, and reached the path that led along the bank of the Chicago River. A strip of weeds and clover ended in dense trees, obscuring the fence that protected the steep slope over the water. The path was closed off by police tape here for at least fifty yards. I knew why. Betsy Kern had been found hidden in the brush near this spot, a knife in her heart. She was the latest victim in a chain of violence that stretched across the Many Worlds.

I walked north by the river. Ahead of me, the path descended under Foster Avenue, where graffiti marred the stone wall and the steel girders of the bridge. I walked beside the river’s drab green water here. Beyond the bridge, the trail climbed into a new section of parkland. By that time, the horizon was brightening, but in the semidarkness, the trail lights hadn’t switched off.

I came upon a weeping willow whose dangling branches swished against the sidewalk. As I passed the tree, I disturbed an enormous rat, which scampered practically over my toes into the dense undergrowth near the water. Seeing the rat made me freeze, although rats were a common sight along the river. I was still looking down at my feet when I spotted a fleck of gold reflecting the shine from the light post. It made me curious. I squatted and used my fingers to brush away the mud to see what it was.

What I found was a brass button. I picked it up and rubbed the metal to clean it, and then I used my phone to light up the button in my hand. The insignia showed a small crown and shield, with the initials HSM underneath. I knew that those initials stood for Hart Schaffner Marx, because that was the brand of navy blazer I’d been wearing yesterday, and my coat had identical buttons on the cuffs.

The Dylan who lived here, Tai’s husband, owned the same blazer. I didn’t think that was a coincidence.

I stared at the dark riverbank where the rat had disappeared. The weeds beside the trail grew particularly high here. Between the brush and the trees clustered tightly together, I couldn’t even see the rusted fence on the riverbank. I looked up and down the trail to make sure I was still alone, and then I plunged into the weeds. When I reached the fence, I didn’t even need to climb it. The mesh had been cut away from the post, leaving a gap where I could squeeze to the other side. Only a few feet separated me from the river at the bottom of the slope. A dense web of green branches leaned over the water. I heard the low slurp of the current. Birds chattered loudly, as if warning me away.

It was still night in here, dark and deep. Using my phone again, I lit up a small patch of the woods around me, watching a cloud of insects flock to the glow. When I turned the light to the ground, I caused a stir, as half a dozen more rats scattered from where they’d been feeding. When I looked at what they’d left behind, my stomach lurched. I held in the urge to vomit. I squeezed my eyes shut and took several deep breaths. Then I steeled myself to see what was below me.

A body.

A body with no face. That was partly because of the rats eating away what was left of the corpse and partly because someone had used a shovel or club to bash the man’s face to a pulp. He was completely unrecognizable, but he was wearing a Hart Schaffner Marx navy blazer identical to the one I owned. I checked the cuff and saw a missing button, and below the cuff, the body was missing something else. His hand had been cut off. I checked and found that the other hand was missing, too.

No fingerprints.

It was an eerie feeling, staring at myself, dead. Because I knew this was Dylan Moran. Tai’s Dylan Moran, who was never coming home to her. No one was likely to identify him in his current state, and that was assuming his body was found at all before the rats skeletonized him and gnawed away what was left of the bones. He’d simply ooze away into the ground.

What did I do next? I did nothing.

I left him there. I definitely wasn’t going to call the police.

When I was sure no one else was nearby, I slipped through the fence again and headed toward home. His home. No one would be looking for him, no one would wonder if the body was his, because Dylan Moran wasn’t missing. He was right where he was supposed to be. I was here in his place.

I had a strange, disorienting realization about what this all meant.

If I wanted it, this man’s life was mine.

Eve Brier had already warned me. You might be tempted to stay.

Roscoe had feared the same thing. They were both right.

I’d come to this world to stop a killer, but now that I was here, I found myself wondering: What if I really could find Karly?

Could we be together again?

Could I have what I’d lost?

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want that, but it gave me a sick feeling to think about rebuilding my life over the decomposing body of another Dylan Moran.

I didn’t know what to do. I needed Eve’s help. I needed to find out more about the Many Worlds and what would happen to me if I stayed.

She’d given me her business card when we first met. It listed the address of her office in the tapering black tower that Chicagoans would always call the Hancock Center. Her psychiatry practice was lucrative enough to afford her exclusive space along the Magnificent Mile.

I drove downtown, parked a couple of blocks away, and joined the morning chaos on Michigan Avenue. It felt normal to be here, as if nothing in my world had changed. I could head south to my favorite lunch places, and they would recognize me. I could walk into my office at the LaSalle Plaza and go to work, and no one would find anything strange about it.

This was Dylan Moran’s Chicago.

I entered the building through the doors on Chestnut Street along with a sea of commuters. Inside the lobby, I found myself mesmerized by the sculpture that dominated the space. Called Lucent, it was a globe formed by thousands of blue lights designed to emulate the stars of the night sky. With a mirrored ceiling above it and a black pool of water beneath, the endless reflections made me think of the parallel worlds in which I was caught. Somehow, I didn’t think that was an accident. Eve had picked this place for a reason, as if the artwork were the first step in opening a patient’s mind to limitless possibilities.

I gave the guard at the security desk my name and the number of Eve’s office on the twenty-ninth floor. While he tapped on his keyboard, I thought about what I needed to say to her. As far as I knew, she and I were strangers in this world, but she was also my ally, my coconspirator. She was the one who’d delivered me here, so it made sense that she could help me decide what to do next.

“Sir?”

The guard interrupted my thoughts. I watched a frown furrow his face.

“I’m sorry, sir, but that office isn’t registered to Eve Brier.”

I tried to focus on what he was telling me. “Who does have the space? Maybe she’s part of a larger practice.”

“Actually, no one’s in that office right now,” he replied. “The suite is vacant.”

“Do you know for how long?”

“Almost a year.”

“Was Eve Brier the previous tenant?” I asked. “Is it possible she moved?”

“Not according to my records. I ran the name, and there’s no Eve Brier in any other space inside the building. It doesn’t look like there ever was. I’m sorry, sir. She’s not here.”

I thanked him and walked away. Eve had no phone; she had no office in Hancock Center. I should have expected that her world had changed, just as everyone else’s had, but I was genuinely shocked to realize that she wasn’t here. Not just shocked — afraid. I was under the spell of her therapy, and she was gone.

I sat down in one of the lobby chairs and used my phone to run searches for Eve Brier.

For her psychiatric practice.

For her medical school and degree.

For her lectures.

For her bestselling book about Many Worlds and Many Minds.

For Eve Brier herself, with her swirls of highlighted brown hair and her distinctive, hypnotic eyes. If she wasn’t in Chicago, where was she? If she wasn’t living her life, what was she doing?

She had to be out there somewhere, but I found nothing. There was no record of Eve Brier, doctor, psychiatrist, philosopher, author. There was no record of Eve Brier anywhere, no one who even looked like her. She’d left no footprints in this world.

As far as I could tell, she didn’t exist.

I got up from where I was sitting. As I stood in the lobby, the Lucent sculpture engulfed me again. I found myself lost in its thousands of lights and endless reflections, and then my eyes focused on a single star among the many. That was me, one insignificant point of light, lost somewhere in an infinite number of universes.

Infinite.

I heard the word in my head.

All I had to do was say it. That was my way out. Roscoe had told me it would be better if I just went home, but I hadn’t finished what I’d come here to do. There was a Dylan Moran in this city who had already killed twice. Karly was alive and in his sights, and I had to save her.

Eve Brier couldn’t help me.

I was going to have to navigate this world on my own.

Chapter 20

From downtown, I drove back to Northwestern.

I retraced my steps in the light of day to the residence hall where Karly lived, but like last night, I stopped before going inside. This wasn’t the way to approach a stranger. All I would do was alarm her. Instead, I needed a meeting with her that was innocent and accidental.

I noticed a young man in shorts and sunglasses, reading an economics textbook on the building’s back porch. It wasn’t even eleven in the morning, but he already had an empty beer can tipped on its side and another one in his hand. Ah, college days.

“Hey, do you know where I can find Karly Chance?” I called to him. “I need her signature to add a class in the fall.”

He didn’t even look up from his book. “Try Norris. She hangs out there.”

“Thanks.”

Norris was the university’s student center and gathering place. It was only about a ten-minute walk from where I was, and the path took me past a quiet inner lake formed by fill land that blocked the waves of Lake Michigan. Sunshine beat down on my head, but the breeze off the water was cool. I entered Norris in the dining area and checked the tables to see if Karly was there. She wasn’t, but the building was a large space with several floors, and she could be anywhere. I strolled around the sprawling center, and everywhere I looked, I expected to see her. I tensed for that moment.

What would I do? What would I say?

When I passed the university bookstore, I glanced at the window display and saw at least three dozen books arranged under a sign for faculty titles. Among books on climate change, Sufi literature, and French cinema, my gaze landed on a slim paperback with a cover that showed the outline of a woman’s face as she held up a mirror, creating an endless series of reflections vanishing into the center of the photograph.

The name of the book was Portal.

The author was Karly Chance.

I went into the bookstore and picked up a copy. The first thing I did was check the last page to see whether the publisher had included a photograph, but the only information was a brief biography. Karly Chance is a lecturer and poet-in-residence at Northwestern University. This is her first collection.

That was all.

I checked the listing of poems included in the book. The one-word titles unsettled me. One was called “Cut.” Another, “Plaything.” Another, “Jump.” Another, “Candy.” When I flipped through the pages, I was impressed but also horrified. Her poems used beautiful imagery to build a tableau of violent self-destruction, like Thomas Eakins painting the blood of a nineteenth-century surgical procedure in exquisite detail.

It seemed impossible to me that the Karly I knew could have written these poems. I’d never seen a side like that in her personality. But then again, this was not the Karly I knew.

I also thought about the word her faculty colleague had used in describing her background.

Trauma.

“You should read the book,” a voice next to me said.

I looked around and saw a young woman no more than twenty, in a Northwestern T-shirt, with her brunette hair tied in a ponytail. Her name tag told me she was a bookstore employee. As I held the book in my hand, she tapped a purple-painted fingernail on the cover.

“The poems are really deep. I mean, some of them will turn your stomach, but if you want to know what depression can do to someone’s head, it’s all in here.”

My finger caressed Karly’s name on the cover. “Do you know her?”

“Sure. I’ve taken her class.”

“What’s she like?”

“She’s amazing. So many of the profs around here are just talking heads, you know? But Karly lived it.”

I smiled. “You’ve sold me.”

I followed the young woman to the cash register. As she rang up the sale and took my money, I said, “You mentioned depression. Is that what the poems are about?”

“Oh, yeah. She spent years in the cave.”

“Did something happen to her?”

“You don’t know?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Well, Karly was in a car accident right after college. She talks about it in class and doesn’t sugarcoat how bad it was. She had her mom in the car with her, and they were having some kind of big argument. The two of them didn’t get along, like really didn’t get along. Karly got distracted. She ran a red light, and they got T-boned. Her mom was killed.”

I felt those words like a blow to my chest.

“She spiraled after that,” the girl went on. “She spent a year in hell. Heavy into meth, abusive relationships, suicide attempts. The last time she almost succeeded.”

I hesitated, but I needed to know. “What did she do?”

“She drove her car right into the river.”

I had trouble standing. Waves of violent memories rolled over me. My mother, dead on the floor. My father, with the gun in his mouth. Roscoe, dead in the seat next to me, his face shredded by broken glass. Dylan Moran on the riverbank, the rats eating his face.

Karly and I, swirling and tumbling in the black water.

Roscoe said: Fate has a way of making even the smallest details converge.

“Shit,” I murmured.

“Yeah. When they pulled her out, she was dead. No heartbeat. No oxygen for like four minutes. They put her in a coma to give her brain a chance to recover, but nobody figured she’d come out of it. But she did. She says that was what finally turned her around.”

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

“Anyway, enjoy the book,” the girl told me with a macabre smile.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

I left the store, still devastated by what I’d heard. I took the stairs up to the next level, and I used a coffee coupon on my receipt to buy myself an iced latte. When a table opened up, I sat down and began reading Karly’s book.

Knowing it was her, knowing what she’d been through in this life, made the words almost unbearable to me. All this naked emotion roared off the page. Fury. Lust. Savagery. Ecstasy. Coldness. Guilt. Despair. “Plaything” was about bondage with a series of strangers. “Candy” was about her overdose of pills. “Jump” was about standing on an eighteenth-story Marina City balcony, naked and high as a kite, hallucinating that her mother was shouting from the ground below that she should climb over the railing.

Jump, she said to me.

Jump, she sang.

I told myself that this was a different Karly, not my Karly, not the woman I knew, but I realized something as I read the book that made me impossibly sad.

This was my Karly.

I could hear her voice in the turn of a phrase. Little things she’d said when we were together, the words she’d made up about people, showed up here. The poems sounded exactly like her. All the pain, all the darkness, had been inside her when she and I were together. Same soul, same mind. Maybe it had taken a journey of shame to bring it to the page, but she’d had this identical wounded heart all along. I had never seen it, never asked her about it, never dived into the deep, deep pool of who she really was.

I had loved this woman and not known her at all.

How could I have missed it?

I was in tears when I put the book down, for everything I’d lost, for everything I’d failed to appreciate while I had her. I hadn’t looked up from the pages for an hour. My vision was blurred, and I wiped my eyes. I hadn’t touched the coffee at all, and the ice had melted away, leaving a drink as muddy brown as the flooded river. Trying to regain some sense of where I was, my stare traveled from table to table, person to person, spying on the lives of others.

Then my gaze froze.

My heart stopped.

Not even twenty feet away from me, a woman with jagged blond hair sat in profile, her graceful fingers tapping on the keyboard of a laptop. When she paused, which wasn’t often, she sipped tea from a paper cup. Her face was absorbed in her work, and she didn’t seem to notice the rest of the world.

She had no idea that a stranger at another table had seen her. That I had to plant my feet on the floor with heavy chains to stop myself from getting up and sweeping her into my arms.

That woman was Karly.

Perfect. Gorgeous. Alive.

That woman was my wife.

Seeing her, I felt like a tongue-tied fool, with no idea what to do next. I could get up, go over there, introduce myself. But then what? Anything I would say to her felt completely insufficient to that moment. And yet if I offered even a glimmer of what was happening to me, she’d think I was crazy. I was the one whose world was turning upside down, not her.

Needless to say, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. After a while, she felt it, the way you get that prick in your neck that someone is watching you. I saw her head turn, taking in the people around her, wondering where that odd feeling had come from. She stared at the others in the coffee shop one by one, and then, finally, she stared at me. Just for an instant, she looked right at me, before she moved on. I looked away, too, but the damage to my soul was already done.

I was crushed.

She didn’t know me. There wasn’t any recognition at all. Ten years ago, we’d had one date, and I’d come and gone from her life without making so much as a ripple. In my world, she’d found me bleeding in the car next to Roscoe, and we’d fallen in love with each other in the time it took for her to tell me that everything was going to be fine. But not now. Her gaze passed over me with no interest at all, no attraction, not even a physical curiosity. I felt nothing from her. Complete disinterest. That was worse than any other reaction she could have given.

The despair I felt made the reality of my situation very clear. Roscoe was right. I didn’t belong in this world.

I got up from the table, took Karly’s book with me, and left. I didn’t even turn around for another glimpse of her. The risk of her looking back with those blank eyes was too painful. I went downstairs, anxious to get back outside. I knew what I should do. Go back to the lake, find a quiet place where no one could see me, and say the escape word simply and clearly. Say it out loud and hope that it would send me home.

But fate got in my way and reminded me why I was here.

As I walked back into the sunshine, I met a man coming the other way. He was old and slightly stooped, with salt-and-pepper hair. We were on a collision course, and I side-stepped to give him space. Instead, he blocked my path.

His weathered face studied me curiously. “Oh, hello again. Did you find her?”

“What?”

“Did you find the woman you were looking for? Karly Chance?”

I was about to say yes — but then I realized that I had no idea who this man was. We’d never met. I’d never seen him before. And yet he knew me.

“Why did you think I was looking for Karly Chance?” I asked, but the twisting sensation in my gut told me why.

His face screwed up with confusion. He squinted, looking at me again. “Didn’t we meet last night? I could swear you were the man who asked me about Karly Chance. Sorry, it must have been someone who looked like you. These old eyes of mine aren’t what they used to be. My mistake.”

“No problem,” I said, walking away.

I wanted to tell him his eyes were fine. He hadn’t made a mistake.

My doppelgänger was still here. Still hunting. I couldn’t leave this world until I’d found him.

Chapter 21

I spent the day consumed by thoughts of Karly. I didn’t go to work, because the job at the hotel wasn’t really my job. I didn’t go home, because Tai wasn’t really my wife.

But Karly? I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

I went to the Bohemian National Cemetery, which is a couple of miles west of our apartment. That’s where I go when I need to think. I usually visit one particular sculpture. Its true name is The Pilgrim, but people call it by other names. Death. Walking Death. The Grim Reaper. It shows an old woman covered by a cloak, walking with a staff toward a nearby mausoleum. Unless you get up close and look under the cloak, her face is invisible, just black shadow. However, the legend says that if you look at her face, you’ll see a vision of how you’re going to die. I’d never looked. It never seemed worth the risk. That day I was tempted enough that I stole a peek, but all I saw was the pilgrim mother’s serene expression as she stared at the ground. She didn’t give me any clues about what was coming next.

I spent the afternoon there, lingering even after the cemetery gates closed. I sat on the steps of the mausoleum, and I reread Karly’s book of poems over and over. It wasn’t just that I wanted to know the woman she was now, in this world. I wanted to know who she’d been. The wife I’d lost. The more I read, the more I fell in love with her all over again, as if I’d discovered an entirely new person. It killed me that we couldn’t be together.

Eventually, the cemetery caretaker kicked me out. I had nowhere else to go, so the only thing I could do was head home to the apartment. When I got there, things got even worse.

Detective Bushing was waiting for me. He sat in the wicker chair where he’d been the day before, his face like a dry desert except for those sharp eyes. Tai sat on the sofa with her hands in her lap. She wouldn’t even look at me.

“Mr. Moran,” the detective croaked. “Welcome home.”

I took a seat on the opposite end of the sofa from Tai. Her coolness gave a chill to the apartment.

“What do you want, Detective?” I asked.

Bushing pulled his briefcase into his lap and drew out a yellow pad, along with a stubby pencil in need of sharpening. “It’s been a whole day since you got back. I was hoping you’ve started to remember things from when you were gone. Like what you did in the park that night when you went for a walk.”

“I still don’t remember anything.”

“That’s too bad.”

“It is what it is, Detective. I can’t help you.”

Bushing nodded, seemingly unconcerned. “What about last night? You remember that, right? Where did you go last night?”

I saw the twitch of a smile on his lips. He knew something. I glanced at Tai, who was uncomfortably quiet.

“I went to visit a friend on the South Side. Roscoe Tate.”

“Yes, your wife told me. She also said she called to check on you and found out that you left the parish where your friend works midevening. You didn’t come home for several hours after that. Where did you go?”

“What business is it of yours, Detective? Why do you care?”

“I’m investigating a homicide, Mr. Moran. I care about everything.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with my whereabouts last night.”

Bushing played with the pencil between his fingers. “Then let me explain it to you. The fact is, in this city, some murders are more equal than others. Ten black kids get shot on a holiday weekend, nobody seems to blink. But a pretty white girl gets stabbed in a park? People notice that. They see it in the paper; they remember it. It tends to generate a lot of tips. Most of them go nowhere, but every now and then, you find a needle in a haystack.”

“You’ve lost me,” I said.

“Well, see, a tip came in late last night. Someone in campus security at Northwestern called us. Seems a grad student reported a strange man stalking her near one of the residence halls. She gave a pretty good description of him, too. That kind of thing wouldn’t typically make it onto our radar, but the security guy remembered the photo of Betsy Kern from the newspaper. He said the two women looked a lot alike.”

Bushing removed two photographs from his briefcase. One was of Betsy Kern, the same photo I’d seen in the newspaper. The other was the young woman who’d confronted me near Goodrich Hall the previous night. The woman I’d thought was Karly.

“That security guard had good instincts,” Bushing said. “These two women do resemble each other. Now, that in and of itself wouldn’t really trip my trigger, but the security guy also sent along the description of the suspect. Figured it might help us. That got my attention. Short white guy, late twenties or early thirties, scruffy dark hair, heavy stubble. Sound like anybody you know, Mr. Moran?”

I didn’t answer.

“The grad student also said the man who followed her was wearing a dark-red button-down shirt. According to your wife, you were wearing a shirt like that when you went out last night. Was that you on the Northwestern campus, Mr. Moran?”

He had me cornered, and we both knew it. All it would take was a photograph for the woman at Northwestern to identify me, if she hadn’t done so already. I couldn’t pretend that I hadn’t been there.

“Yes,” I admitted. “That was me.”

“Why were you following that woman, Mr. Moran?”

“I wasn’t. I saw someone else following her, and I was concerned. I was trying to intervene to make sure she was okay.”

“She didn’t see anyone else behind her. She saw you. She also said she was pretty sure you had a knife.”

“I didn’t.”

“If we search your car, will we find a knife?”

“No.”

“Because you got rid of it?”

“Because I never had one.”

“Betsy Kern was killed with a knife.”

“Yes, that’s what you said.”

“Did you kill Betsy Kern, Mr. Moran?”

“No,” I hissed.

“Well, you say you don’t remember anything from the night you disappeared. So how can you be sure?”

“I think I’d remember killing someone.”

“Right. Or maybe this whole memory-loss story is nothing but a big pile of steaming dog shit on the bottom of your shoe.”

“I’m telling you the truth. I don’t remember that night. But I would never kill anyone.”

“Then what were you doing up at Northwestern?”

I sighed, because I had no explanation that made any rational sense. I couldn’t mention Karly. I had no connection with her, no reason to be looking for her. But even if I kept her name secret, it wouldn’t take Bushing long to track down the calls I’d made and the people I’d talked to about Karly. He’d find a photograph of her and see the resemblance to the other two women.

They’d ask Karly about me, and as soon as they did, I’d be cut off from her forever. She would never talk to me, never trust me.

I could feel a web closing around my life, exactly the way it had in my own world. No doubt that was just what the other Dylan Moran wanted. I was running out of time.

“I drove up there to visit the Block Museum,” I said, grasping for any kind of excuse.

“You went all the way from the South Side to the North Side to visit a museum? Why? When I talked to you, you said you were exhausted.”

“I was, but I was also restless. I’d lost two days of my life, and I didn’t know what had happened to me. I was trying to shut off my mind and see if anything came back. It’s not like I really thought about where I was going. The Block had a photography exhibit I wanted to see, so I went up there.”

“Did you see it?”

“No. The museum was closed by the time I got there. I had it in my head that they were open until nine or ten. I was wrong. They closed at eight. So since I was already up there, I decided to take a walk.”

Bushing snorted. “Another walk, Mr. Moran? You took a walk on Tuesday, and Betsy Kern died. You took a walk last night, and a woman who looks a lot like Betsy Kern saw you coming after her with a knife.”

“She made a mistake.”

“Is that the story you plan to stick with?”

“It’s the truth.”

The detective stuffed papers back into his briefcase and stood up from the wicker chair. “Let me tell you what happens next, Mr. Moran. I’m going to tear your whole life apart. Everywhere you’ve lived. Worked. Gone to school. Gone on vacation. I’ll be looking to see if there are unsolved murders around the time you’ve been there. Then I’ll be back with a warrant to search your house, your car, your office, everything.”

“You can search all you want. I’m innocent, Detective. I haven’t done anything.”

“Yeah? Well, if I were you, I’d get a lawyer.” Bushing glanced at Tai. “And if I were you, Mrs. Moran, I’d think about sleeping somewhere else.”

When Bushing was gone, Tai stayed on the sofa, not saying anything. Her back was straight, with perfect posture, and she kept her hands neatly folded in her lap. She calmed herself with steady breaths, and then her head swiveled slowly to watch me. Her eyes didn’t blink.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Come on, Tai.”

“I’m serious. Who are you?”

“You know who I am.”

Tai shook her head. “No, I thought I did. Now I don’t know. I’m beginning to wonder if you’ve been wearing a mask all along. Yesterday I was afraid you were having an affair, but this is a thousand times worse.”

She got up from the sofa. As she passed by me, I grabbed her hand to stop her, but she made a violent twist to shrug me away. “Don’t touch me! Keep your hands off me!”

“Tai, I’m sorry. I wish I could make sense of this for you.”

“But you can’t.”

“No. The only thing I can tell you is that I am not a killer.”

Tai’s mouth pinched into a frown. Her eyes made it clear that she didn’t believe me.

“Who were you having sex with last night?”

“What do you mean?”

“Who were you screwing in our bed last night, Dylan? Because it wasn’t me. You were thinking of someone else, I could tell. Was it this girl at Northwestern?”

“Tai, please. This is all messed up.”

“Yes, it is. It’s very messed up. Sleep on the sofa tonight. I don’t want you anywhere near me.”

“Whatever you want. But I swear to you, you have nothing to fear from me.”

Tai walked away. At the fireplace, she stopped and studied our wedding photo, then reached up and turned it facedown on the mantel. “I have nothing to fear from my husband,” she told me. “You’re not the man I married.”

Chapter 22

The next day, I found Karly back in the coffee shop at Northwestern.

I had a decision to make. Talk to her, or let her go. I knew I couldn’t get what I wanted from this world. I’d never have Karly back in my life forever. The walls were closing in on me, and soon I’d have to leave. But she was here now. Even a few minutes with her were more than I’d thought I would ever have again.

I walked over to her table.

“Karly?”

She brushed her hair from her blue eyes and looked up at me. Her gaze was far away. I’d distracted her in the midst of a thought. “Yes?”

“You are Karly Chance, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

I tried to be myself and not to choke on my words. “I’m sure you won’t remember, but we went out on a date a long time ago.”

She gave me a smile. It wasn’t a Karly smile, but a smile of polite disinterest. “Did we? I’m sorry, but you’re right. I don’t remember.”

I shook off the blow to my ego and replied with a joke. “Don’t worry about it. It went so well you’ve probably blocked out the entire experience.”

Her eyes reviewed my face, trying to place me in her memory. It was excruciating, because to me, she looked exactly the same. Her face, the pale lips, the firm confidence in how she held her jaw. Her voice, soft and musical, making you lean in close to hear her. The uneven blond-brown ends of her hair. I was madly in love with this woman, and she didn’t know me at all.

“Your friend Sarah introduced us,” I added. “I’m... Dylan Moran.”

At the sound of my name, something changed in her expression. She blinked; her pupils dilated. Her eyes reappraised me with an odd curiosity. She looked uncomfortable, and I wasn’t sure why. Had something happened on that date that I didn’t know about?

“Dylan,” she murmured. “That was you? The blind date?”

“That was me.”

“I’m sorry. I do remember now. It’s just that my life is sort of Before and After, and that was Before.”

“We went to a club that night, didn’t we? I don’t even remember which one.”

“The Spybar,” Karly replied without hesitation.

“Right, of course. Well, I’m sure that went really well. I have a reputation for being the world’s worst dancer.”

“You’re probably being hard on yourself,” she said generously.

“Oh, I doubt it. Anyway, I’m ten years late in apologizing.”

“That’s not necessary. I went into it with the wrong attitude. I hate blind dates.”

“Same here.”

We’d had our exchange of pleasantries. Now it was time for me to walk away. But there was still so much to tell her.

I’m your husband.

I love you.

You’re in danger.

I couldn’t say any of that, but I also couldn’t let meaningless small talk be my last conversation with Karly.

“I’ve read your poems,” I added.

“Oh?”

“Your book. Portal. In fact, after I bought it, I read it four times in a row.”

“Four times. Are you a masochist?”

I smiled. That was such a Karly thing to say. “Actually, your poems are very eloquent, but they made me sad.”

“Sad? I don’t hear that very often. I hear disgusting. Gross. Satanic. But sad is a new one.”

“They made me sad because when I read them, I realized what I missed,” I told her.

“I don’t understand.”

“I had a date with someone who was obviously very deep, thoughtful, complicated, and talented, and I didn’t get to know her at all.”

Karly took a sip of tea as she reflected on what I’d said. I wasn’t trying to flatter her. I was being sincere. If she was still the woman I loved, she’d recognize that.

After a moment’s hesitation, she said, “Do you want to sit down?”

“I would. Thank you.”

I took a seat and had to restrain myself from reaching over to caress her face, which would have felt so natural. Her gaze flicked to my left hand, where I still wore my wedding ring. White gold, with an inlaid Celtic knot over black titanium. “That’s a beautiful ring,” she said.

“Yes, it is.” I wanted to tell her: You gave it to me.

“So you’re married.”

I didn’t know how to answer her. My wife was sitting at this table, and she didn’t even know it.

“I was.”

“Divorced?”

“She died.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you. I still haven’t been able to take off the ring.”

“I understand.”

“It’s hard enough that I lost her, but our last conversation was an argument. She made a mistake, and I couldn’t get past it. I let it ruin us.”

“What was her mistake?”

“It doesn’t matter. She was talking to me, but I wasn’t listening. Now it’s too late for me to make things right. There’s so much that I wish I could tell her.”

Karly’s eyes drilled into mine. “What would you say?”

I thought about that. My wife was sitting right here, and I could tell her anything I wanted. It was easy now to say what I couldn’t say before. I forgive you. But I was so far past that. If I could have my wife back, I wanted her to know that things would be different.

“‘Don’t give up on me,’” I said. “That’s what I’d tell her.”

“Maybe she felt the same way. I mean, it was her mistake.”

“Maybe. We’d both gone down the wrong path and ended up somewhere we didn’t want to be. I just wish we could get a do-over. A second chance. I want that more than anything in the world.”

“Yes, it would be nice if life worked like that. I think about that a lot.”

“I’m sure.” I frowned and then said, “I heard what happened to you. Your mother. And everything after.”

Karly nodded. “I don’t run away from it. Not anymore.”

“I probably didn’t tell you about this when we met. The Dylan from back then didn’t like to share personal things. My parents died when I was a kid. My father shot my mother, and then he killed himself. I was there to see it happen. It changed me. I had to make a lot of choices in my life after that, and believe me, I didn’t always make the right ones.”

She sipped her tea, but her eyes never left mine. To me, it felt unbelievably intimate. “That’s an interesting way of phrasing it.”

“What’s that?”

“‘The Dylan from back then.’ Almost as if you’re not the same person.”

“I’m not. Not really.”

“I’m well aware of that feeling,” Karly said.

“I imagine so.”

“Why are you telling me this, Dylan?”

“I guess I want you to know who I am.”

“No offense, but why does that matter?”

“Because I learned who you were from your poems, and you never got a chance to know me.”

“It was only one date,” she reminded me. Then she said something extremely strange. “Wasn’t it?”

I wanted to say: No. No, it was so much more than that. But I didn’t.

“You’re right. It was just one date.”

She almost looked disappointed at my reaction.

I realized that my coffee cup was empty. I picked it up and crumpled it in my hand. She smiled; I smiled. Two nervous, awkward smiles. I checked my watch, and she checked hers. We’d swayed on the edge of being something other than strangers, but that was all we could be here.

“Well, it was good seeing you, Karly.”

“You too.”

“Take care of yourself. Be safe.”

“I will.”

“Maybe—” I began, then stopped.

“Maybe what?”

“I don’t know. It’s foolish. I was thinking, maybe sometime we could try a do-over. On our date, I mean.”

She hesitated. “Maybe.”

I got up from the table, but then sat down again immediately. I couldn’t let go of her so easily. I couldn’t let this be nothing more than a vague promise of seeing her again sometime in an uncertain future. I needed more than that. “Actually, do you mind if I ask you one other question?”

“If you like.”

“It’s about your book. Why Portal?”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s no poem by that name in the book. And the cover, with the endless mirrors. I didn’t see any connection in the poems. What did any of that have to do with what you wrote?”

An answer rolled smoothly off her tongue, as if she’d said it a million times. “I tell people that the book was a portal from who I was to who I am. I was leaving my relationship with Susannah, and my guilt over what happened to her, in the past. I was stepping through a door to somewhere else. Does that make sense?”

“Yes, it does.” But somehow I thought she was testing me, so I relied on my instincts and plunged ahead. “Except I feel like that’s not the real reason. Is it?”

She hesitated. “Actually, no. It’s not.”

“What is?”

Her fingers twisted strands of her hair in a gesture I knew very well. “If I tell you, you’ll think I’m crazy.”

“Trust me, I won’t.”

“I have no idea why I’m saying this to you, Dylan. I don’t know you, and I’ve never admitted this to anyone.”

Because we’re still connected, I thought.

“I’ll keep your secret,” I told her.

Karly stroked her cheek as she stared at me, studying me, evaluating who I was. A stranger. I could feel her debating with herself. When she spoke, even before she formed the words, I knew she was going to say something that changed absolutely everything. “Have you ever heard of something called the Many Worlds theory? It’s from quantum mechanics in physics.”

I wanted to scream, but I could barely breathe. All I could say was, “I have.”

“Do you know what it says? About the idea of living other lives? About parallel worlds?”

My voice was almost inaudible. “Yes.”

“Do you believe it’s possible?”

“Actually, I do.”

“I tried to drown myself,” Karly went on. “I nearly died.”

“I know.”

“I was in a coma for almost a month.”

“Yes.”

“The thing is, while I was in that coma, I went somewhere. I didn’t even recognize the place. It was some kind of — some kind of dollhouse. I know that sounds weird, but it was a huge dollhouse. There were other Karlys there. Endless numbers of them, all like me, as if they were passing through on their way to somewhere else. It was like I was inside those Many Worlds, at a kind of crossroads.”

She stopped. Embarrassment filled her face. “See, I’m crazy.”

“No. Go on.”

“I met one of the others there. I know how it sounds, but this woman was another me, living a totally different life. I told her everything that had happened to me, about Susannah, about how bitter she was about her business failures, about how we never got along. And then how I lost myself after she was gone. This other Karly understood my dark side, even though she had a much happier life. She was in love. She was married to—”

Karly stopped.

“Who?” I asked urgently. “Who was she married to?”

She looked down. “It doesn’t matter. I told you, she had a different life. Anyway, she wasn’t a poet, but she was talented and funny. We sat in a corner of the dollhouse, watching the other Karlys coming and going, and we wrote poems together. We wrote Portal. Her and me. We sifted through all that dark matter together and came out the other side.”

“That sounds like an amazing experience.”

Karly shook her head with something like wonder. “It was. Except none of it was real.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course it wasn’t. It was me talking to me. All I know is, when I came out of my coma, most of the poems from that book were already in my head. I knew what I needed to do with my life. I was finally ready to let go of the past and become a different person.” Suddenly, Karly pushed her chair back and stood up. “God, what am I doing? This is nuts. Please don’t tell anyone I said this.”

“I won’t.”

“I need to go.”

“No, wait, stay. I want to talk more. There are things I need to tell you.”

“I’m sorry, I really have to go. I’m meeting a student in my office. I don’t know how you found me, Dylan, but I’d rather not discuss any of this again. I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

She gathered up her laptop and her papers, but I put my hand gently on hers. The hand where I wore my ring. “Meet me tonight,” I said.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Please. I want to tell you a story.”

“It’s better if you and I don’t share anything more. We don’t know each other.”

“Karly.”

She stopped. I saw a faint tremble in her whole body. “What is it?”

“Don’t give up on me.”

Her hand covered her mouth. She didn’t say a word. Instead, she stared down at the table and hugged her laptop to her chest.

“Meet me tonight,” I said again.

Without looking up, Karly nodded. “Nine o’clock. Right here.”

Then she hurried away.

After she left, I was flying.

I was so high I couldn’t see any way back down, which is a dangerous thing. The higher you go, the farther you’re likely to fall. Even so, I allowed myself to dream that I could tell Karly the truth, and she might believe me. I began to wonder if she and I could really start over in this world and rebuild what we had. That was the first moment of happiness I’d had since the accident.

Then I went to see Roscoe, and he sent me plummeting back to the ground.

I told him everything that had happened in the past day — including finding the body of his Dylan by the river — and when I was done, he bowed his head in grief. When he finally looked up again, his eyes were as cold as I’d ever seen them. This was not Roscoe the priest. This was Roscoe the friend, and I’d disappointed him.

“I told you that you didn’t belong in this place,” he snapped at me. “I told you to go back home before more people suffered. Now look what you’ve done. Look at the wreckage you’ve already caused.”

“What happened by the river wasn’t my fault,” I protested.

“Is that true? Can I believe anything you tell me? You arrive out of nowhere with this story of parallel worlds, and now you tell me my real friend is dead. Murdered. How do I know that you didn’t decide to do this yourself? Get him out of the way, take over his life, all so you can find a way to be with Karly again.”

I shook my head. “Roscoe, you know me. I would never do anything like that—”

“Actually, you made it clear that I don’t know you. And you’re right. Yesterday you promised me that your only interest in Karly was to protect her from this so-called killer. Now here you are, telling me you think you can get her back, just as I predicted. I’m sorry, Dylan. Haven’t you done enough damage?”

“How is it damage if she and I are meant to be together?”

Roscoe exhaled slowly and loudly. He took off his black glasses and wiped them on his sleeve. Then he positioned them on his face and focused his hard eyes on me. “Do you know what I spent an hour doing just before you got here? I was talking to Tai. She’s devastated. Confused. Afraid. She thinks she’s lost her husband, a man she deeply loves, and from what you tell me, she’s right. I don’t care whether there really is a dead man by the river or not. I don’t care whether your story of parallel worlds is true or a delusion. What I care about is seeing my friend — a man I love — turn his back on his wife and pursue a relationship with someone else. That is not who you are.”

“Roscoe, I feel bad for Tai, but I don’t love her. She’s not my wife.”

“In this world, she is!” Roscoe shouted, his voice echoing off the high ceiling of the church. He closed his eyes, then spoke more softly. “I’m sorry. If you’re going to live in this world, you have responsibilities to this world. You can’t come in here and expect things to be the way they were. You made decisions here. You made choices here. You have to honor them.”

I clenched my fists. “Roscoe, try to understand my situation. I love Karly, and I lost her. I never believed there was any way to have her back again. But now I realize she went through something similar to what’s happening to me. It’s not a delusion. She’ll listen to me.”

“Really? How do you think that goes, Dylan? You’re the suspect in the murder of a woman who looks just like her. You told her that your wife died, but pretty soon she’ll discover that your wife is actually alive and you’ve lied to her. You think she’s going to ignore all of that and fall in love with you? You think there’s any way this ends well?”

“Roscoe—”

My friend shook his head with the sharpness of a door closing. “No. I’m sorry, Dylan. You can’t simply undo the choices you regret from another life. That’s not how it works. All you can do is learn from them and become a better man.”

“I’m trying to do that. I swear, I’m trying to change.”

“Change requires sacrifice. Change requires acceptance of your sins. Is that what you’re doing? Or are you still pursuing your own selfish desires? I’m telling you, walk away. Walk away from Karly. If you think you can’t be with Tai, then walk away from this world altogether.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“I do. Believe me, I do.”

“Roscoe, I came to you as my friend. I need your help.”

“Yes, I know. Believe it or not, help is what I’m giving you. I know you think I should be loyal to you, and I’ve told you many times that I’d always be there for you. But you’ve also made it clear that you’re not the man I know. My friend is dead. Don’t you understand? The longer you stay here, the worse it’s going to get. You are a trespasser, Dylan. You need to leave.”

Chapter 23

When I got home, Tai was packing. Grabbing clothes by the handful, she stalked back and forth between our closet and a pink suitcase on the bed. Her long black hair was mussed, her golden face streaked with tears. I stood in the doorway, and she pretended to ignore me, but I could feel the depth of her hurt. Watching her, I knew that Roscoe was right about everything. I’d come to this world and ruined her life. She deserved better.

Her husband, her real husband, was gone. He was dead by the river, and he was never coming back. Meanwhile, the husband who was living in her house was in love with another woman.

“Who is she?” Tai asked, as if she could read my mind.

“What?”

She stopped in the middle of the bedroom and let the dresses she was carrying fall to the floor. “I followed you this morning. I saw you talking to that blond woman at Northwestern. Who is she?”

I hesitated, but there was no point in trying to hide it. “Her name is Karly Chance.”

“Are you having an affair with her?”

“There’s no affair.”

“Don’t lie to me. I saw you. Do you think I can’t read your face? Do you think I haven’t looked for that expression when you stare at me? But I’ve never seen it. Not once. You’ve never looked at me the way you were looking at her.”

“It’s impossible to explain,” I told her. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Save your explanations. I don’t care. I’m leaving. I’m going to stay with a girlfriend.”

“Tai, I’m sorry.”

She shook her head. “No, you’re not. That’s the worst thing. You say the words, but you’re not sorry at all.”

“That’s not true. I hate that I’ve hurt you.”

“Everybody warned me. My family. Roscoe. Hell, even Edgar warned me. They said I was making a mistake by marrying you. I should have listened.”

There was nothing I could say to that.

“Is it love?” Tai went on. “Are you in love with this woman? Or is it something worse?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not an idiot, Dylan. I see the resemblance. She looks like the woman who was murdered across the street from us. She looks like the woman you were stalking behind the dorm at Northwestern. What kind of man are you? Who did I marry?”

“You have it all wrong,” I insisted.

“Do I? Well, I guess we’ll see about that. I gave Detective Bushing the clothes you were wearing when you came back on Thursday. I told him to get your DNA and test it. If you killed Betsy Kern, they’ll find out.”

“I don’t care what the test shows. I didn’t kill anyone.”

“In other words, you already know the DNA will match.”

“I’m telling you, this is not what it looks like.”

She started packing again. “Go away, Dylan. Leave me alone. I don’t want to be in the same apartment with you.”

“Tai, please—”

“Go!” she screamed at me. “Get out! If you don’t go, I’ll call 911 and have them drag you out.”

I held up my hands in surrender. “Okay. Whatever you want. I’ll go.”

I left the apartment, because I didn’t want her to get any more upset. She was wrong about me, wrong about who I was and what I’d done, but then again, she wasn’t wrong. No, I wasn’t a killer, but the DNA would probably say that I was. No, I wasn’t having an affair, but I was in love with Karly and would take her back in my arms if I could. I’d been cruel to Tai in this world, but it’s not like I’d been a saint to her in my own world. I’d led her on and told myself it was innocent, because I had no bad intentions. But it wasn’t innocent at all.

After I left the apartment, I took the stairs to Edgar’s place. My grandfather and I didn’t have a great relationship in any world, but I was running out of people to talk to. Roscoe and Tai had both thrown me out. I was feeling increasingly isolated by my mistakes.

Through the door, I heard the blare of a game show on his television. I had a key, so I let myself in. He was asleep in a recliner, his snores blowing like a trumpet. Seeing him like that, alone, gave me a shiver. Despite the six decades between us, I can always see the family resemblance. It’s not just him and me. I can see my father in both of our faces, too. His ghost is never far away.

When I shut off the television, the sudden silence jarred Edgar awake. He blinked with surprise, seeing me sitting on the sofa opposite him.

“You’re up here?” he growled. “Am I dying or something?”

I gave a sad smile. “No.”

“Then what’s going on?”

“I just wanted to see how you were.”

Edgar reached for a warm open can of Budweiser. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”

“Okay. Well, if you want the truth, Tai is downstairs packing. She didn’t want me around.”

“She leaving you?”

“Yes.”

“You cheat on her?”

“It’s complicated. Mostly, I think she just figured out that I wasn’t in love with her.”

Edgar snorted. “I’m pretty sure she knew that from the beginning.”

I thought about the Dylan whose life I’d taken over and the choice he’d made to be with Tai. I still didn’t understand it. “She said you told her not to marry me.”

“That’s right.”

“Sounds like everybody told her the same thing.”

“Yeah, so? Were we wrong?”

“I guess not.”

“So what are you going to do?” Edgar asked.

“What is there to do? She’s leaving.”

“Yeah. Give up. That sounds like you.”

“I don’t love her, Edgar. According to you and Roscoe, I never did. The best thing I can do is let her find someone who really does love her.”

Edgar laughed so hard he nearly spat out his beer. “That’s the best thing? For who, you or her? Aren’t you forgetting something? That girl was nuts about you from the beginning, and I assume she still is. Everyone told her you were damaged goods and she should run away, but she didn’t. That takes some balls, I’ll tell you. It’s not like she didn’t know what she was getting, but she saw something in you that you didn’t see in yourself. I gave her a lot of credit for that. Honestly, I gave you credit, too. I expected you to bail on her, but you stuck it out, at least until now. You worked your butt off to make a life with her, and it seemed to me like it was paying off. This past year, you were as happy as I’d ever seen you.”

I hadn’t heard that word very often in my life. “Happy? Tai made me happy?”

“Sure looked that way to me. I was beginning to think the two of you would go the distance. That would be a first in our family. I screwed things up, and your father — well, we both know about him. But you and Tai seemed to click. Made me glad to see it. I don’t know what the hell happened to ruin that, and I’m not judging anything you did, because I’m sure no angel myself. But it’s a shame. That’s all I’ll say. It’s a shame.”

Edgar’s admonition hit me like a punch to the gut.

Since I’d been here, the only thing I’d processed was the idea that the Dylan Moran who was married to Tai didn’t really love her. Not the way I loved Karly. That was all I needed to know. I saw a man who was nothing like me in any way other than our bodies. He was without fire, without passion, without a wife who was his soul mate. I looked into his closet and saw clothes that I hated and cuff links and cologne I’d never wear. It had literally never occurred to me that he was actually satisfied with his life. That he was wearing that cologne because his wife picked it out for him. That he went to Disney World and Hawaii because it made him happy to be with her. That he was trying hard to rise above his past and build a marriage that worked.

He was not me, and their relationship was not mine. But I’d taken that away from them. I’d destroyed their lives by coming here. Tai was about to walk away with her dreams shattered and her faith gone, and she had no idea why. She’d question herself and find it impossible to trust again. The man she’d loved had proven himself to be a total stranger, someone she didn’t know at all.

Because of me. Because I was a stranger.

Son of a bitch. What had I done?

“I have to go,” I told Edgar.

I knew what to do. Whether it was crazy or not, whether she believed me or not, I finally had to tell Tai the truth. I couldn’t let her walk away thinking that her Dylan had changed. The mistake wasn’t hers. I had to lay it all out and explain why her life had been turned upside down in a few short days. I also had to give her the hard truth that her real husband wasn’t coming back.

I left Edgar. I ran back downstairs and let myself inside our place.

“Tai!” I shouted.

She didn’t answer.

“Tai, I need to tell you something!”

And still there was only hurt silence.

“Please. Listen to me.”

I glanced out the windows. Her car was still at the curb; she hadn’t left. I went into the bedroom and saw her pink suitcase still on the bed, half-packed. The bathroom door was half-shut. The light was on inside. I went over and tapped my knuckles against the door.

“Tai? I’m sorry — I know you told me to go, but I really need to explain. It’s important.”

Still she ignored me.

I listened at the door, expecting to hear quiet tears, but all I heard from the other side was the noise of water running. When I looked down at my feet, I saw a stream of water creeping under the crack beneath the door, growing and spreading across the bedroom floor. My heartbeat took off with fear. I pushed the door open and went inside. Water flooded around my feet. When I glanced to my left, I saw the tub overflowing, cold water running down the fiberglass wall like a river overflowing its banks.

I took two steps and looked into the tub, and I wailed in disbelief. From under the crystal-clear water, Tai stared back at me, eyes wide open, mouth wide open. She wore the yellow dress she’d been wearing a few minutes ago, its sunny fabric now pasted to her skin. I knew she was dead, but I turned off the water and grabbed her torso and pulled it toward me. Her body was a limp weight, unmoving, her skin already frigid. Her face never changed; her fixed eyes stared at me with the same terrified expression.

“Tai,” I murmured, shaking my head. “Oh, my God, Tai.”

I knelt on the wet floor and held her. Water dripped and sloshed around me. I shook her and kissed her forehead, and I gently closed her mouth with my hand and used my fingers to shut her eyes. She looked peaceful that way, but I was caught in a storm. My mind struggled to catch up to what had happened. It took me until that moment to realize that someone had killed her.

Someone had grabbed her and overpowered her and run the water and held her down where she couldn’t breathe.

Someone. Me.

I heard a footstep behind me. Tai’s body slipped from my arms, and I spun around. I tried to get up quickly on the wet floor, but I was too late.

He was there, looming over me. I was there.

Dylan Moran stared down at me, his mouth bent into a hard frown, his blue eyes as implacable as a stormy ocean. The leather jacket he wore was wet, where Tai had soaked him as she fought for her life. He had a dirty red brick from the back patio in his hand. Before I could get to my feet and put my hands around his neck, he swung the brick toward the side of my head. I saw it coming, heard the rush of air. I tried to duck, but I wasn’t fast enough.

A white-hot eruption of pain went off inside my skull like fireworks, and then I was gone.

Chapter 24

I awoke to a raging headache and the coppery taste of blood. My eyes blinked open. At first, I saw only the ceiling fan rotating slowly above me, making a low rattle. Then I shifted my head and saw that I lay in bed. When I tried to move, I found that I was tied down, spread-eagled, my wrists and ankles tightly bound with silk neckties to the four corners of the bed frame.

Night hadn’t fallen yet, but the room around me was dark. The heavy curtains were closed. In the dense shadows, I could barely distinguish a kitchen chair that had been pulled into the corner of the bedroom. Someone was sitting in it. A dark shape watched me. I could hear his breathing and the rustle of his clothes as he moved. He knew I was awake now. With the scrape of a match, I saw a tiny flame illuminating the skin of his hands. Then the sting of cigarette smoke made its way to me.

“Hello, Dylan,” my doppelgänger said.

He pushed himself off the chair and came and stood over the bed. I stared into a black mirror, his face identical to mine. He had the collar of my father’s leather jacket pulled up, framing his neck like the wings of a crow. Under it, he wore a collarless olive-colored shirt, untucked and misbuttoned. He had wild, messy dark hair, and he hadn’t shaved in days. The bones of his face jutted out in angles that looked sharp enough to make you bleed. He was the same as me in every physical way, but we were two different people. His mouth had no expression, whereas Karly had always told me she could read my mood by my lips. Given the things he’d done, I expected to see cruelty shining in his blue eyes, but his fixed gaze offered no evidence of his sadism. The bubbling cauldron inside him had to be at the bottom of a deep well.

“You didn’t have to kill Tai,” I said.

He didn’t answer right away. He examined me with the same intensity I’d given him. With two fingers, he freed the cigarette from his mouth, tilted his chin, and exhaled gray smoke. Then he said with a shrug, “I do what I want.”

The other Dylan retrieved the wooden chair. He put it next to the bed and sat down, folding his legs with the black heel of his dress shoe balanced on his other knee. He took the cigarette and offered me a drag with a flick of his eyebrows. I shook my head.

“I’m glad to finally see you up close,” he said.

“Why?”

He shrugged. “Most of the Dylan Morans out there are dull little people. Frigid, depressed, beaten down. Look at this one, letting his wife dress him up like a Ken doll. It’s hard for me to respect someone like that. But you fought back. You came after me. It makes me think you’re more like me than the others.”

“I’m nothing like you.”

He gave me a quick, cynical laugh. “Oh, come on. You want to kill me, don’t you? That’s why you’re here. That was your plan. If I let you, you’d wrap your hands around my throat and choke the life out of me. Admit it. We’re not so different.”

“I’m trying to stop you from killing anyone else. That’s the difference.”

“Yeah, you’re a hero, and I’m the devil. You have no innocent blood on your hands.” He leaned close, engulfing me in the smoke of his cigarette, and whispered in my ear. “But then why is Roscoe dead in your world? Why is Karly dead? You killed them, not me.”

I flailed against the bonds but couldn’t free myself. I stared at him with murder in my eyes. He was right. I would have strangled him then and there if I could.

He grinned, as if he’d made his point. Then he got up from the chair and went to the closet and began taking out men’s clothes, which he draped across the bed piece by piece like a fashion show. “Relax. I’m just baiting you. I don’t apologize for who I am. Unlike most of our other twins, I accept it. So should you.”

“I can’t imagine becoming someone like you. Doing the things you’ve done.”

He shrugged, as if we were talking about the ethnic foods we liked and didn’t like. As he reviewed the clothes he’d taken from the closet, he held up a Hawaiian shirt from the bed and rolled his eyes. Then he sat down in the chair again.

“Really? You’ve spent your whole life afraid of turning into your father. Why is it so strange to meet a Dylan Moran who did?”

His one cigarette was done, so he took the time to light another. Every motion he made was unhurried. When he’d savored a few puffs, he leaned close to me, with curiosity in his voice.

“Let me ask you something. If you could go back to that day, what would you do? You know what I’m talking about. Dad took the gun and fired. Mom was dead. You’re sitting in the corner. What would you do differently?”

“I was a kid,” I said, trying to make myself believe it this time. “There’s nothing I could have done.”

“Not true. I did something.”

Oddly, I found that I had to know. “What did you do?”

“I killed him. I charged him, knocked him over, took the gun, and blew his head off. I got revenge for our mother.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Why not? Because you were a coward, and I wasn’t? Because you wish you’d done the same thing as me?”

“I don’t wish that.”

“No? Then why do you keep getting into fights with men who abuse their partners? It’s because when the chips were down, you didn’t stand up for our mother. You did nothing, and it eats you alive.”

I felt myself breathing hard. I wanted to scream a denial, but he wasn’t wrong. Yes, I’d dreamed about doing what this other Dylan had done. This mirror of myself, this serial killer, knew me better than I knew myself. A little smirk of triumph crossed his face as I looked away.

“See?” he announced, easing back in the chair and sucking on his cigarette. “I’m the ultimate Dylan Moran. I do what all of you wish you could do, and I get away with everything. Killing my father? They let me off. I was just a traumatized kid. In high school, I kept beating kids up, but they didn’t do a thing to me. Oh, that poor boy, he had such a tough upbringing. They’d send me to detention, or send me to a counselor, and then I’d do it again. Sound familiar?”

I frowned. Yes, it did.

“So I just kept raising the stakes. I wanted to see how far I could go. But I already knew where I was headed. I knew the line I wanted to cross. It’s how I’m wired. Somewhere inside you, you’ve got the same code, whether you like it or not.” He shot me a look that said he was familiar with all my secrets. “Who was the first girl you slept with? Diana Geary, right?”

There was no point in lying. “Yes.”

“How’d you meet her?”

“We met on a train,” I said, because it was obvious the same thing had happened to him. “I was seventeen. She was older, twenty-two. We started talking and went back to her place, and then she got me drunk on tequila, and we ended up in bed. She was feeling bad because her boyfriend had dumped her, and I was the consolation prize.”

“I met Diana Geary on a train, too,” the other Dylan replied. “Same as you. We had sex.”

He stopped. He waited for me to ask, and I couldn’t stop myself.

“Then what?”

“Then after we were done, I suffocated her with a pillow and cut off her head.”

“Oh, shit.” I struggled against the ropes that held me again, but I couldn’t move.

“And do you know what happened after I killed her? Not a damn thing. No one found out. No one knew it was me. Once I figured that out, once I knew I could do anything, I tried different methods, different victims. The violence itself wasn’t really the high. The thrill was knowing I could get away with it. By the time I turned twenty-six, I’d killed fourteen people. The police had no idea.”

“You’re a sick son of a bitch.”

He shrugged off my loathing, as if moral and immoral were just mirror images of each other.

“I could have kept going like that for a long time, but everything changed on my twenty-sixth birthday. Do you remember what you did that day?”

Actually, I did. It was a memorable thing to do on my birthday. “I saw a shrink.”

“That’s right. Court-ordered therapy for anger management. After a bar fight.”

“Yes.”

“Who did you see?”

“Her name was Vanessa Kirby.”

Dylan nodded. “Yeah, I was supposed to see Dr. Kirby, too, but she was sick that day and didn’t show up. So I saw someone else. There was a shrink with an office on the same floor, and I figured, what the hell? All I needed to do was check off a box on my court papers. Guess who I saw?”

My brow furrowed. “Who?”

“Eve Brier.”

I swore under my breath.

“Yeah, isn’t it funny how things work out? Eve was smart. She really got me. She told me that I felt guilty about killing my father and getting away with it. She said I felt an intense need to be punished, so I kept putting myself in situations that proved I was a bad person. Of course, I hadn’t told her about any of the other people I’d killed, but I guess that would have just proved her point.”

Dylan got up from the chair again. He grabbed a skinny-fit dress shirt in deep purple, with a checkered design. He held it up on the hanger. “What do you think of this shirt? Can I pull it off?”

I stared at him. “What?”

“Is it stylish? Maybe with a button vest? There’s not a lot to choose from here.”

“You want fashion tips? Are you kidding me?”

He shrugged and took off the leather jacket and unbuttoned his olive shirt. When he slipped it off, I noticed a pattern of scars all across his bare chest, like cuts made with a razor blade. It was obvious they’d been self-inflicted. I understood why Eve thought that this Dylan felt a desire for punishment. He’d been taking out his self-hatred on his body for years.

“Anyway, that was when she told me about the Many Worlds thing,” he went on. “Did you think it was bullshit?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah. Me too. But Eve wanted to try it on someone, and I thought, what the hell? She said experiencing other worlds would help me deal with the bad choices I’d made. So I let her inject me with her little cocktail. That was a ride, huh? There I was in the Art Institute, surrounded by all of these other versions of myself. Except I was the only one who knew what it meant. The others were oblivious. Knowing what was going on made it even worse. The more of them I saw, the more I felt like I was cracking up. Is that what it was like for you?”

I didn’t want to answer, but I did. “Yes, that’s exactly how it was.”

He nodded, as if it made him happy to hear that. Then, without saying anything more, he turned around and went into the bathroom. With his back to me, he found a razor and shaving cream in the medicine cabinet, and he began shaving his face with slow, measured strokes. He was doing that with Tai’s body still in the tub, where he’d drowned her. We could see each other in the mirror, and he smiled a little as I kept struggling to free my hands and feet. But I couldn’t.

Eventually, he finished, washed his face, and came back, drying his now-smooth skin with a towel. He sat down and continued his story. “I didn’t try to go anywhere that first time. I just got the lay of the land, you know? Then I said the word — you know the word — and boom, there I was back with Eve. She asked if the treatment helped me, and I told her it did. That was true, but not in the way she was thinking. I was already starting to wonder if I could really go into one of these worlds. So I said I wanted more sessions. The next time, I followed one of the other Dylans out the door. I had no idea what to expect, but holy shit. I was totally lost. When I woke up, it was days later. I was on the can in a men’s room in Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg. It made no sense, right? Except when I got out into the mall, I spotted my double, and I followed him. I never let him see me, but I got to know his whole life. I stayed there for a week or so, and finally I said the safe word to get the hell out of there. Same thing, there I was, back in Eve’s office, and like half an hour had passed on her end. I told her I wanted to keep doing it. I wanted to go back. Only this time I knew what to do.”

“Kill,” I murmured.

“Oh, yeah. I followed another Dylan into his life, and I watched him. Studied him. Figured out his routines. Then I did an experiment. I went into his job at the hotel while he was at a meeting somewhere else. Nobody knew. Nobody suspected a thing. I mean, why would they? So then I slept with his wife. She thought it was the best sex they’d ever had. I loved that. And then on a night when I knew he was home alone, I picked up a girl at a bar and went to her place.”

I closed my eyes. I knew what was coming.

“And then I cut out her heart.”

I swore, over and over and over.

“The next day, I watched from the park as the police arrested this other Dylan Moran. They had him on camera at the bar. He’d given his name to the bartender. They had his fingerprints in her apartment. They took him away, screaming that he was innocent. I’d never had a high like that. The thrill of killing wasn’t even close to the thrill of watching Dylan Moran suffer for my crimes. Of all things, it turned out that Eve was right about me. I really did want the punishment. I wanted everybody to know that Dylan Moran was an evil, terrible person who should be put away forever. But the best thing was, I could do it over and over and never stop. There was always another world, another Dylan to destroy.”

“The perfect crime,” I said.

“The perfect crime,” he agreed. “You’re right.”

He put on the checked purple shirt he’d found earlier, and then he went back to the closet and grabbed a gray vest. He changed pants, too, switching from jeans to black slacks with tapered legs. He slipped his feet into loafers. He took one of the cologne bottles from the nightstand, opened it, and winced as he inhaled. Even so, he dabbed a little on his face. I could smell the musk. He sat down again and checked his watch and obviously concluded that he had time for one more cigarette. He was loosening up, enjoying himself now as he blew smoke up into the blades of the ceiling fan.

“Then there was you,” he went on. “I’ve done this so often now that I try to make the crimes fit the punishment. And with you, well, once I got to know you, I knew what to do. I started killing women who looked exactly like your wife. Sooner or later, Detective Bushing would show up, all the evidence in hand, your pretty wife shocked to realize she was married to a killer. But after Karly died in the river, I decided to make things more interesting. I decided to let you see me. I’d never done that before. I wanted to watch you disintegrate as you lost your mind. It added a nice little twist. But you surprised me. You figured it out. And then you used Eve to come after me. Knowing you were on my trail forced me to improvise. I had to move fast. I also couldn’t have two other Dylans in this world, so I took care of one by the river. Now it’s just you and me.”

“So what happens next?” I asked. “Do you kill me, too?”

“It’s not about the killing. Remember? It’s about the punishment.”

He left the bedroom, and I could hear him opening a drawer in the kitchen. When he came back, he held two serrated knives in his hand. He slipped one into his pocket and then put the other on the bed just out of the reach of my fingers.

“It may take you a while, but you should be able to figure out how to get hold of the knife and free yourself,” he said.

“Then what?”

“Then you can come after me, and we’ll see who wins.”

“Or maybe I’ll just wait here and take my chances,” I replied. “The police are going to have a hard time charging me with Tai’s murder if they find me tied to the bed. They’ll know I didn’t do it.”

“You won’t wait here,” my doppelgänger replied with a strange degree of confidence.

“No?”

“No.” He calmly smoothed the sleeves of his purple shirt. “You have a date with Karly tonight. Remember?”

Suddenly, I understood.

Suddenly, the horror of what he was doing became clear. The dress clothes. The smooth shave. The musk cologne. My body wrenched against the bonds that held me, making the entire bed frame rattle on the floor. “Stay away from her! Don’t go near her! Don’t do this!”

He took the knife from his pocket and dangled the blade in front of my eyes.

“You couldn’t save Karly in your own world,” Dylan told me. “So this should be very interesting. Do you think you can save her in this one?”

Chapter 25

Karly.

I was going to lose her again. This predator with my face was going to meet her and kill her.

I had to stop him, but I had almost no time. Night was falling fast, which meant the time of our rendezvous wasn’t far away. Meanwhile, I was alone and trapped in the apartment. Alone with Tai’s body haunting me from the bathroom. Another woman I’d failed to rescue.

I shouted for Edgar, but he could barely hear the television even when it was turned up to full volume. I called for help at the top of my lungs, hoping to hear the thud of movement on the wooden floor over my head, but I heard nothing. Edgar was asleep in front of his game shows.

I needed to do this myself.

Dylan had left the kitchen knife just outside my grasp near the headboard. I jerked my body straight up, trying to jiggle the knife toward me. It moved a tiny bit toward my outstretched fingers, but it also slid dangerously close to the edge of the mattress. Where the knife was now, I could just touch the bottom of the handle with the tip of my middle finger. Another fraction of an inch, and I would be able to slide it into my hand.

Again I thrust my body fiercely upward. All four posts of the bed clanged up and down on the floor. The vibration bounced the knife closer, but the blade rotated, and the black handle crept over the side of the bed. I saw it falling in slow motion, and I was able to pinch the point of the sharp metal between two of my fingers, but it cut me, and I lost my grip. The knife dropped to the floor.

Now I had no way to escape.

For several more minutes, I struggled uselessly. However, I noticed that as the bed shook, a lamp on my nightstand kept moving. The lamp had a heavy base and a delicately fluted glass column rising to a conical shade. Glass could break. Glass could cut. I jolted the bed again, and the lamp wobbled. If it fell, there was no way to predict the direction it would go, but I had to take the chance. I hurled myself up and down one more time, watching the marble base of the lamp nudge over the side of the nightstand. Another shudder, and the thing would topple.

My fingers were ready. I heaved my left side upward. The lamp swayed, then fell like a tree, thudding onto the mattress next to me. Immediately, the weight of the stone base began dragging it to the floor. All I could do was cling to the shade with my fingertips. If I let go, it was gone. I held my breath, then snapped my fingers shut like a mousetrap. The lamp jumped closer to me and immediately began to slide back down, but my hand wrapped around the slim glass column and held it firmly.

With a quick twist of my wrist, I smashed the lamp backward against the brass headboard behind me. The glass broke and left jagged edges. It was fragile glass, but sharp, and I used it to saw at the fabric that secured me to the corner of the headboard. The process was frustratingly slow, but the silk began to come apart in threads, and when I’d opened up a small tear, I yanked hard and heard the tie rip apart and felt my right arm come free.

I swung my body over and repeated the process to free my left arm. When the silk tore away on that side, I pushed my body up and cut through the knots that held my ankles. I bloodied myself in the process as I rushed to get free, but when the last knot separated, I leaped off the bed.

Karly.

We’d agreed to meet at nine o’clock on the Northwestern campus. Outside the window, darkness had fallen in the time it had taken me to get free. When I checked the clock, I saw that it was nine thirty. He was already with her.

Using my phone, I found the contact number for the Norris center and waited through what felt like two dozen rings before someone answered. It was Saturday night. I was sure the place was busy. I asked to be transferred to security, and this time a gruff voice answered immediately.

What to say?

“One of your faculty members, Karly Chance, is meeting someone in the coffee bar on the second floor. You need to get up there and get her away from him. He’s dangerous.”

“Dangerous? How do you know?”

“Please, just go talk to her and tell her she isn’t safe. Karly Chance. Do you know who she is?”

“No, I don’t. You need to tell me what’s going on, sir.”

“Karly Chance. She’s on the English faculty. Blond hair, ragged cut down to her shoulders, fair skin, blue eyes, about thirty. She’s with a man named Dylan Moran. Messy black hair, lean, not very tall. He’s wearing a checked purple shirt and gray vest. You need to hurry.”

“I’m heading up there right now, sir, but you need to tell me what this is all about.”

I needed a story he’d believe. I needed something. Anything.

“Look, Dylan’s my roommate. He’s obsessed with this woman. He read her book, and now he won’t stop talking about her. He was on campus the other night stalking a girl near Goodrich who looked just like her. He’s unstable, takes a lot of meds. When he left the apartment tonight, he took a knife. Search him. You’ll find it.”

“A knife? Are you sure?”

“I’m absolutely certain.”

“Okay, hang on.”

The sound on the phone grew muffled. I could hear the background noise of a large crowd of people, and then I heard the man’s voice again, talking to someone else. I couldn’t make out what they were saying. The length of time felt excruciating, and I squeezed the phone impatiently.

Finally, he came back on the line.

“Karly Chance? English professor?”

“Yes, that’s her.”

“She hasn’t been in here tonight.”

“She must be. We were supposed — I mean, Dylan told me that he was meeting her there at nine o’clock.”

“Well, she didn’t show. The coffee guy knows her. He hasn’t seen her. He’s been here all evening.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to think. “Okay. Okay. Can you put out a security alert to the rest of the campus? Have them look for her. She lives in Goodrich. Somebody needs to check her apartment.”

“First you better tell me your name, sir.”

I hesitated. You really can’t hesitate when somebody asks you your name.

“What’s this all about?” the guard went on, a new shadow of suspicion in his voice. “Who are you? How do you know Ms. Chance?”

“Just look for her! Please!”

I hung up the phone. I paced in the bedroom, overrun by panic. Where were they? Maybe Karly had skipped the date, but my ego told me that wasn’t true. She wouldn’t have stood me up, not after the conversation we’d had today. But if it wasn’t Karly, then it was him. He’d changed the place where we were supposed to meet. He’d assumed I would get free and alert the campus police, so he’d reached out to her to pick a new location away from the university.

Where did they go?

They were out among millions of people on a Chicago Saturday night. They could be anywhere.

I tried the office number I’d found on Karly’s faculty profile. It went straight to a generic voice mail message. I tapped out a short e-mail to her university account: You’re in danger. Get away from Dylan now. But I had no idea whether it would reach her.

Where?

Where would they meet?

Then I remembered a fragment of our conversation. We’d talked about wishing for a do-over in life for our worst mistakes, a chance to go back and change whatever we’d done wrong.

Wasn’t that what tonight was for Dylan and Karly?

A do-over for a disastrous blind date?

If Dylan asked the Karly of this world where she wanted to go, I was willing to bet she’d go back to the beginning. She’d suggest we try our first date over again and see if we could get it right this time.

“We went to a club, didn’t we? I don’t even remember which one.”

“The Spybar.”

The entrance to the basement dance club called the Spybar was down an alley off Franklin in the artsy River North neighborhood. By the time I got there, a line of twenty-something club hoppers stretched around the corner from the black-draped entrance. I stood under the rusted steel beams of the L tracks, and one of the trains thundered like a roller coaster over my head.

From across the street, I studied the people in line. Dylan and Karly weren’t there. That meant they were already inside. Or it meant I was completely wrong and they weren’t here at all. I needed to get into the club and find out. I had no time to wait, so I found two Hispanic girls in skintight outfits near the front of the line. I gave them each fifty dollars and paid their covers, and five minutes later, I was down the stairs and inside the club.

The synthesizer beat of techno music wailed like a siren. I felt it deep in my chest, making it hard to breathe. The house was packed, bodies crammed shoulder to shoulder, arms and hips writhing as people danced. I moved slowly through clouds of fog. Strobe lights blinked, twisting around the floor in cones of white, red, yellow, and green.

A girl in a black bra, see-through top, and pink skirt blocked my way and grabbed my face. She had dreamy dark eyes that were high on something. “Buy me a drink?” she shouted.

“Sorry.”

“Hey, come on. One martini.”

“I can’t.”

I tried to squeeze around her, but she pressed her body hard against me and stuck out her tongue between her teeth. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

I made up an excuse. “I’m with someone.”

“Yeah, so? She can join the party, too. I saw her. She’s hot.”

It took a second for my distracted mind to catch up to what she’d said. Then I took hold of her shoulders with both hands. “You saw me tonight? You saw a woman with me?”

“Sure. Blond, classy.”

“Where?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Where did you see her? Where in the club? Show me!”

She wriggled in my grasp. “Let go of me, you freak!”

“Tell me! Where did you see the woman I was with?”

“Get off!”

She twisted away from me and shoved a middle finger in my face. With an irritated toss of her hair, she swayed on high heels toward the bar. I saw others watching me curiously. Two men who were probably bouncers started my way. I melted into the crowd, losing myself among the seething bodies. I couldn’t afford to be tossed out, not when I knew Karly was here.

The relentless pulse of the music thudded in my brain. The swirling lights dizzied me. I pushed through the club, bouncing off people like a bumper car. No one knew what was happening; no one understood my panic. They laughed. They screamed. Drunk girls did shots and kissed each other on the lips. All I could see around me was a kaleidoscope of skin and sweat, in which faces appeared and disappeared in a fraction of a second.

Blink on. A face. Blink off. The face was gone.

Hundreds of them pressed in around me, constantly moving, constantly changing places. I tried to isolate them in my head one at a time. Men. Women. All strangers.

Then I saw him.

Blink, blink, blink, went the multicolored lights.

His face flashed on and off under the strobe, but it was him. My double, my alter ego, my doppelgänger. He balanced a drink in one hand and danced with a slow, sinuous energy, as if riding some kind of adrenaline high. His head undulated like a snake while the beat taunted me: find her, find her, find her. But Karly wasn’t with him. I looked among the nearby faces and didn’t see her. I tried to shove my way toward him, so I could wrap my hands around his throat, but the dancers made an unbreakable chain. I was trapped where I was. The beat grew louder, like a boxer punching me in the chest.

Find her!

His head stopped moving. He felt my presence in his brain. His body ground to a halt, and his smoky gaze landed on me. There we were, the two of us, staring at each other across the frenzy of the dance floor. I shouted at him, but the music drowned out my voice. He raised his drink to me, a toast. His grim lips bent into a grin, and I knew in my heart what that awful smile meant.

I was too late.

I shouted again. No one paid any attention. No one heard me.

The lights went off and on. In that split second, Dylan disappeared. He vanished from where he was, and I didn’t see him again. But Karly was still here somewhere. Dying. I knew it. I fought my way through the crowd. When I got to the building’s brick wall, I headed for the back of the club, where people hid from the tumult and noise. I pushed past couples making love in the dark. I slipped on spilled drinks and God knows what else. As the strobes flashed — blink, blink, blink — I spotted someone on the floor. A woman. She sat in the corner with her knees against her chest and her arms wrapped around them.

“Karly!”

I scrambled to her and got down on my knees beside her. Blond hair covered her face. When I pushed it aside, her stare was empty, seeing nothing. Her head turned, but when she looked at me, I don’t think she saw me. I watched her lips move; she said something, but in the chaos of the club, I couldn’t hear what it was. I put my arms around her. As I did, my hand sank into a river of blood. When I pulled away, my fingers were covered in crimson red that blinked on and off in the lights.

“Help! We need help! Over here!”

No one heard me.

I put my lips to her ear and whispered. “Karly, hang on. Please hang on. Stay with me.”

Her head sank against my shoulder, the way it had a million times before. At the movie theater, in the car, in front of the fireplace, on the pillows in bed. It felt so warm, so good, so familiar, as if it should last forever. But she was leaving me again. She was getting farther away, dragged from me by a river of blood that pulsed between my fingers. I put my palm to her chest, feeling her ragged, rattling breath go in and out.

“Karly, I love you.”

In.

Out.

“You’re my wife. I love you.”

In.

Out.

“I should have saved you. I failed you. I’m sorry, God I’m so sorry.”

In.

Out.

And then nothing.

“Karly.”

Nothing. She was gone. I’d found her again and lost her again.

“Karly.”

All I could do was say her name and hold her limp body.

Inches away, people danced. The electronica pounded into my heart, louder and louder. We were invisible on the floor. For the longest time, the partiers in the club were oblivious to us, the beautiful woman dead in the corner, and the man who’d let her die twice.

Chapter 26

Finally, someone saw me. Saw her. Saw the blood. A piercing scream cut through the noise, and several more followed like a chain reaction, triggering bedlam. The music shut down, and a moment of shocking silence gave way to panic. People called for help and ran to get away. Half the crowd pulled out their phones, some dialing 911, some filming me as I laid Karly gently on her back. I couldn’t stay, not with the police on their way. I got up and headed for the club stairs. I needed to get out of here.

The people parted for me like some kind of sordid celebrity. Look, there goes OJ. One man tried to be a hero by stopping me, but I planted my foot and delivered a hook across his jaw that sent him reeling. Don’t get into a bar fight with Dylan Moran; he’s been there before. Other men closed in on me, but as they did, I bolted for the steps and escaped into the cool night. Not far away, police sirens blared, heading for the club from multiple directions.

I ran. So did other club hoppers dispersing from the alley. I sprinted below the L tracks, which loomed over my head like a metal centipede. For four blocks, I ran full out, and then I stopped, slumping against a wall to catch my breath. My head snapped up as I spotted the lights of a squad car speeding toward me, and I quickly spun around the corner into an empty alley. When the police car passed, I went back to the street. I knew I needed to get out of the neighborhood before the cops cordoned off the area, and my car was parked several blocks away. But I found it hard to move. I squatted down, my elbows on my knees, my face in my hands as I endured a new wave of grief.

When I finally looked up, I saw him.

Diagonally across the street, near the stairs that led to the Brown Line L station, Dylan Moran stared back at me. He was in his leather jacket, a cigarette dripping from his mouth. He leaned against one of the yellow concrete impact poles off the curb. His grin was gone; he was emotionless again. Her blood was on him, the way it was on me. Seeing him, I felt a rage like nothing in my life. I erupted from where I was and charged toward him. He watched me come, not even moving at first. Then he flicked his cigarette to the street and walked unhurriedly up the stairs to the train station.

It took me no time to cross the street. Like an animal, I bolted up the stairs after him, but when I got to the top, the station was already empty. No one was there. I used my fare card to spin through the turnstile, and when I got to the platform, I ran along the tracks in both directions. There were no hiding places, no way for him to escape.

Even so, Dylan was gone. I could almost hear the echo in my head.

Infinite.

He was done with this world, and he’d left me behind to take the fall. It was another perfect crime.

After I made it back to my car, I drove aimlessly through the downtown streets until I was nowhere near the club. Then I pulled to the curb. There was only one thing I could think to do. I called Roscoe. In every world, when I needed him, he was there to rescue me.

We agreed to meet near the sandy shoreline of North Avenue Beach. It didn’t take me long to get there, and I sat in the car with dried tears on my face and my clothes soaked in blood. The midnight beach in front of me was empty. A stiff cold breeze blew into the car and sent spray over the windshield. I lowered the window, listening to the rhythmic roar of the surf, which went in and out like my wife’s last breaths.

This was my catastrophic reward for trying to be a hero.

The Dylan who owned this life was dead. So was Tai. So was a woman named Betsy Kern.

So was Karly.

I’d destroyed all of them, and the man I’d chased here had already moved on to kill again.

As I sat there, the waves lulled me with a kind of hypnosis. I wasn’t even aware of time passing, but when I looked up, I saw the glow of headlights in my mirror. A car parked beside me, and Roscoe got out. He wore a light-blue windbreaker and casual clothes rather than his priest’s collar. Standing next to the car, he shivered a little and watched the lake, with his hands in the pockets of his jacket. He was probably thinking about all the times we’d biked here as kids and hung out on summer afternoons by the water.

Roscoe climbed into the passenger seat next to me. With a single glance, he took note of my condition.

“Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“So I take it that isn’t your blood.”

“It’s Karly’s.”

He adjusted his black glasses and spoke softly. “I’m sorry, Dylan.”

“Thanks.”

“I brought the fresh clothes you wanted,” he added.

I just nodded.

“I heard on the radio about a murder at the Spybar. They said a suspect was on the loose. Was that you?”

“Yes, it was me, but it wasn’t me. Not that it matters. The killer had my face, so what will anyone believe? But I didn’t do this, Roscoe. I know it’s hard for you to accept anything I’ve told you, but I hope you’ll have faith in me. I did not do this.”

This would have been the time for Roscoe to point out that he’d warned me about the dangers of being in this world, but he was gracious. His deep voice soothed me, the way it always did. “You’re my best friend, Dylan. I’ve said you could always call me for help, and I mean that. As for having faith in you, that goes without saying.”

“That means a lot.”

“So what happens now? What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. He won. I lost. Now he’s gone, and here I am.” I pushed open the car door, because I needed to breathe in the fresh air. “Do you want to take a walk on the beach? Like in the old days? We may never have another opportunity to do that together.”

“If you like.”

We crossed to the sand and then to the rolling edge of the surf. It was a clear night under moon and stars, and the waves made white ribbons as they broke toward shore. We wandered north, not talking. Around us, I could see a few beach dwellers huddled under blankets, hoping to avoid the park security. When I looked over my shoulder, I saw the city skyline awash in light. Where we’d walked, the lake was already wiping our footsteps clean.

I stopped, confronting more memories.

“When we were about sixteen, we came out here on a summer afternoon,” I said. “We saw a little kid flailing in the water. His mother was distracted because her youngest was crying. The two of us plunged in and saved him. Did that happen here, too?”

“Yes, it did.”

“His mom bought both of us new bikes.”

“I remember.”

“I always felt good about what we did. The strange thing is, now I know there’s also a world out there where we didn’t save him. We failed, and he died.”

Roscoe put a hand on my shoulder. “I prefer to look at how hard God worked to put us on that beach at the exact moment when the boy was drowning. We almost missed the bus going down here — do you remember that? We were complaining because we were going to have to wait another twenty minutes for the next one. But as it turned out, the bus we wanted was running late. So we made it. If that hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t have been here to save that child.”

“Yes, but there’s also a world where we missed the bus,” I protested. “So what’s the point? There’s no meaning to any of it. There’s no plan.”

“Not at all. It simply means in a different world, there’s a different plan.”

A sad smile creased my face. “I’ve always envied the strength of your beliefs, Roscoe. I wish I shared them. If there’s been one good thing about being here, it’s seeing you again. I’m going to miss you.”

“Are you saying you have to go?”

“You were right all along. I don’t belong here.”

“Will you follow this other Dylan again? And stop him this time?”

“No, it’s time for me to go back to where I came from and face what I left behind. That’s what you said I should do, isn’t it? Say the word and go home. I was a fool to think I could change the world.”

Roscoe squatted in the sand and let it run through his fingers. Then he spoke to me softly. “Actually, I’ve changed my mind about that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think you’re ready to go home, Dylan. That’s not who you are. If you believe in what you’re doing, the worst thing you can do is give up. The fact that you failed doesn’t mean that you should quit. The friend I’ve known my whole life would never give up.”

“You really think I should try again? After everything that happened here? What if I make it worse wherever I go next?”

He shrugged and looked up at me. “What if you make it better?”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence, Roscoe, but even if you’re right, it’s a moot point. The only thing I can do is go back home. I have no way to go anywhere else. I can’t chase him, even if I wanted to.”

“Why not?”

“I have no way back into the portal without Eve Brier.”

He flinched at the sound of the name. “Eve Brier?”

“She’s the therapist who sent me here. The idea of trying to bridge the Many Worlds was her idea. But as far as I can tell, she doesn’t exist in this world. There’s no record of her anywhere.”

Roscoe dipped his hand in the cool water and shook his head. “God really does work hard to make things come together.”

“What do you mean?”

“I know her,” he replied.

“What?”

“Well, I don’t know if she’s your Eve Brier. She’s not a therapist, that’s for sure. But I do know an Eve Brier, and I’m not surprised you wouldn’t find any record of her online. She’s a drug addict. Homeless, has been for years. She comes into the parish sometimes when we’re preparing meals.”

“An addict?”

“Yes, she’s very smart, but she went off the rails a long time ago and never made it back. Actually, I think she was in medical school once upon a time. She got thrown out over theft of prescription drugs. It’s only gotten worse since then. She’s been hospitalized for overdoses multiple times.”

“That’s got to be her,” I told him. “How can I find her?”

“If she’s still alive, you’ll probably find her sheltered under the train tracks west of my church. That’s where she usually hangs out. But I wouldn’t count on her being able to help you, Dylan. Eve doesn’t live where the rest of us do. She spends most of her time in other worlds.”

Chapter 27

The streetlight near the railroad tracks had been shot out, leaving the tunnel ahead of me pitch black. I parked near a fence that guarded a vacant lot overgrown with weeds. Using my phone for light, I walked down the middle of the road. Spiderwebs of cracks ran through the pavement, and loose gravel crunched under my feet. Where the asphalt had chipped away completely, I saw layers of red cobblestone. Above me, dense trees leaned over the railway bridge. Retaining walls supported the overpass on both sides, and ribbons of ivy and green mold ran along the concrete.

Inside the tunnel, brown water dripped from the low ceiling. The I beams were connected by round archways, where the white paint had mostly flaked away. I wasn’t alone here. The night people were with me, and I was conscious of being watched by a dozen sets of eyes. The smell of weed hung in the air, thick enough to make my head spin. I saw a lineup of old blankets, sleeping bags, and pole tents crowded against the walls. The broken glass of a tequila bottle glinted in my light. A feral cat sniffed among the debris for food and rats. Someone near me talked to himself incessantly, stringing together random words that made no sense. I heard the splatter of someone urinating against the wall.

I stopped near a kid no older than twenty, who skipped rope with nervous energy in one of the archways. The snap of the rope echoed in the tunnel. I waited until he missed a step and then approached him. I dug out a ten-dollar bill from my wallet as an incentive.

“I’m looking for Eve Brier. Have you seen her around here?”

His jaw pumped as he chewed tobacco. I could smell it on his breath. He spun the jump rope in his hand like he was Will Rogers with a lariat. “Who wants to know?”

“I’m a friend of Roscoe’s. Roscoe Tate from the church.”

“Yeah, everybody knows Roscoe. What you want with Eve?”

“I need to talk to her.”

He snorted out a laugh. “Talk, huh? Lotta people like to talk to Eve. Best wear a sleeve when you talkin’.”

“I swear. Just talk. Do you know where she is?”

“Yeah, sure. Couple blocks up. Alley behind the cemetery. She takes her little rides up there.”

“Her rides?”

“That what she calls ’em. Seems like some crazy trips. When she goes away, she gone.”

I pushed the ten-dollar bill into his hand. He took off his baseball cap, put the cash on his head, and slapped the hat back on. Then he started skipping rope again.

On the other side of the overpass, most of the houses had barred windows. I passed a couple of late-night bars and some empty storefronts. Two blocks down, I found the cemetery, which was protected from grave robbers by concrete walls topped with barbed wire. A narrow alley ran adjacent to the cemetery wall, and I walked into the darkness, kicking garbage out of my way. In a small yard of mud and grass behind one of the buildings, I saw a woman slumped on a blanket.

I shined my light on her face.

It was Eve Brier, but this was a very different Eve than the one I knew. She wore a soiled gray sweatshirt and no pants, only frayed purple underwear. Her long legs were riddled with bruises. She had one sleeve pushed up, displaying the track marks of numerous injections. The long, elegant nails I remembered on her fingers were chewed down, her cuticles bitten and bloody. She lay on her side, her body wrapped in the blanket. Her almond-shaped eyes were closed. I didn’t know if this was sleep or unconsciousness. I knelt next to her and gently brushed the long hair from her face. She had no elegant highlights, just brown hair that matched the mud.

“Eve,” I called softly, getting no reaction.

My hand stroked her shoulder. “Eve?”

She moaned, a guttural protest through her closed mouth. Her limbs twitched as she stirred. Her eyes blinked open, failed to register her surroundings, and sank closed again. I patted her cheek.

“Eve, wake up.”

This time, she did. She opened her golden eyes as she rolled onto her back. When she focused on my face, her eyes widened in shock. Inhaling, she let out a primal scream and skittered away from me. I came off my knees and followed, but she beat at me with her fists, her throat wailing without forming words. She bumped into the brick wall behind her, and her hands flew at me as if trying to wave off a cloud of bees. I had to wrap her up tightly in my arms to stop her.

“Eve, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

She wouldn’t stop screaming. I was afraid the people in the houses nearby would call the police. I put my hand over her mouth, trying to quash the noise, but she bit down hard on my palm, drawing blood. When I drew my hand back in pain, she wailed again. One word.

“Dylan!”

She knew who I was. She’d seen me before.

“Don’t hurt me! Please don’t hurt me! Dylan!”

I grabbed her shoulders, with blood dripping down my wrist, and pushed her against the wall.

“Eve,” I hissed urgently. “Eve, listen to me.”

“Don’t hurt me, please!”

“Eve. Try to focus. I’m Dylan, but I’m not him.”

“You are, you are! Go away, leave me alone!”

“Look at me!” I backed away and shined the light of the phone on my face. “Look at me, Eve. You can tell, can’t you? We’re the same, but we’re different. I’m not him.”

I put my hands up, a gesture of faith that she wouldn’t run. That she should trust me. She summoned the courage to look at me, and I had the chance to look at her, too. I had no idea what she was on or how far gone she was, but when her animal instincts receded, I saw a little bit of the Eve Brier I remembered. Somewhere in there was the brain that had started all of this.

She was the portal.

“See?” I said quietly. “I’m not him.”

She touched my face, like a blind woman getting to know me. “You’re right. You’re different.”

“Yes, I am.”

“How? How did you get here?”

“Through you,” I said.

She didn’t look surprised. “You mean a different me? From somewhere else?”

“That’s right.”

Eve exhaled with relief. “So you know about the worlds. You know they’re real.”

“I do.”

“People don’t believe me. I tell them I go on rides, and I tell them what I see. They think I’m crazy. They think it’s nothing but the drugs.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy. Tell me about the rides, Eve. Where do you go? What do you see?”

“There’s a place where we all meet,” she replied dreamily, looking over my head at the sky. “There are so many of them. So many of me. I’m not like this everywhere, you know. I’m smart. Rich. Beautiful.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Sometimes I follow them. The other Eves. Just to see what it’s like to live like that. I hide, and I watch them, but I never stay. I couldn’t live in those worlds. I’d still end up just the way I am now. We all end up back where we belong sooner or later. Except for him. He goes wherever he wants.”

“Tell me about him.”

Her face darkened. “He’s evil.”

“You’ve seen him on your rides?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve seen him, too. That’s why I need your help.”

“Look at me. I can’t do anything.”

“You can send me after him,” I told her.

Eve stared nervously into the shadows. On the street behind us, headlights came and went in the alley. “I wasn’t always like this, you know. In college? I had a 4.0. University of Chicago, summa cum laude. Totally clean. No alcohol, no weed, no nothing. I went to medical school, and I was good, really good, but you can’t imagine the stress. You’re exhausted all the time. I needed something to keep me going, and a guy in the lab hooked me up. It was just supposed to be the one time, to get me through a rough patch, but the pills sucked me in. I tried so many times to stop, but I wasn’t strong enough.”

“I’m not blaming you, Eve.”

“Except you know a different me, don’t you?” she said. “One with a better life.”

“Yes.”

“How do you know her?”

“She wrote a book about the Many Worlds.”

“And why do you care about that?”

“Because of the other Dylan,” I said. “He came to my world and destroyed my life.”

“He destroys everything.”

“How do you know him?”

“I saw him on one of my rides. I do it a lot, you know. Ride. I was spying on one of my doubles in the park, and I saw him talking to her. I could see there was something wrong about him. Something bad. I don’t know how I knew, but I knew. So after they split up, I followed him. I saw him go into the park that night, and he met this woman and — oh, my God.”

She wrapped her arms tightly around her chest.

“Since then, I’ve seen him half a dozen more times in other worlds. I see the things he does. It’s always the same. He’s a killer.”

“I know.”

“The last time, he spotted me watching him. He recognized me. He knew I’d seen him, and he came after me. I had to say the escape word to get away.” Eve shivered. Her fingers twitched. “Since then, I’m afraid that wherever I go, he’ll find me. But I need to ride. I can’t stay here. I have to get away from this life, you know? It’s too much. I can’t take who I am.”

I grabbed both of her hands. “Eve, I want to stop this other Dylan. I never want him to hurt anyone else. I came here to do that, but I failed. He got away. Now I want to go after him again, but I need your help. I need you to get me to the Many Worlds again.”

She shook her head. “I only have one dose left. I don’t know when I can get more, and I can’t be stuck here. Not like this. I’ll go crazy.”

“Eve, I can’t do this without you.”

“What if you go after him and you fail again?”

“I’m not going to fail.”

“You might not be able to deal with it. The stuff I get isn’t always pure. When it’s laced, sometimes strange things happen to me when I ride. Weird, scary shit.”

“I’ll take that risk.”

Her face softened. She put chapped hands on my cheeks and leaned forward, and I was surprised when she kissed me. Her lips were gentle and submissive, craving any kind of human connection. I didn’t stop her. I let her kiss me for a while, and then she sank back against the brick wall. She lifted up her sweatshirt, exposing her flat stomach and the slopes where her breasts swelled. A capped hypodermic was taped across her skin.

“Take it.”

I reached forward, peeling off the tape and taking the needle in my hands. I removed the cap and studied the clear liquid in the barrel. For all I knew, I was about to kill myself. OD.

“Where do you go?” she asked me.

“What do you mean?”

“When you ride. Where do you go? The crossroads.”

I understood now. “The Art Institute. The painting Nighthawks.”

“I’ll talk you through it,” Eve said, “but I don’t know what will happen. I’ll try to guide you there, but if it’s a bad batch—”

“That’s okay.”

I stared at the needle and then rolled up my sleeve. When the moment came to inject myself, I hesitated. I rolled it around in my fingers and couldn’t bring myself to put the metal tip to my vein.

“Do you want me to do it?” she asked.

I saw a steadiness in her eyes. “Yes.”

She took my arm in hers with surprising skill and gentleness. But then I realized that once upon a time, she’d been on her way to becoming a doctor. She pressed the point of the needle into the seam of my arm.

“Are you sure? Once it’s done, it’s done.”

“I’m sure.”

I watched the clear liquid disappearing through the needle as she injected me. The cocktail flowed like a cool river into my body, and the last thing I heard was Eve whispering in my ear.

“Kill him.”

Something was wrong. I knew it immediately.

I could see other Dylans coming and going, hundreds of them shuffling back and forth in front of me, but they were in a different place, separated from me by a window. I tried to get up from where I was, but I was paralyzed. I couldn’t even feel myself breathing. Glancing down, I saw the sleeves of a navy-blue suit and the brim of a fedora dipped low on my forehead just above my eyes. My arms leaned forward against some kind of counter. But I couldn’t move at all. All my limbs felt frozen.

“More coffee?”

I saw another Dylan. He wore a white uniform, a paper cap on his head. He leaned over the counter where I sat motionless.

“What?”

“I said, more coffee, buddy?”

There was a white mug in front of me. “Yes. Sure. Okay.”

He took the mug and went to a large coffee urn near the wall and refilled it. Then he put it in front of me. “How about the lady?”

I couldn’t turn my head, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw a beautiful woman in a red dress sitting next to me on the adjacent stool. Like me, she sat stiffly, not talking, not moving, as if she were some kind of mannequin. Her face was intimately familiar to me. Pretty. Vivid red hair to match her dress. I knew her well, but I had no idea what her name was.

Then I understood.

I was inside Nighthawks.

I was trapped inside the painting. The man I’d dreamed of being for years, the one sitting next to the woman in the red dress, was me. All the other Dylans were outside, in the museum gallery, moving back and forth on their way to their next destination. I had nowhere to go.

Then I heard a laugh.

My eyes shifted. To my right, I saw the other man in the painting, the one whose back is always to the watcher. The mystery man. It was another Dylan. It was him. Instead of a suit and fedora as he should have been wearing, he was dressed in my father’s leather jacket, stained with blood. His blue eyes, appropriately enough, were the eyes of a night hawk, out for prey. He sipped his coffee and chuckled.

“You don’t give up, do you?”

I heard myself saying, “I’m going to kill you.”

“Yeah? Well, we’ll see about that.”

He finished his mug of coffee. Unlike me, he had no trouble moving. He had a lot of experience at the crossroads of the Many Worlds, and I was still a novice. He got up from the stool, threw down a dollar bill on the counter, and headed for the door of the diner. In the painting, there was no door, just a long glass window and the city street, so when he got to the end of the painting, he melted away like fog. A moment later, I could see him inside the museum.

I had to go after him, but I was trapped here. I stared at my painted hands and arms, which were no more than color on canvas. Instead of two dimensions, I needed to become three again, but how could I move? How could I change what I was? Then I realized that the change was all in my head. If I could see and think and talk, I could do everything else, but I had to believe it.

I had to accept that this was real. If it was real, then I could control it. The only prison we can never escape is our brain, and yet our brain is what sets us free.

It happened slowly. A moment at a time. I willed myself to move and felt my mind bend to my commands. One of my fingers bent. Then another. My shoe tapped on the rail of the counter. My head swiveled. I was nearly there. I tensed my muscles and pushed, and like glass shattering, I felt my entire body break out of its bonds.

I was back in the gallery, surrounded by hundreds of other Dylan Morans. The painting hung on the wall again where it was supposed to be. The characters were strangers, not reflections of me.

I felt a surge of confidence. In this next world, everything would be different. I didn’t run. I marched calmly, sure of where I needed to go and what I needed to do. This time, the other Dylans parted for me as I took off after my doppelgänger.

I was finally ready.

It was time for my second chance.