Infinite

Chapter 28

The wail of a horn blared in my ears. Air brakes screeched. I looked up to see a semitruck shuddering to a stop inches from my face. The truck was so close that I could see dead bugs squashed on its grille, and I’d very nearly become one of them. Around me, Chicago traffic roared through the intersection in both directions. I was in the middle of Michigan Avenue, crossing against the light.

The truck driver barked at me through his open window. “Shit, man, where did you come from? Are you blind? Get out of the street!”

He added several more obscenities to make sure I got the message.

I raised my hands in apology, then waited for a gap in the cars and hurried to the opposite side. I steadied myself against a light post and took a few deep breaths. I couldn’t help but think about the irony of almost dying as a truck ran me over. In my head, I could hear Edgar’s raspy voice telling me the story of Daniel Catton Rich, director of the Art Institute, who would have died the same way in 1941 if my grandfather hadn’t accidentally tackled him.

It made me think again that Roscoe was right. Fate had a way of making the elements of our worlds converge. What I called fate, he called God.

Standing at the corner, I got my bearings. I was on the park side of the street, across from the Hilton, a few blocks south of the LaSalle Plaza. I had no idea why my exit from the Art Institute had taken me here, but a moment later, I heard someone calling my name.

“Dylan?”

Looking toward the lake, I saw Tai heading my way from Grant Park.

Seeing her gave me a shiver of disorientation. My last nightmarish memory of Tai was of seeing her face under the water in our apartment. Now she was back, alive and unharmed.

She walked up and gave me an awkward kiss on the cheek. “Dylan, it is you. What a nice surprise.”

She said it in a way that told me it really wasn’t such a nice surprise. We were definitely not married in this world.

“Hello, Tai.”

“How long has it been? I mean, it must be four years.”

I tried not to blurt out my surprise: Four years? How could I not have seen Tai in four years?

“It’s been a while,” I said, stumbling over my reply. “How are you?”

“I’m good. Really good. Things at the hotel are fine. I mean, not the same without you, of course.”

“Sure.” I had no idea what she meant. Then I added, “You look good.”

“Thanks.”

She really did look good. She’d chopped off her long hair, now sporting a modern androgynous cut. She wore a tailored burgundy suit, with a skirt that didn’t quite reach to her knees, which showed off her legs. Her stilettos matched the suit. She’d always been pretty, but now she radiated confidence to go with it. She didn’t look young anymore.

“You look good, too,” she added, mostly as an afterthought.

“Still the same.”

“No. No. Definitely different. But I like it.”

“So the job’s okay?” I asked, trying to understand why I’d left the hotel years earlier.

“It is. I mean, believe me, I did not want to take over the way I did. And without you, I felt like I was jumping into the pool to learn how to swim. For months, I didn’t know which end was up.”

“I doubt that.”

“Oh, no, it’s true. It really is. But enough about me. What about you? How are you? Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Seriously? You’re doing all right?”

“I’m fine,” I told her.

“Well, good. That’s good to hear. Look, I really need to apologize. I should have done a better job of keeping in touch. I felt like a shit that I sort of cut you off. It wasn’t because I didn’t care. I mean, yeah, I felt a little weird about things, but it’s just that I was so busy. We were shorthanded, and I was trying to learn the ropes. And after that, I don’t know. I wasn’t even sure you’d want to hear from me.”

“It’s okay, Tai. Don’t worry about it.”

“What are you doing downtown?” she asked me. “Are you trying to find a job? I mean, I’d help if I could. Truly. I’d hire you myself, but the hotel wouldn’t go for it. I could put in a few calls if you’d like, but I think most of the hotel managers in the city know what happened.”

“I’m not looking for a job.”

“All right. Well, it really is such a nice surprise to see you again. You probably don’t want to talk about it, but was it rough for you? Hell, what am I saying? Of course it was. But maybe it was for the best, you know?”

“Maybe so,” I replied vaguely.

“I suppose that’s a stupid thing to say.” Her golden skin actually blushed. “Nobody thinks prison is for the best.”

“Prison,” I exclaimed, not able to stop myself.

“But you made it through okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said again.

“Good.” Tai checked her watch to give herself an excuse. She looked uncomfortable, as if she wanted to get away from me as quickly as she could. “Anyway, I need to go. Big event tonight, eighteen million details. You know how it is.”

“I do.”

“Of course you do.”

Tai went to cross the street, but then she took a breath and turned back to me. She grabbed my hand. “I really am sorry, Dylan.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I know, but I always felt like I should have been able to reach you back then. Like I could have changed how you were. Made the anger go away. I mean, I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I always had kind of a thing for you. I never said anything about it. Maybe I should have. I always had this idea in the back of my head that if we’d gotten together, it would have helped you become a better person. That sounds arrogant. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I appreciate the sentiment, but it doesn’t work that way, Tai. You wouldn’t have been able to change me.”

“I guess. Are you doing better? You were always so hard on the whole world, especially yourself. I hoped you’d find some softness, you know? I wanted you to have peace.”

“I’m getting there.”

“I’m glad.” She put her arms around me in a quick, awkward embrace, and then she bowed her head in embarrassment. “Take care of yourself.”

“You too.”

The light changed. She started across Michigan Avenue toward the Hilton. My eyes followed her, but then I looked beyond her to the crowded sidewalk on the opposite side of the street.

He was standing right there.

My Dylan. The Dylan in the leather jacket. The Dylan I was here to kill.

He stood on the corner and eyed me with his own steely resolve. Tai must have seen him, too, because she stopped in the middle of the street. Her shoulders spun around so she could look behind her. Finding me where I was supposed to be, she began to look back to confirm the impossibility of what her eyes were seeing.

As she did, a Chicago tour bus blocked our view of the Hilton. When it passed, the other Dylan had already vanished. I was sure he was in the crowd of pedestrians now, but as far as Tai was concerned, he was just a momentary trick of her imagination. She continued to the opposite corner and gave a little wave as she headed south for the LaSalle Plaza.

I didn’t bother chasing after my doppelgänger. Not yet.

I knew that when the time came, he’d find me.

Obviously, the Dylan Moran who lived in this world had made mistakes even worse than mine.

I wanted to know who he was, what had happened that sent him to prison, and whether Karly was a part of his life. There was one person who could always give me answers. Roscoe. That was assuming there had been no car accident in this world that had taken him away from me.

I headed for Roscoe’s South Side church, but when I went inside, I noticed a poster on the bulletin board with photographs of the church staff. My heart fell when I saw that Roscoe wasn’t listed among them. I wondered if he was gone, as he was in my own world, but when I asked one of the priests about him, I was relieved to learn that no one named Roscoe Tate had ever been associated with the church.

So where was he?

I retraced my steps to the medical clinic on Irving Park where Roscoe’s mother practiced. Fortunately, this part of the world hadn’t changed. As I approached the building, I saw Alicia Tate coming out the front door, and her face broke into a broad smile as she spotted me on the sidewalk.

“Dylan, what a nice surprise.”

Unlike Tai, Alicia sounded genuinely happy to see me.

“Do you need to talk to me?” she went on. “I was just on my way to the hospital to make rounds, but if something’s wrong, I can fit you in.”

“No, actually, I was trying to find—”

I stopped without saying his name. If Roscoe was dead, I didn’t want to sound like a fool. However, Alicia leaped to the correct assumption.

“Oh, you’re looking for Roscoe. Of course. Well, he’s inside. You know him, that boy works too hard.”

“Look who’s talking,” I said.

Alicia squeezed my shoulder affectionately. “You’re sweet. Go on in, he’ll be happy to see you.”

I continued into the clinic, where several patients were waiting in the lobby. I didn’t have time to ask the receptionist about Roscoe before the inner door opened, and my friend emerged, stooping slightly to help an elderly black woman who was using a walker. He wore more stylish, expensive glasses than he’d worn as a priest, and his face was smoothly shaven, but otherwise, he hadn’t changed. Like his mother, Roscoe wore a white doctor’s coat, which made me smile. Apparently, in this world, Alicia Tate had gotten her wish by having her son follow in her footsteps.

As Roscoe straightened up, he saw me. He wore the same sober expression I’d known since we were boys. “Dylan, hey, what are you doing here? Everything okay?”

“Fine, but I need a minute if you can spare it.”

He glanced around the crowded waiting room and at the watch on his wrist. “I’m a little slammed, but sure, come on back.”

I followed him down the inner hallway. We turned into a small office, where he sat behind a beat-up desk, under a wall that included a framed copy of his medical degree from the Pritzker School at the University of Chicago. Alicia had gone there, too. On his desk, I saw pictures of him with his parents, along with a small photo of the two of us, back when we were kids playing football in Horner Park.

He followed my stare. “Long time ago, huh?”

“Very. And now look at you. That little kid’s a doctor.”

“I know. It’s still hard for me to believe.”

“I always thought that you would become a priest.”

Roscoe chuckled. “Yeah. That was a tough call, but I’ve never looked back. Plus, I get to work with my mom. Most days, that’s a blessing. Other days... well, you know how she is.”

I smiled.

Back in high school, Roscoe had gone in the opposite direction. He’d decided that going into the ministry would allow him to do more good for people than medicine, by helping them find meaning in the losses and setbacks of their lives. He’d also rolled his eyes in exasperation at the idea of ever being able to work in a clinic with his mother.

“So what’s up?” Roscoe asked.

“I have something to tell you.”

“What is it?”

“It’s hard to explain and even harder to believe.”

“Try me.”

I took a breath and considered what I would say. I’d thought about trying to pry my life’s history out of him without telling him what was really going on, but Roscoe was my best friend, and we still had a pledge of never lying to each other. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure if a doctor would take a leap of faith about unseen worlds as readily as a priest. Somehow, I had to prove that what was happening to me was real.

“Where should I be right now?” I asked him.

“What do you mean?”

“If I wasn’t here in the clinic with you, where would you expect to find me?”

“I don’t know. At your office, I guess.”

I leaned across his desk, picked up the phone, and handed it to him. “Call me.”

“What?”

“Call my office. Ask to talk to me.”

“Why?”

“Please, Roscoe. Just do it.”

With a look of confusion, he punched a button for the speakerphone and then pressed a speed dial number. The phone buzzed on the other end, and after several rings, a young woman answered.

“Chicago Housing Solutions.”

“Dana, it’s Roscoe Tate,” he said, his foghorn voice as deep as ever.

“Oh, hey, Dr. Tate. Are you looking for Dylan?”

“I am. Do you know where he is?”

“Sure, he’s on the other line. Do you want me to tell him you’re holding?”

Roscoe didn’t say anything for a long time. He stared across the desk at me, and his brow furrowed, like a mathematician confronting an insoluble problem. He stayed silent for so long that the woman on the phone finally broke in again.

“Dr. Tate? Are you still there? Do you want me to get Dylan for you?”

His eyes never left me. “Dana, are you saying that Dylan’s in the office with you? Are you sure about that?”

“I’m looking right at him,” she replied. “Actually, he just finished up his call. You want me to put him on?”

“Yes, please.”

A few seconds passed. Then we both heard my own voice on the other end of the phone. There was no mistaking it.

“Roscoe. Hey, buddy.”

“Dylan,” Roscoe murmured. He opened his mouth to talk, but seemed unable to decide what to say next.

“What’s up, Doc? You need something?”

Roscoe propped his arms on the desk and then balanced his chin on his hands. Our faces were barely a foot apart. He didn’t have the look of a man who thought he was in the midst of a prank or an April Fool’s joke. His eyes were serious, the same as mine. He spoke into the speakerphone, but he stared at me as he did.

I knew he was talking to both of us.

“Listen, I have a strange question for you,” Roscoe said. “It came up with a patient today, and I thought you might remember. There was an old woman who used to work behind the counter at Lutz’s bakery for a while. I think they found out her husband was some kind of Nazi. We used to make fun of her name while we were eating our pastries. Do you remember what it was?”

On the phone, Dylan answered immediately in a singsong chant.

So did I, mouthing the same words silently to Roscoe from the other side of the desk.

“Friedegunde, Friedegunde, face like die Hunde.”

Roscoe closed his eyes in disbelief. We’d both passed the test, and neither one of us could have faked it. A long time passed before he said softly, “Yes, that was it. Now I remember.”

“We weren’t very nice back then, were we?” Dylan said with a laugh.

“Well, we were nine,” Roscoe replied, opening his eyes and considering me like an alien come to earth. Which, in some ways, I was.

“So why did you want to know about old Friedegunde?” the other Dylan asked.

I put my finger over my lips and shook my head.

“I’ll tell you later, buddy,” Roscoe said into the speakerphone. “Gotta go for now.”

“Okay, catch ya later,” Dylan replied.

Roscoe stabbed the button on his phone to end the call.

“All right,” he said to me, his voice a block of ice. “Who the hell are you?”

Chapter 29

I’d barely begun telling Roscoe the story when he shut me down. At the first mention of the Many Worlds, he put up his hands, unwilling to hear more. He had patients to see, and they came first. What it really meant was that he needed time to process the idea in his head. Roscoe never leaped to judgment about anything. He thought about things. He evaluated all the factors and made plans. He was cautious. In other words, he was everything I wasn’t.

He told me to meet him at six o’clock at a bar just off the Kennedy on Montrose. The location he picked felt like another test. This was the bar where I’d gotten drunk and wound up in a street fight with a man who was abusing his girlfriend. Roscoe had come to collect me from the police station, and he’d never made it home alive.

The fact that Roscoe was alive meant that evening had gone differently in this world. And yet the fact that he chose the bar as our meeting place told me that the location still had some kind of special significance for Dylan Moran.

When I got there, I didn’t recognize the bartender, which was probably a good thing. If anyone knew me here, I doubted they would serve me. I sat at the end of the bar and tried to hold back the flood of memories from that night. Me confronting the man four seats down, his girlfriend telling me to mind my own effing business, him throwing a drink in my face. It was a karaoke bar, and I could still hear someone doing a painful rendition of “Coma” by Guns N’ Roses as the soundtrack to the fight.

“You want a drink?” the bartender asked me sullenly. She was an Asian girl with cherry-red hair.

“Vodka rocks,” I said. Then, as she walked away, I stopped her. “Hang on. Forget that. Just club soda.”

She shrugged. “Whatever.”

When she brought me the drink, I sat and nursed it with a clear head, and then I ordered another. I tipped her like I’d ordered Grey Goose. The bar began to fill up as the after-work crowd arrived, and people came and went over the next couple of hours. By six fifteen, Roscoe hadn’t shown up, and I began to wonder if he was planning to pretend that I’d been a figment of his imagination.

However, at six thirty, he slid onto the seat next to me. His eyes took note of the club soda, but he didn’t offer to join me in my sobriety. Roscoe had always been a Southern Comfort man, even as a priest, and he still was. He ordered it on the rocks and said nothing until he had it in his hand and had taken the first sip.

“I drove by your office,” he said. “Although I guess it isn’t really your office, is it?”

“No, it’s not.”

“Dylan was inside. I saw him. Then I drove straight over here, no stopping, and here you are. I needed to see it with my own eyes, know what I’m saying?”

“I do.”

He shook his head. “Many Worlds, Many Minds. I looked it up. The whole thing sounds pretty crazy to me.”

“That’s how I felt about it, too. But that’s what’s happening to me.”

“You’re a different Dylan. I mean, you’re the same, but you’re different.”

“That’s right.”

He eyed me as he sipped his drink. “It’s easier to believe when I really look at you. You’ve got a different edge, no doubt about it. It’s in your face, your eyes, how you hold yourself.”

“I met another Roscoe who told me the same thing.”

“You’re more like my Dylan was a few years ago. He’s changed since then. You? Not so much. You haven’t found yourself yet, not the way he did. Although I like the not drinking part. That’s a start.”

“You’ve changed, too,” I told him.

“Let me guess. In your world, I’m a priest.”

“You were.”

He laughed to himself. “Sometimes I wonder what my life would be like if I’d taken that path. Maybe we all do that.”

“Believe me, I’ve been obsessed with that idea recently.”

Roscoe nodded as he looked around at the bar. “I asked you here for a reason, you know. This place right here is where my Dylan’s life changed.”

“Mine, too.”

“So tell me what happened to you here,” he said.

I picked up my club soda and swirled the ice, watching it clink around the glass. “Four years ago, on the anniversary of the night my parents died, I came here. I got drunk, and I got into it with a guy who was calling his girlfriend names. The cops came and arrested me. When they let me go, I called you, and you came to pick me up.”

Roscoe knew there was more. “And? What happened next?”

“There was a car accident. You died.”

A blink was his only reaction. He took another sip of Southern Comfort. “Oh.”

“I blamed myself.”

“Of course you did.”

“There’s more. I met a woman that night. It was a coincidence, a weird twist of fate — or at least, that’s what I thought at the time. Now I don’t know. She rescued me. She helped me recover. We got married. Then very recently, I lost her, too.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Roscoe glanced at me from over the top of his drink. “What was her name?”

“Karly. Her name was Karly.”

“Did you love her?”

“Yes, I did. I can’t imagine my life without her. I finally had everything I ever wanted, and I let it all slip through my hands. I screwed up my whole damn life, and now I can never get it back.”

I slammed my glass down on the bar. Ice and club soda sloshed over the side. I shook my head and dabbed at the spill with a napkin, and I waved away the bartender, who was looking at me with concern.

“You still have that temper, I see,” Roscoe murmured.

I drank what was left of the club soda. “So that’s my story. What happened here? In this world.”

My friend sighed. “Four years ago, on the anniversary of the night your parents died, you came here. You got drunk, and you got into it with a guy who was calling his girlfriend names. You started beating the hell out of him on the street.”

“And? What happened next?”

“The guy hit his head on the pavement. He died.”

“Shit.”

“You pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter. Your lawyer argued for probation because of your family background. He said what happened to your mother triggered a kind of psychological fixation with defending a woman who was in danger, and that the man’s death was accidental. The judge wasn’t impressed. You’d been in fights before, so he said you were aware of the risks. He gave you a sentence of two to five years.”

“Sounds like I deserved it.”

“Yes, that’s what you said. You didn’t even appeal the sentence. You went to prison and did eighteen months before you got paroled. It was rough for you. I know it was. But honestly, you became a new man. When you got out, you turned your life around. You went to AA and haven’t had a drink since. You go to counseling every month. You found a job at a nonprofit focused on affordable housing, and within a year, you were running the place. You even managed to come to terms with Edgar. You apologized for all the crap you’d dealt him over the years. You thanked him for taking you in as a kid. The two of you had breakfast every morning during his last three months.”

“Edgar died?” I asked.

“Yeah. Heart attack in his sleep.”

I felt an unexpected wave of grief. Edgar. My grandfather. My last family member. Dead.

In my own world, Edgar was still alive, but I didn’t know whether I’d ever see that world again. For the first time, I confronted the idea of him not being there. I had a vision of myself standing in front of Nighthawks, wishing Edgar was there to tell me the story of Daniel Catton Rich. Roscoe was right. There were things I should have said to him when I had the chance.

Even without knowing the Dylan Moran in this world, I realized he was living his life better than me.

I had to know more about him.

“Am I married?” I asked quietly.

He didn’t answer right away.

“I mean, in this world, there was no accident. You didn’t die. Karly didn’t find me in the car.”

Roscoe stared into his drink and wrestled with what to tell me. “After Edgar died, you brought in a contractor to work on the upstairs apartment so you could rent it out. The two of you became friends.”

“Scotty,” I guessed. “Scotty Ryan.”

“That’s right. He did a lot of work for a realtor he thought would be perfect for you, so he set the two of you up on a blind date. You hated the idea, but I pushed you to go. You went dancing at the Spybar, and it was love at first sight. Six months later, you were married.”

I closed my eyes and found it hard to breathe. Under my fingers, the bar was still wet where I’d spilled my drink, and the barest sensation of water made me feel as if I were drowning. “Her name, Roscoe. What’s her name?”

“Karly.”

I still couldn’t open my eyes. I was too angry with myself, too frustrated with my mistakes. The Dylan in this world had learned his lesson before it was too late. He’d changed. Not me.

“Am I happy?” I asked.

“Yes, you are. For the first time I can remember, you’re at peace. Plus, you’ve got—”

He stopped.

“What?”

“I’ve told you everything you need to know.”

“There’s something else. What is it?”

Roscoe shook his head. “I’m sorry. There are things that belong only to Dylan, not you.”

“I’m Dylan.”

“No, you’re not. Not here.”

I dug in my wallet and put money on the bar. “I have to go.”

“Where?”

“Home,” I said.

I began to get off the barstool, but Roscoe grabbed my wrist. For a small man, his grip was like steel. “Do not interfere in his world. He’s come too far to have it ruined for him. You had the same chances he did to turn your life around, and if you regret the choices you made, that’s on you.”

I looked into Roscoe’s eyes, which was a gift I never thought I’d have after I lost him. We’d known each other since we were kids. We’d grown up together, gone through all my struggles together. He was the most decent man I knew in any world, whether as a doctor or a priest.

Somehow I knew this was the last moment between us. I’d had one final little bonus, and now it was over. One way or another, alive or dead, I’d be gone from this world before the night was done. I would never see him again.

At least I had the chance to hug him and kiss him on both cheeks and say a proper goodbye this time.

“I’m not going to interfere in Dylan’s life,” I promised my best friend before I left. “I’m here to save him.”

Chapter 30

I stood among the trees of River Park in the twilight. It would be dark soon. The Dylan I needed to kill was here, not far away from me. I could feel him on the other side of a milky cloud. In the same way that he could read my thoughts, I was beginning to read his, too. The last time, he’d been waiting for me inside the apartment, but I saw nothing to suggest that he was there now. Neither was the Dylan who really lived here, and neither was Karly. That worried me.

Whenever they came back, they’d both be targets.

From my vantage in the grass, I could see the whole street. As I stood there, I noticed a gray sedan easing down the block, its lights on. This wasn’t the first time I’d seen it. The car reached the corner and turned, but I had the feeling it would be back. I was right. Less than ten minutes later, I saw it again, retracing its route down the street. This time, it pulled onto the park sidewalk near me and stopped.

A tall man with a skeletal appearance got out. He wore a wrinkled tan trench coat over a white shirt and baggy black pants. He had a casual, stooped walk, but he wasn’t out for a stroll. He headed straight for me.

It was Detective Harvey Bushing.

“Excuse me,” he called, pulling out his badge and introducing himself. “Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?”

“If you like.”

“Do you live around here?”

I nodded at the building across the street. “Yes, that’s my apartment right over there.”

“And your name is?”

“Dylan Moran.”

“Got any ID, Mr. Moran?”

I thought about arguing with him, but I pulled out a driver’s license and gave it to him, and he studied it with careful eyes. When he handed it back to me, he said in his monotone voice, “I’m just curious, Mr. Moran. If you live right over there, what are you doing in the park?”

“Enjoying the evening air,” I replied.

“Well, I’ve been down this street three times, and you haven’t moved. You just keep watching the building. Are you waiting for someone?”

“No.”

“Well, it’s just that most people go for a walk, or sit on the bench, or light up a smoke, or something like that. Not too many people stand there and stare at their own house.”

“Is that a crime?”

“Not at all.” But he was clearly waiting for an explanation, and the longer I made him wait, the more questions he’d ask.

“Look, Detective, I’ve lived in this area for most of my life. My grandfather owned the building, and he used to live in the upstairs apartment. He died a couple of years ago. We didn’t exactly have the best relationship, and sometimes I like to come out here and think about him. Is that okay with you?”

“Absolutely. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.”

Bushing reached into his trench coat and pulled out a photograph. “Since you know the area, maybe you can help me out here, Mr. Moran. Do you remember seeing this woman around the neighborhood?”

I didn’t need to squint in the diminishing light to see who it was. I recognized the picture from the headline in the Tribune, but that was in another world. It was Betsy Kern.

“No, I haven’t.”

“You sure? She only lives a couple of blocks away.”

“Sorry. I’m sure.”

“Well, she’s missing. She went out for a run in the park last night and never came back home. Her family’s pretty worried about her.”

“I wish I could help, but I haven’t seen her.”

“What about people hanging around in the park? Have you seen anyone who looked suspicious?”

“We get strange characters around here all the time, Detective. But lately? No one comes to mind.”

“Okay. Well, if you see anyone, please give us a call, Mr. Moran.”

“I’ll do that.”

Detective Bushing retraced his steps to his car. He got back inside but didn’t drive away, and I knew he was waiting to see what I would do. I couldn’t really wait outside any longer. I headed across the street toward my apartment building. When I got to the door, I was relieved that my key worked, and I went inside and closed the door behind me. On the street, Bushing’s gray sedan cruised past the building and disappeared.

I didn’t turn on any lights. I stayed in the shadowy hallway, looking across at the park, which was now sinking into the grip of night. Finally, I let myself into the downstairs apartment. It had a different smell, not like my place and not like the apartment where a different Dylan had lived with Tai. I couldn’t place what the aroma was. The only word that popped into my head to describe it was creamy, which wasn’t a smell at all. It reminded me of how our home used to smell when I was growing up with my parents.

The building itself was dead quiet. I didn’t feel the presence of my doppelgänger or the aura of menace that followed him. The only sensation here was that strange creaminess, which I didn’t understand. Even so, I couldn’t afford to linger. I needed to make sure the apartment was empty, and then I needed to leave before the other Dylan and Karly came home. I didn’t want to risk leaving any footprints in their lives. I’d promised Roscoe I wouldn’t do that.

But I was too late.

I had just started down the hallway when the front door rattled behind me. I froze where I was, and there was no time to hide. The living room lights went on, blinding me.

When I could see again, there she was. Karly.

I captured that moment in my head like a photograph, because I knew it wouldn’t last. She wore a striped T-shirt and blue capris that hugged her willowy body. Heeled leather boots made her taller than me. Her hair was blonder and longer than my own Karly had kept it, and even her breasts seemed to swell larger from her torso than the woman I remembered. But her face was the same. Her blue eyes gravitated to mine like a magnet. Her mouth broke into a wide smile, and in that heartbreaking smile was everything I’d lost.

She was my wife. She loved me.

“Hey, sweetheart,” she said, with happy surprise in her voice. “I thought tonight was your night to work late.”

I tried to say something, but I couldn’t. I simply stared at her, enraptured. I wanted to run to her and sweep her into my arms. We stared at each other for no more than a beat or two, and then instead of closing the front door, she kept it open with her foot and pulled something inside the apartment behind her.

A stroller.

Karly closed the door, then bent down and carefully lifted a baby into her arms, holding it like the treasure at the end of a rainbow. “Look, Ellie,” she cooed to her child. “Daddy’s home early. Don’t we love that?”

Ellie. Eleanor. My mother’s name.

My child. My daughter. Our daughter. That was the creaminess of this place. It was the smell of a baby, of life, of innocence, of freshness and beginnings. Staring at the two of them, I felt something tightening in my chest, as if there weren’t enough oxygen in the world to let me breathe. I could not love this woman more, and yet suddenly, I did. I had never dreamed of what it would be like to have a child with her, but in that moment, I knew my life was empty without one.

“Are you okay?” Karly asked, studying me with a crinkle in her forehead.

I struggled to speak. “Fine. You look beautiful. Both of you.”

“Well, you don’t look so bad yourself.” She crossed the space between us and casually deposited our little girl in my arms. “Here, can you take her? I need to feed her, but I want to change first.”

She kissed my cheek and headed for our bedroom. I had held few babies in my life, but holding Ellie felt utterly natural. I wondered how old she was, but she looked new to this world. Her face, her hair, her eyes, they were me. And Karly. And Edgar. And my mother, even my father, too. My entire family lived in that child, free of anything bad, of anything that wasn’t good and perfect. I wanted everything in my life to stop where it was right then and there. I wanted that moment to last forever.

Then Ellie began to cry. Her little face screwed up as she realized that her mother was gone and a stranger was holding her. With her cheeks red, she wailed for Karly and squirmed to get away from my arms. That was when the reality of this situation truly hit me.

She was not mine.

She belonged to someone else.

Nothing in this world was mine.

Karly returned moments later, wearing a loose Cubs jersey and sweats. “Aw, what’s wrong, Ellie?” she murmured as she retrieved her baby and took a seat in the living room near the fireplace. She lifted her shirt and offered up her breast, and Ellie settled immediately, making soft suckling noises. “Could you dim the lights, honey? She likes it better when it’s not so bright.”

I did.

“And some music?” she asked. “Something mellow.”

“Sure.”

When the piano music was playing, I took a chair opposite her. I needed to go, because the real Dylan could return home at any moment, but I found it impossible to drag myself away. Watching Karly, watching Ellie, I felt in awe of the amazing life this other version of myself had built. To be honest, I was jealous. Envy ate me up inside. This man, whoever he was, had made bad choices like me — he’d killed someone with all his pent-up frustration — and yet here he was with this beautiful wife and child. He’d gone through hell and come out in heaven on the other side.

It was almost too much for me to bear. Everything here felt so good, so natural, so right. And none of it belonged to me.

“I saw Susannah for lunch today,” Karly told me, using her mother’s first name.

“How is she?”

“I think having a granddaughter may turn out to be a reasonable trade for me getting out of the real estate business.”

“She didn’t try to get you back?” I asked, because I knew what Susannah was like in any world.

“Well, she didn’t put her heart into it. She brought it up once and then dropped it. She did remind me that with you working for a nonprofit, and me being a stay-at-home mom, we have practically no money.”

“What did you say?”

“I said you have a ten-minute walk to work, and I don’t mind Hamburger Helper.”

Karly’s eyes drifted to Ellie, and I watched her face glow with love.

“Are you really okay with this?” I asked her.

She looked up from Ellie, and her eyes were as serious as I’d ever seen them. “Life’s about making choices, Dylan. This was my choice. I don’t have a single regret.”

I wished I could say the same. At that moment, I was consumed with nothing but regrets. I told myself again: You need to go. I needed to leave this house and give it back to the people who belonged here.

But I couldn’t.

“I was working on another poem today,” Karly went on.

“That’s great.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, because we’re not poor enough, I want to get a useless graduate degree and write poetry. I haven’t shown any of them to my dad yet. He keeps pestering me, but I’m not ready. They’re really dark. I don’t know where any of it comes from. I’m so happy with my life, but I start writing, and it all comes out like a nightmare.”

“I think that’s the sign of a deep soul.”

“Oh, yeah, right,” she replied, but she had the twinkle that told me she liked hearing that.

“Can I see what you wrote?”

“Sure. I’ll read it to you later when we’re in bed.”

I covered my disappointment, because I wouldn’t be here for that. “Okay.”

“Would you get me a cup of tea, sweetheart?”

“Of course.”

I stood up from the chair. I wanted nothing more than to spend the evening like this, in the dim glow, with music playing. Then I would put my daughter in her crib and go to bed with my wife. My hunger to stay in this life overwhelmed me, but all good things had to end. Like a jumper on a bridge railing, I finally took the plunge, but I regretted it as soon as I fell.

“I think I’ll stretch my legs outside,” I told her. “I need to clear my head.”

“Are you all right?”

“Fine. I just want to get some air. Do you mind? Are you okay here?”

“I don’t mind, but please stay out of the park. Did you hear about that woman disappearing? I don’t like you walking home that way at night. I know the park is a shortcut, but I want you to stay on Foster.”

“Okay. Whatever you want.”

I went into the kitchen to make her tea. I knew the kind Karly liked: mandarin orange with a hint of cinnamon. It was too sweet for me, but she loved it. I could do this one last thing for her, but then I had to go. While the water boiled in a mug in the microwave, I got myself ready. I grabbed a light jacket from a hook near the back door, and I slipped it on.

Then I took a long, sharp knife from the butcher block on the counter and tucked it into the jacket pocket.

Chapter 31

Despite Karly’s warning, I headed straight for the park. It drew me into its darkness. There was no one around, just empty sidewalks and shadows where the glow of the light posts didn’t reach. The night hid me, but it hid him, too. I walked across the wet grass to the dense trees lining the riverbank, where my gaze couldn’t penetrate the wall of tangled brush. The sewery dankness of the water intensified as I got closer, like the blooming of a corpse flower. The wind was dead still, letting the smell hang in the air.

I thought about calling out to him. I was sure he could hear me. Let’s end this now. You and me. But I didn’t think he’d show himself yet. He was like a virus, stalking his victims silently and only coming into the open when he saw that they were vulnerable.

In the quietness, I listened to the chirp of a lone cricket, like a spy issuing a warning. A mosquito whined in my ear, and I batted it away. Keeping my eyes on the riverbank, I returned to the trail and headed north. As I walked, I curled my fingers around the handle of the knife in my pocket. Every few steps, I looked back, trying to pick out a silhouette in the trees.

No one was there.

I kept looking for the Dylan who lived in this world, coming home from work. I wasn’t sure what emotions I would feel when I saw him. We’d have the same face, the same body, the same walk, but he had so many things I didn’t. Karly and Ellie were waiting for him. When he was back in our apartment, he’d kiss his little girl and sleep next to his wife. I had no one waiting for me in my own world. They were all gone.

All I could do was make sure that this Dylan Moran got home safely to his family.

At least, that was what I told myself I was here to do.

Ahead of me, the trail split. One way led up to Foster Avenue. The other way led down into a tunnel beside the water. I took the tunnel, where lights illuminated rust, swirls of graffiti, and a swarm of bugs. The last time I’d done this, I’d found Dylan Moran’s body in the process of being consumed by rats. It made me wonder if I was already too late. Maybe the Dylan of this world was never coming home from his job. Maybe my doppelgänger had left his body beside the river, his decomposing flesh contributing to the rotting smell in my nose. But I couldn’t let myself think that way. I had to keep going.

On the other side of the tunnel, I climbed the wet grass to the north side of Foster. A few cars lit me up with their headlights. I walked several blocks to the neighborhood of North Park University. My mother, Eleanor, had gone there. I walked as far as Kedzie and saw a one-story office building across from the entrance to the university campus. I could see white lettering stenciled on the tall windows.

Chicago Housing Solutions.

This was the nonprofit run by Dylan Moran.

The lights were on inside. I could see a few workers, but I couldn’t make out individual faces. All I could do was wait for Dylan to head home and then follow him. I was near a McDonald’s, and I was hungry, so I took a minute to get myself an order of fries. I brought them back out and ate them one at a time as I perched on the top of a low fence that ran along Kedzie.

I’d been there about twenty minutes when a voice behind me said, “Mr. Moran?”

It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d be recognized here. I looked back, thinking about how to explain myself. A plump black woman in her sixties stood next to the door of an old Camry in the McDonald’s parking lot, with a brown takeaway bag in her hand. A boy no older than ten held her hand. Seeing my face, she gave me a wide, gap-toothed smile.

“Oh, Mr. Moran, I knew that was you. You taking a little dinner break?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

She looked down at the boy who was with her. “William, you go shake that man’s hand, all right? Do it right now. He’s a very special person.”

The boy looked nervous as he came up to the fence, but his grip was strong as he reached up to shake my hand. “My name’s Bill,” he said.

“Nice to meet you, Bill. I’m Dylan.”

The woman approached the fence, too. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

I began to apologize, but she waved it away.

“No, no, don’t you worry about that. With all the people you meet every day, I’m not surprised at all. I’m Cora-Lee Hobart. You helped my son Lionel last year. Saved him is what you did. You saved all of us, including me and my grandson here. Lionel fell behind on our rent when he was out of work for a couple of months. I needed looking after when I had my heart attack, but do you think the landlord cared about that? He was going to kick us out on the street. You wouldn’t let that happen. You made calls and wrote letters and got lawyers and people from the city on our side, and the landlord, he backed right down. Let Lionel catch up on the rent again when he went back to work. Without you, heaven only knows where we would be right now. God bless you, Mr. Moran.”

I smiled at her, but I felt envy again.

Envy that no one had ever spoken to me with that kind of gratitude in their voice. Envy that I’d never changed someone’s life like that.

“Well, it’s good to know you’re all doing so well,” I told her.

“That we are.” Cora-Lee looked around the parking lot and lowered her voice. “I’m not sure if you realize this, Mr. Moran, but people around here know your story. You made mistakes, and I’m sure you feel bad about what you did, and I know you paid a price for it. All I can tell you is, I thank God for your mistakes. They’re what brought you to us. Ain’t no accident, that’s for sure. You’re here for a reason.”

I shook my head with a kind of wonder. “That’s very nice of you to say.”

“It’s the truth.”

Her grandson shook my hand again. The two of them got into her Camry, and Cora-Lee waved at me as she pulled out of the parking lot. They drove down Foster toward the river, and I was alone again. When they were gone, I crossed the street to stand outside the offices of Chicago Housing Solutions. I hoped the darkness would keep me invisible on the other side of the windows. I needed to see this Dylan Moran up close — not just his face, but who he really was inside.

It wasn’t a big-budget operation. All the furniture looked secondhand. The yellow paint was dirty, with posters that read “Housing Is a Human Right” stuck crookedly on the walls with masking tape. The gray industrial carpet was worn and stained. Despite the late hour, almost a dozen people worked the phones and computers as if it were the middle of the day. A couple of them wore business clothes, but most wore blue T-shirts with the CHS logo, identifying them as volunteers. I saw two Lou Malnati’s pizza boxes on one desk, several liters of Mountain Dew, and a beat-up coffee machine with an oversize red tub of Folgers next to it.

My stare went from face to face. Then I saw him.

With his feet up on a desk and a phone propped on his shoulder, Dylan Moran drank Folgers from a paper cup.

He looked just like me. He hadn’t cut his hair or shaved. His clothes were similar to mine, a dark slim-fit button-down shirt and khakis, and leather shoes that had been through a war. As he talked on the phone, I saw a range of expressions that I regularly saw on my own face in the mirror and in photographs. We smiled alike; we frowned alike. Our blue eyes had the same heat. If you stood the two of us next to each other, we’d look like twins you couldn’t tell apart. Even Karly had accepted me as him. We were the same person.

But to my eyes, he was a completely different man. Our similarities were skin deep, and underneath all of that, we were strangers. Even the killer wearing my father’s leather jacket resembled me more than this Dylan Moran did. I couldn’t decide what it was that made him so foreign to me. I tried to unlock the riddle in his face, but I found myself unable to decipher it.

As I watched, he hung up the phone. I could see that it had been an intense, difficult call. I knew those calls — when I dealt with suppliers who were bucking deadlines, or with clients who kept changing their minds about their events. Those calls kept me up at night. But as soon as this Dylan put down the phone, a relaxed smile returned to his face. He called out something I couldn’t hear to two of the volunteers, and one of them tossed a foam football his way. They passed it back and forth for almost a minute. Then he got out of his chair, clapping his hands like a coach. He went from desk to desk, checking in on each of his volunteers. They joked. They argued. An old man showed him something on a computer screen that obviously made him happy, and Dylan kissed the top of his head. He finished his coffee, poured a little more from the pot, and drank it all. He found part of a doughnut in a pink box, and as he took bites of it, he sat on the edge of a desk and checked messages on his phone.

There was nothing special or unusual about any of it. It all looked so casual. So normal. This day, this evening, must have been like any other day for the man who worked inside these walls. That was when it hit me. That was when I understood what made him so different from me.

This Dylan Moran wasn’t running.

All my life, I’d been hurrying to get somewhere, without the slightest idea where that was. But this Dylan was already there. He looked at peace with the ground he was standing on. He would go home to his family tonight, and wake up tomorrow, and his life wouldn’t have changed at all. That was just the way he wanted it.

I felt a malevolent emotion grip my heart again.

Envy, as deep as a well.

Dylan checked his watch and realized what time it was. He was late going home. He looked up with a start, and in doing so, he stared out the windows toward the street. Among the reflections, he saw me. His face did a double-take, and he pushed himself off the desk. Before his mind could truly reconcile the idea that there were two of us, I backed up into the darkness and turned from the window. I crossed the street and took shelter behind the North Park sign, where I was invisible. The door to the building opened a few seconds later, and Dylan came outside. He looked long and hard both ways down the street, but when he saw that the sidewalks were empty, he shook his head and went back into the office.

He didn’t stay there for long.

Just a few minutes later, he reemerged, calling goodbye to the people inside. The incident in the window was obviously forgotten, because he didn’t check the street again. Instead, he turned left, heading toward the river.

Heading toward home.

I followed on the other side of the street. When the traffic cleared, I crossed and fell in behind him. We walked in tandem, half a block apart, but he never looked back. I knew, somehow I knew, that he would take the shortcut home through the park, despite the warnings from Karly that it wasn’t safe. He’d go through the tunnel beside the river, and he’d cut across the open grass where it was pitch black.

The three of us would be together. Dylan. Me. And the killer who was waiting for both of us.

I knew my job. I had to stop that killer once and for all. His journey ended here. This was why I was in this world. I swore to myself that I had no other motives in my heart.

Except I was lying.

I couldn’t hold back dark thoughts bubbling out of that well of envy and desire. Everything this man had, I wanted. His wife. His child. His job. My perfect life was right there in front of me, and all I had to do was take it for myself. If this man disappeared, no one would know. No one would miss him. I’d become him. I would go home and wrap Karly up in my arms, and this world would go on just as it had before. The only price to pay was one sin.

A life for a life.

Eve Brier had whispered to me when this began: You might be tempted to stay.

And not just stay. She’d seen this coming. She’d known that sooner or later, a serpent would dangle an apple in front of me and encourage me to take a bite. You might be tempted to kill that other version of yourself.

Yes, I was tempted. In fact, I couldn’t think about anything else.

Ahead of me, Dylan reached the bridge over the river. He crossed to the east side, still unaware of my presence only a few steps behind him. If he stayed straight, he’d remain on the brightly lit city streets, but the park was immediately below him, beckoning with its solitude and darkness.

I knew that’s where he’d go, because that’s where I would go.

And he did.

He turned onto the park path and skidded down a grassy slope. The empty tunnel led beside the river. For a brief moment, the hill blocked me from his view, and I used that moment to close the distance between us. When I got to the tunnel, Dylan was a shadow moving toward the light, only steps ahead of me.

I should have noticed immediately that the tunnel was dark. The lights had been on when I came this way before, but now they were off. I didn’t realize what it meant. I was too focused on catching up to the man in front of me. I plunged ahead, practically running beside the river, and the noise of my footsteps finally made him aware of me.

He stopped, turning around slowly to see who I was. I stopped, too.

We confronted each other. He stood at the end of the tunnel, lit by the light post and the glow of the street above him. I was still in darkness, my face obscured. We weren’t far apart. If I leaped for him, I’d be on him. He had nowhere to run.

Dylan raised his arms with the fingers of his hands spread wide. He knew that I was a threat, but for now, I was just another Chicago mugger shaking him down. “I’m not armed,” he called. “I’m not going to fight back. What do you want? Money? I don’t have much, but you can have whatever’s in my wallet.”

I spoke to him from the tunnel. “I don’t want money.”

“Then what do you want?”

I tried to speak, but my throat choked up with guilt and indecision. We were alone, no one around but the two of us. It was the perfect moment. Everything I wanted was right in front of me, standing on the trail. All I had to do was take it.

“Talk to me,” Dylan went on. “Are you in trouble? Do you need help? Tell me what you want.”

I couldn’t hold it in. What I said made no sense, not when he couldn’t see my face and see who I was. But I told him anyway.

“I want your life. That’s what I want.”

Fear widened his eyes. He flinched and took a step backward, ready to bolt. I wondered if he was thinking about that earlier moment, looking through the window, seeing his mirror image on the other side of the glass. Did he realize that was me? Could he hear himself in my voice?

“Don’t run,” I warned him sharply, grabbing the knife from my pocket and holding it up in silhouette. “Don’t try it. You won’t get far.”

“Listen to me. I have a little girl. A baby.”

“I know.”

“You know? You know who I am?”

“I know everything about you... Dylan Moran.”

“Then what do you want with me?”

“I told you. You’re leading the life I’m supposed to have. And I want it back.”

“What does that even mean?” He narrowed his eyes, trying to see me in the darkness. “Who are you?”

I almost stepped into the light and gave him the answer. I’m you. If I came at him, he’d know who was taking away his world. Before he died, he’d look into my eyes and see the truth. I tightened my grip around the knife handle, feeling it slip in my sweaty fingers. My mouth was dry with desire for what this man had. My legs tensed, ready to move.

But I couldn’t do it. This wasn’t me.

I was trying to take things that belonged to someone else. I’d lost my Karly; he’d kept his. I’d waited to have a child with her; he’d said yes. I could take those things for myself, but in the end, they still wouldn’t be mine. I hadn’t earned them, and this man had. He deserved to keep them, not to have them ripped away by a stranger. I couldn’t steal his life.

I stayed in the tunnel, where I was invisible. The silence between us dragged out.

“It doesn’t matter who I am,” I told him finally. “Go home. Get out of here. Go home to Karly. Go home to your little girl.”

He backed away, unsure whether this was a trick. I stayed in the darkness without moving, watching my one chance at happiness leave me behind. When Dylan got to the top of the slope, he turned his back on me. I knew he would run now, disappearing into the park.

“Dylan,” I called after him sharply.

He stopped, although he was far enough away that I wasn’t a threat anymore. “What is it?”

“Not that way.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t go through the park. Stay on the street. If you never want to see me again, stay out of the park at night.”

There was something in the sound of my voice that convinced him. He went the other way. He clambered up the grass away from the trail, and when he was out of sight, he ran. I heard his footsteps pounding above me, as he joined the lights and traffic and people on the street.

He was safe. He’d make it home now.

My grief tasted bitter in my mouth. I felt hollowed out inside. I’d come a long way and ended up back where I started, with nothing to show for the journey. The guilt, the loss, the shame, all distracted me. I wasn’t thinking about where I was, or the darkness of the tunnel that had been lit up when I came this way before. I’d missed the clues I should have seen immediately. I’d forgotten why I was in this world.

I turned around and saw my own shadow.

He buried a knife in my stomach.

Chapter 32

The blade sliced through tissue and muscle and severed my intestines. I felt an electric shock of pain and then a strange flowing warmth. My doppelgänger was right in front of me, his breath on my face. He cut through my abdomen with the practiced hand of a butcher. The damage was done in seconds, and then he put his other hand flat on my chest and pushed me away. I stumbled backward. The knife slid out of my body. I clutched at my stomach and felt blood oozing between my fingers. I staggered out of the tunnel into the light, with a wet red stain growing on my shirt. The river slurped along the bank beside me, sounding loud inside my head.

Shock overwhelmed me. With my fingers numb, my own knife clattered uselessly to the sidewalk. I tried to hold the blood in, but I couldn’t. It pulsed out of my body.

Dylan followed me out of the tunnel, wiping the bloody knife on his leather jacket.

“I thought you were different,” he sneered. “When I saw you take out that knife, I really thought you might have the balls to kill him. But no. You had your chance, and you let it slip away.”

I fought down the dizziness in my head and charged at him. He saw me coming. Smoothly, he eased his weight onto his left foot, turned sideways, and lashed out with a jab of his right leg. His foot kicked like a piston into the wound in my stomach, and my brain turned upside down with agony. I stumbled, moaned, then collapsed to my hands and knees. My mouth spat up vomit. Blood dripped from my belly onto the trail, a constellation of cherry-red spatter.

I tried to forget about my panic. My fear. My pain. I needed to function, at least for a while longer. The blood on the ground became a kind of Rorschach test, centering me. I stared at the blood, and then my gaze shifted to the weeds and cracks in the bridge’s retaining wall, and then to the shadows thrown by the light post overhead, and then finally to the long steel blade of my knife. It still lay on the trail where I’d dropped it. The black handle was inches away. My body blocked it from the view of the Dylan standing over me. I could feel him there, like a boxer crowing over the adversary he’d knocked to the ground.

My fingers inched closer to the knife like the legs of a spider. In one jerky motion, I grabbed it and pushed off my knees. I slashed at him with the blade, and my knife landed in flesh, driving four inches deep into his thigh.

He howled with pain and twisted away, ripping the knife handle from my hand. Grimacing, he yanked the knife out of his leg and threw it like a boomerang into the river. I could hear the splash. He lifted his own knife high over his head, and his eyes boiled with fury. I expected him to bury the blade in my neck, cutting through arteries that would erupt in fountains of blood.

Instead, slowly, he brought his arm back down. I was on my knees on the sidewalk, and he limped toward me and slid the sharp edge of the blade under my chin. He pressed hard enough that I could feel the sting. Then he lowered the knife and jabbed it into the fabric of my shirt and tore away one of the sleeves. He backed up and tied the sleeve tightly around his leg. The cloth was crimson in seconds.

With his wound bandaged, he jerked me to my feet. Another shock wave of pain radiated through my body. I had trouble standing. He threw me against the railing at the riverbank and pushed the point of the knife against my rib cage, where my heart was beating wildly. Below me, I could smell the brown sludge of the river.

“Do you want me to end it?” he asked.

“Do whatever you want.”

“Sorry, I won’t make it quick for you. You get to sit here and die slowly, knowing what I’m doing on the other side of the park. Listen carefully. Maybe you’ll be able to hear Karly scream.”

My lip curled into a snarl of rage. I dug my fingernails like claws into his wounded thigh. It felt good to see him suffer, but my victory was short lived. He scored the knife in a bright-red line across my chest and hurled me to the ground. I landed hard on my side as he delivered a vicious kick into my stomach with the toe of his shoe. Fireworks blew up in my head, white hot and blinding. I was barely conscious.

He knelt beside me, and his voice made a sadistic whisper in my ear.

“I’m going to kill all of them, Dylan. Do you want to watch? Sorry, but I don’t think you’ll make it that far. You’ll see it through my eyes, though. We’re connected, you and me. You’ll know what I’m doing. You’ll watch each one of them go. Dylan. Karly. And the little girl, too. I won’t forget her.”

“Don’t.”

It was the only word I could drag from my throat. He just laughed at me.

“It’s too late. You had your chance. Once I’m done, I’ll go back to the Art Institute and start over. I have more worlds to conquer, and you won’t be around to chase me. You failed again, Dylan. I’m stronger than you are. Face it, I always have been.”

He pushed himself to his feet and limped away.

I tried to focus, but my eyes spun in circles and then blinked shut. I lost consciousness. When I opened my eyes again, I didn’t see him anymore. Inside the spinning kaleidoscope of my mind, I saw my father instead. I was a boy huddled in the corner of the bedroom, and my mother’s gun was on top of the dresser, and my father was reaching for it, cocking it, aiming it, pulling the trigger.

I should have been able to stop it.

All my life I’d looked back on that moment and wondered why I’d let it happen. I should have been able to stop it!

If only I’d reacted faster. If only I’d seen him going for the gun, if I’d screamed, if I’d warned my mother, if I’d leaped off the floor and run to him, if I’d put myself between him and her. I could have done something. Instead, I sat there and watched my father pick up the gun and shoot my mother in the head. I did nothing.

I let her die.

I let Roscoe die.

I let Karly die.

Losing them was all on me, one failure after another.

Never again. I heard myself shouting somewhere in my head, trying to jolt myself awake. Never again! I wasn’t going to let it happen to anyone else. I’d come here to set myself free, and that was what I had to do.

The blur of my memories faded away. Somehow, I came back to life. I was still in the park. I’d passed out, but I had no idea for how long. The other Dylan was gone. I was alone on the sidewalk in a river of blood, but I was still alive, and that meant I had one more chance. I grabbed the railing on the riverbank and pulled myself up. When I was standing, I tried to swallow down the pain. I pushed a hand against my abdomen to stanch the bleeding, and I staggered up the trail.

Where was he?

I didn’t see him.

The trail crested a hill beside the trees. With each step, I dragged stale air in and out of my chest. Bugs swarmed around me, as if smelling that I was close to collapse. No, it was my blood they wanted. I felt them landing on my fingers, beating their sticky wings, drinking their fill from my wounds. I didn’t have the stamina to swat them away. Let them feed.

Faster, I thought to myself. You have to go faster.

My legs carried me down the dark trail at a pace that was almost a run. I was in a race now, not just between me and my doppelgänger, but between my mind and my body, to see which one would give up first.

Where was he?

There. I could see him ahead of me now. He limped in and out of the glow of the light posts. He’d slowed; he was losing blood, like me. I dug into my reserves and pushed aside pain, and breath, and blood, and memory, and I stumbled ahead like a marathon runner with the finish line looming at the end of one more long block.

I was nearly there. I had him within reach.

Then, from the middle of the park, I heard something that sent a shudder of terror through my soul.

“Dylan?”

It was a voice from the darkness, calling my name. A voice I knew so well.

Karly.

No, no, no, no, it couldn’t be her, not here, not now. But the Dylan I was chasing heard her, too, and he stopped on the trail. The unmistakable silhouette of my beautiful wife broke from the trees and joined him. She wrapped him up in an embrace and kissed him. It was dark, and she could barely see him, but she showed no fear.

Why should she? He was her husband.

Relief filled her voice. “Dylan, where were you? I was so worried when you didn’t come home. I left Ellie with the neighbors and came out to find you. Sweetheart, I told you not to go through the park.”

I saw him smile. There was nothing but evil in that smile. I heard him say, “I’m sorry, my love.”

Then I saw his hand disappear into his leather jacket for the knife.

He was just like my father, reaching for the gun.

I should have been able to stop it!

I summoned everything I had left in my body. I threw myself across the last few steps and launched into the air, colliding hard with his back and knocking him to the ground. Pain exploded in my gut, tearing open my wound, unleashing a sea of blood. I took Dylan’s head into both of my hands and slammed his skull against the concrete. Then I did it again, and again, hearing the bone crack. When his eyes finally closed, I wrapped my hands tightly around his throat and pushed my thumbs into his windpipe. I cut off every atom of air that would keep him alive.

Above me, Karly screamed.

Of course she did. She couldn’t see my face. I was a stranger attacking her husband. She grabbed my shoulders to pull me off, and when I hung on, she kicked and scratched and got on the ground and clamped her teeth around my forearm. I couldn’t take it. Finally, I let go, and she dragged me backward into the grass.

We were still in the dark. She couldn’t see my face.

“Karly, stop!” I screamed.

But all her primal instincts had taken over. She hammered my body with her fists. Her knee sank into the bloody mess of my abdomen, causing waves of agony that left me struggling to breathe. I put up my arms to fend her off and shouted again.

“Karly, it’s me!”

My familiar voice, my words, slowly seeped into her mind. She began to perceive that something impossible was happening here, but it was already too late.

Rising above her like a ghost under the park light, I saw my doppelgänger. He was on his feet again, the knife in his hand. Blood from his fractured skull ran in ribbons down his face. He jumped toward my wife. With a surge of adrenaline, I shoved Karly away, but Dylan kept coming. He landed on top of me, and we rolled together, battling for control of the knife. My strength was waning, but so was his. Both of us were dizzy, drained, desperate. The park became a whirling gyroscope inside our heads, and I could feel our minds coming together. I saw his face and my face through my own eyes. As we rolled, as our bodies intertwined, we were becoming one person. We’d always been one person, trapped inside endless worlds.

There was only one way to stop him. I had to sacrifice myself. I let go of the knife and took hold of his throat again, choking him. With his hands free, he thrust the knife into my back, and pulled it out, and thrust it in again. I held on through every lightning bolt of agony. I ignored the pain and weakness and blood and kept my fingers wrapped around his windpipe. Below me, his face turned purple. His eyes bulged. His tongue swelled from his mouth. He stabbed me over and over, but the shock waves rippling through my back belonged to someone else, not me. My mind shunted them aside. I had no wounds, no feeling, no body at all. I was nothing but two hands locked around a killer’s neck.

He reared back to stab me one more time.

This time, the blow never came. His arm stiffened in midair. The knife slid away from his fingers and dropped to the grass. His stare grew fixed, the whites of his eyes ruby red with exploded blood vessels. His body went limp.

It was done.

Dylan Moran was dead.

It took time for me to unclench my knuckles and peel my fingers away from his neck. When I was finally able to let go, I rolled off him. We lay in the park next to each other, two twins. One dead, one dying. I turned my head, watching him, still not able to believe I’d killed him. Exhausted, I let my eyes blink shut — not for long, only for a few seconds. When I opened them again, he was gone. The ground was empty, as if his body had never been there at all. He was an intruder who didn’t belong in this world.

Neither did I.

I had to go, too.

Every breath had become torture. I dragged in air and tasted blood as I exhaled. It wouldn’t be long. And yet I felt free.

Karly knelt by my side. Her blue eyes were full of confusion and fear. “Dylan. Oh, my God, Dylan, what’s going on? That other man, he was you. He had your face. Where is he? Where did he go?”

I whispered to her as my brain floated. “Go home, Karly.”

“No, you need help. An ambulance.”

She took her phone in her hand, but I found enough strength to hold her wrist down. “Don’t.”

She put her hand softly on my cheek. “I can’t lose you. Ellie can’t lose you.”

“You won’t lose me. Go home. I’m there.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m not your Dylan. I’m not him. Your Dylan is safe. I promise you.”

“I don’t understand!”

I felt black clouds encroaching. I didn’t want her to see the end. “Please, Karly. Go.”

“How can I leave? How can you say that?”

She bent down, and her hair swished across my face. Her lips found mine. I could barely feel them, but the barest sensation of softness was enough to take away some of the pain. She held on to me, our faces pressed together. I smelled her perfume, but my five senses had begun to shut down, and only the sixth was left.

“Do you love me?” I asked her.

“You know I do.”

“Then trust me. Go home.”

She pushed herself up on her hands, her face over mine, only inches away. “Are you really there?”

“Yes.”

“How can I possibly believe that?”

“Because I would never let you go.”

She stared down at me, trying to find answers in my face. I felt her kiss me again, slow and soft, like a fairy touch. She got to her feet and stood over me, memorizing the look of me, the way I’d memorized her.

“Come find me, Dylan,” she murmured.

I tried to speak, but I couldn’t.

“Come find me,” she said again. “I’m still here.”

Then she walked away, not looking back. I followed her with my eyes until the darkness of the park enveloped her. She was in her world; she had her husband and her child. I was alone again.

I lay on my back, staring at the sky. Stars ran across the heavens in limitless numbers. There was no more pain at all. My blood was on the ground, but I doubted it would be here for long.

My chest swelled with one last breath.

It gave me the strength for one last word.

“Infinite.”

Chapter 33

“Welcome back,” Eve Brier told me.

I still lay on my back, but instead of a field of stars above me when I opened my eyes, I saw the white foam tiles of an office ceiling. Beneath me, the damp grass of River Park had been replaced by a leather sofa. Instinctively, my hands went to my abdomen, where I expected to feel blood gushing from an open wound. Not anymore. I was completely uninjured.

With a jerk, I sat up, trying to orient myself. A little bit of nausea lingered, as well as a splitting headache. “Where am I?”

“Hancock Center,” Eve replied. “My office.”

She sat across the room from me in a cushioned roller chair near a row of floor-to-ceiling windows. Behind her, I could see the expanse of Lake Michigan, a view that was interrupted by one of the building’s huge diagonal crossbeams. On the horizon, the blue of the water met the blue of the sky.

Eve cocked her head over her bony shoulders. She had an enigmatic smile on her face. Her almond-shaped eyes still looked alien. She had a pen in her hands that she stroked in an oddly suggestive manner. Her lush blond-and-brown hair swept messily across her shoulders. She pulled her chair close to the sofa and leaned forward, looking at me with an intense, curious expression.

“Did you go there?”

I knew what she meant. “The Many Worlds? Yes, I did.”

“Was it what you imagined?”

I didn’t know how to answer her. I got off the sofa and had to brace myself, because my legs were unsteady. I crossed to the windows and stared at the vista. Chicago looked the same. “Why are we not at Navy Pier? How did we get here?”

“Navy Pier? I don’t understand.”

I turned away from the windows. “That’s where you gave me the injection.”

Eve shook her head. “No, we’ve been in my office the whole time.”

“I’ve never been to your office before.”

“Actually, you’ve been here half a dozen times. We’ve been working through your grief over Karly. But today was the first time we tried my new therapy.”

I sat down again and tried to puzzle out what was happening to me. By saying the escape word, I should have gone back to my world. The real world. And yet my surroundings all felt brand new.

“How long?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“How long have I been here?”

“Today? About five hours. That’s quite a bit longer than most of my patients experience in their sessions. I was starting to get concerned. If it went on much longer, I was debating how to bring you back. But I assume you finally said the escape word.”

“I did,” I said, after a moment of silence.

She sensed my hesitation. “Dylan, it may feel strange, but you really are back where you belong.”

Was I?

Then why did everything feel different?

“I don’t remember any of this,” I told her. “Your office. The sessions we’ve had. I don’t remember the past few weeks at all, other than being in the Many Worlds.”

“That’s not surprising. Short-term memory loss is a common side effect of the treatment.”

“Because of the psychotropic drugs?” I asked.

“Psychotropics?” she replied with surprise. “Where did you get that idea? All I gave you was a simple muscle relaxant to put you in a receptive frame of mind. The rest is hypnotic suggestion, and then... well, it’s up to your brain to take it from there. However, the intensity of the experience can leave patients extremely disoriented. Your memory typically comes back after a while. It may take a few hours, or even up to a few days. Given how long you were under, I’m not entirely sure what you can expect.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to remember my recent past, but the only experiences that were vivid were what I’d been through in the other worlds. I could still remember the violence and death I’d seen there. I could feel it. My hands were raw where I’d squeezed them around Dylan’s neck. I could taste Karly on my lips.

“This hypnotic suggestion you gave me,” I said. “How did that work?”

“Before we began, you picked a place that you wanted to use as your ‘portal.’ The place where the various versions of yourself would intersect.”

“And that was... ?”

“The Art Institute,” Eve replied with another curious smile, as if she knew I was testing her. “So that’s where I told you to go.”

I got off the sofa again, feeling restless. Everything she said made sense, but I was having trouble leaving the experiences of my hypnosis behind. “This will sound like a strange question, but are the police looking for me?”

Surprise creased her face. “The police? For what?”

“Murder. Four women were stabbed to death. They’d all attended events at my hotel.”

“Murder? God, no, there’s nothing like that. I’m so sorry, you must have gone through horrific things while you were under. That’s very unusual. Most patients don’t have experiences that are nearly so... violent. In fact, most of them never make it out of their portal. But I take it you did.”

“Yes.”

“You actually went to other worlds?”

“I went to several worlds, but the first time—”

“Yes?”

“The first time felt like it was the real world. That’s how I remember it. I don’t recall getting there through the Art Institute. You even had me say the safe word for you in that world, and nothing changed. I didn’t come back here. I don’t understand how that could be.”

“The safe word only works if you’re aware of what’s happening to you,” Eve replied. “Your brain may not have been ready to process the experience yet.”

I thought about that world and everything I’d experienced. The insanity. The violence. The doppelgänger breaking into my life. Of course, none of it was real. Of course, I was already deep inside Eve’s therapy.

So why did being here feel wrong?

“I’m distressed if this was traumatic for you,” Eve went on. “That was definitely never the point of the therapy.”

She sensed my disorientation and tried to reassure me with a smile.

“Look, we obviously need to talk about everything you experienced,” she went on, “but it’s better if we don’t do that right now. You need time to process. We can set up another appointment in a few days, and you can fill me in on what you went through. In the meantime, hopefully your short-term memory will begin to come back, too.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

“It might be better if you don’t drive yourself home.”

“No, I’m fine. I’m starting to feel better. But I do have some questions. With my memory gone, I need to know — well, I need to know more about who I am. I’m a little lost about what’s real and what’s not.”

“Certainly. Ask anything you want.”

I paced back and forth in her office, trying to gather my thoughts. Eve’s desk was on the opposite wall, and I ran my hand along the oak surface. She had a copy of her book there: Many Worlds, Many Minds. It matched the book I’d purchased in the hotel ballroom, at a time when I still thought I was in the real world. When I picked it up and turned it over, I saw the same photograph of Eve that I’d seen in the poster for her event.

“Dylan?” Eve asked. “Are you okay?”

I put the book back down on her desk. “I guess so. You called me Dylan. That’s my name, right? Dylan Moran.”

She smiled. “Yes.”

“What day is it?”

“Wednesday.”

“Where do I work?”

“You tell me,” she replied. “It’s easier to get your memory back if you let your brain help you. Where do you think you work?”

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

“That’s right.”

“I live in an apartment across from River Park. My grandfather, Edgar, lives upstairs.”

“Yes.”

I thought about everything else that had changed in the other worlds. “Have I mentioned a woman named Tai Ragasa during our sessions?”

“The coworker with a crush on you? Yes.”

“But that’s all she is to me? A coworker? We’re not involved?”

“No.”

“My best friend, Roscoe Tate. He’s — he’s not alive.”

“No. You lost Roscoe in a car accident several years ago. It was a devastating event for you. He was the one stable influence in your life after the deaths of your parents.”

“That was also the night... ,” I began, but I couldn’t go on.

Eve waited, but when she saw me hesitate, she filled in the blanks. “That was also the night you met Karly.”

“Eve, why did I come to you?”

“You know the answer to that question, Dylan. Why don’t you tell me?”

“Karly,” I said. “I lost her in the flood.”

“See? You do remember.”

“But I don’t remember coming to you. I don’t remember any of this.”

Eve shrugged. “Three weeks ago, I had an event at your hotel. I gave a lecture about my Many Worlds, Many Minds theory. Afterward, you came up to me. This was only a few days after the accident. You were still devastated, still in deep grief. You said you normally didn’t have much time for shrinks, but everyone had been telling you to get help. My theory intrigued you. You said that ever since the accident, you’d been obsessed with your bad choices. You thought Karly had died because of the man you were and the mistakes you’d made in life. You wondered whether there was a Dylan out there who’d made better choices, and you wanted to know what that world might look like. That’s how it began.”

“I suppose that makes sense.”

“But you still don’t remember any of it.”

“No.”

Eve stood up from the chair. “Don’t worry too much about that. I told you, it will take time. For now, it’s better if you go home and rest.”

I crossed the room and shook her hand. “I guess I should thank you.”

“You should only thank me if you experienced some kind of epiphany. The whole point of my Many Worlds therapy is to help you understand the world you’re in by seeing the alternatives. Did you learn anything about yourself?”

“I think so.”

“What?”

“There was a part of me I had to kill. So that’s what I did.”

She frowned. “Literally?”

“Yes.”

“Well. That’s extreme. I’ve never heard that before. Do you feel like a different person as a result of it?”

“Actually, I do. I just wish I’d figured it out a long time ago. I’ve lost the things that matter most to me, and now it’s too late to change my life.”

She gave me a reassuring smile. “It’s not too late. As long as you’re breathing, there’s still time. I’ll see you again soon, Dylan. Things will start feeling better, you’ll see.”

“I hope so.”

I headed for the door, but as I reached to open it, I stopped. I glanced around at the office again, which was completely unfamiliar. Even so, I told myself that everything here was solid. Normal. Real. So was Eve Brier.

And yet.

“Dylan? Are you all right?”

“I don’t know. Something still feels off to me. I can’t put my finger on it.”

“It’s the aftereffects of the therapy. That will pass. Trust me, Dylan, you’re back now.”

I had no reason to disbelieve anything she’d told me, but I’m sure my face broadcast my doubts.

“You still don’t think this is your own world, do you?” Eve asked.

“I’m not sure. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure I want this to be the real world.”

“Why is that?”

I hesitated, trying to understand it myself. I could still feel those last moments in River Park as I lay dying. “Something happened to me right before I came back.”

“When you had to kill your other self?”

“Yes.”

“Try not to think of the violence as real, because it wasn’t. You were right here in my office the whole time.”

“Yes, I know, that’s what you said. But it’s more complicated than that. I saw Karly in that world. She was there, too.”

Eve frowned. “Ah. That must have been very emotional.”

“It was.”

“Sometimes an experience like that is part of letting go,” she told me. “It’s how you deal with grief.”

“Maybe so, but I can’t stop thinking about what she said to me.”

“What did she say?”

I could hear Karly’s voice, as clearly as if she were standing over me again. Looking down at me and whispering her last words. It didn’t feel like goodbye. It didn’t feel like what she would say if we were about to be parted forever.

It felt like a message.

Something to carry with me wherever I was going.

“She told me to come find her. She said she was still here.”

Chapter 34

I left Eve’s office and passed the Lucent sculpture in the lobby of Hancock Center. Its thousands of lights, reflected in the black pool of water, taunted me like an echo of what I’d been through. Each flickering light was another world, another life, among an endless number constantly multiplying in my mind. I’d visited some of those places, and now I was back in my own world.

Except, according to Eve, I’d never actually left. All this time, I’d been lying on her sofa on the twenty-ninth floor.

As I got back to Michigan Avenue, nothing felt out of place around me. The city looked and smelled the same. The water tower was where it was supposed to be. The shops, people, and traffic hadn’t changed. When I checked my wallet, I found a parking ticket for a garage on Chestnut. It was dated early that morning, just as Eve had told me. The key fob in my pocket led me to a used Ford in the garage, and the documents in the glove compartment told me I’d purchased the car three weeks ago. That would have been shortly after the accident.

Everything fit. So why could I remember nothing between then and now?

Why did I feel like I didn’t belong here?

I drove from the garage into the city. Eve had told me to go home and rest, but I wasn’t ready to do that yet. I was still struggling to decide if I could trust what my senses were telling me. I kept looking for a flaw, a clue, a telltale sign that this world was an illusion like the others. At every stoplight, I checked faces in the cars and crosswalks, hunting for another Dylan Moran. If I saw one of my doubles, then I would know that my brain was lying. But the only Dylan in this world seemed to be me.

My first stop was near Horner Park where Roscoe had died. I needed to see the scars on the ash tree at the corner. They were still there, marking the collision that had killed my friend. Nothing was different. When I was done there, I walked two blocks and found the home listed for sale by Chance Properties. Scotty Ryan’s truck was outside. He was doing renovations; he was still alive. I had no memory of whether I’d gotten into a fight with him over his affair with Karly, but it was obvious that no version of myself had come to the house and stabbed him to death.

What I remembered of the past few weeks wasn’t real.

What I didn’t remember was real. I still found that hard to accept.

My next stop was at Alicia Tate’s clinic. I needed to see someone I’d known for years, someone who would never lie to me. The last time I’d been in this clinic, which felt like only hours ago, I’d seen Roscoe, alive. I still expected him to come through the door, even though I knew that was impossible.

Alicia hugged me when she saw me. She looked normal; she looked the same. When she took me back to her office, she asked me how I was, and I told her very honestly that I didn’t know.

“Alicia, this is an odd question, but when did you last see me?”

She gave me a quizzical stare. “What?”

“I’m having some short-term memory issues. When did we last talk?”

“You came in for an appointment a few days after Karly’s funeral.”

“Was anything wrong with me?”

“Only the things I’d expect. Depression, anxiety, sleeplessness. Your blood sugar was elevated, which can happen as a result of stress, and so was your heart rate. You were grieving, and that takes a physical toll as well as an emotional and psychological one. Now, tell me about these memory issues.”

“I will, but first things first. When I saw you, did I say anything about... seeing things?”

“Seeing things? Like what?”

“Like my identical twin. A doppelgänger. Someone who looked exactly like me.”

Her brow wrinkled in surprise. “No, you didn’t say anything like that. Why, are you having hallucinations?”

I ignored her question. “Did I mention a psychiatrist named Eve Brier?”

Alicia frowned. “Yes. You told me you’d heard her speak at the hotel, and you’d read her book. You were planning to see her for therapy. I told you I wasn’t sure that was the right thing to do. Not therapy itself — I strongly suggested you talk to someone. But I looked up this Dr. Brier, and based on what I found, I had concerns about the kind of treatment she offered. Something tells me you went to see her anyway.”

“I think I did.”

“You think?” Alicia asked. “What does that mean?”

I ran my hands through my hair in frustration. Then I told her everything. The whole story. What I remembered and didn’t remember. What I’d experienced in the other worlds. What Eve had told me when I’d awakened in her office. Alicia took it all in and didn’t say anything for a while.

“You saw Roscoe?” she asked finally.

“Yes. In one world, he was a priest, but in another, he was a doctor, practicing here with you.”

Alicia glanced at the pictures of her son. “Well, I can see the appeal of what Dr. Brier is offering her patients. I can also understand your being reluctant to leave those worlds behind, if you were able to be with Roscoe and Karly again.”

“That’s the thing. I’m not sure I have left them behind.”

“What do you mean?”

“Those worlds felt every bit as real to me as this one does. How do I know this isn’t just another part of the illusion? I don’t trust what I see, Alicia. I look around, and everything in my life looks and feels right. But then again, it doesn’t.”

“Well, I remember your whole life, Dylan. If you’re asking me, this is the real world, but I don’t know if that helps you. I probably would have told you the same thing in those worlds, right?”

“No, it does help. I appreciate it. Eve says the procedure can be disorienting, and that’s probably what’s happening to me. Somehow I have to turn off that experience and turn this world on again.”

Alicia got up from her chair. She came around and sat on the front of the desk. “If these worlds were as vivid as you say, that will take time.”

“I know. I just don’t understand how I could lose three weeks of my life. If Eve’s right, I’ve been getting up, going to work, living my life this whole time, right up until I went to her office this morning. Now it’s like those past few weeks have been erased and replaced by the worlds she sent me to. How can that happen?”

“I can’t tell you that without knowing more about her therapy. But I think there’s more going on here than just Eve Brier.”

“What do you mean?”

“Trauma can affect memory, too, Dylan. You’ve been through a singularly traumatic event.”

“Karly.”

“That’s right.” Alicia put a hand on my shoulder. “Let me ask you something. Forget about today. Forget about the past few weeks. What’s the last thing you do remember?”

I closed my eyes and rewound the clock in my head until the seconds started ticking forward again.

“I remember being in the river,” I told her. “I was under the water. That was when everything stopped.”

Finally, I went home.

In the foyer of our apartment building, I could hear the buzz of Edgar’s game show on the television upstairs. I thought about going to see him, but he was probably asleep. Tomorrow was Thursday, and I’d see him at the Art Institute.

Inside my apartment, I saw the things I’d expect to find for a man who’d just lost his wife. Flower arrangements were beginning to wilt. Dozens of sympathy cards lay on the table, some opened, some still sealed. Laundry was piled in baskets, and dishes that needed to be done were stacked in the sink. This was the apartment of someone who’d been in a kind of Alaska for weeks, frozen in place, unable to move on. Seeing it all triggered fresh memories, too. The last three weeks didn’t come back, but everything that had happened before Karly and I left on our weekend trip was still here in the apartment, waiting for me.

We’d argued in the living room that night. She’d lost an earring as she tore at her hair in guilt over the affair. There, on the floor near the fireplace, I saw the glittering diamond stud where it had fallen.

I’d packed carelessly for our trip, letting a pile of winter sweaters tumble from the upper shelf in our closet. I’d kicked them angrily across the floor. All the sweaters were still there, exactly where I’d left them. Obviously, in the time since then, I hadn’t bothered to pick them up.

Karly had been playing Ellie Goulding songs before I got home late that night. She’d stopped the music in midsong when she saw me. I remembered what she’d been listening to, a song called “Figure 8.” I started the music again, and the same song took up right where she’d paused the disc.

There was no way around the truth.

This was my apartment. This was my world. No other Dylan Moran lived here, just me.

I went to the kitchen to pour myself a drink. When the lowball glass was full, I stared at the ice rattling around in the vodka like diamonds and then drained it all out into the sink. I did the same with the rest of the bottle. We had an unopened bottle of Absolut in one of the cabinets, and I got rid of that one the same way. I kept going until all the alcohol we had in the apartment was gone.

Dylan Moran no longer drank.

While I was in the kitchen, I heard the front doorbell. I had no idea who would be coming to see me, but I went through the apartment and pulled open the door. Detective Harvey Bushing stood on my front step. He was as emaciated as he’d been in the other worlds, and his eyes had the same wily intelligence. In my own life, I didn’t remember him at all.

Even so, he knew me.

“Mr. Moran? Detective Harvey Bushing. We met a couple of weeks ago. You called 911 after finding the body of a young woman near the riverbank.”

“What can I do for you, Detective?” I replied, although two weeks ago was inside the fog that I couldn’t remember. I had no memory of finding a body or calling 911.

“Well, I wanted to give you the news personally that we’ve arrested the man who murdered Betsy Kern. It was an ex-boyfriend of hers who’d been stalking her for some time. He confessed.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“I just wanted to apologize to you. I was a little harsh when I first interviewed you in the park. The fact is, it’s not uncommon for the person who reports a crime like this to be the actual perpetrator.”

“You were just doing your job, Detective.”

“I appreciate your understanding. Anyway, the case is closed. I figured you’d want to know that.”

“Thank you, Detective.”

“Good night, Mr. Moran.”

“Good night.”

I watched the detective retreat down the sidewalk in the darkness. He got into his gray sedan and drove away. On the other side of the street, I could see the trees of River Park, where so much had happened to me in those other worlds. In the horizon sky, over the river, I saw a distant flash of lightning, followed by an extended roll of thunder that made the ground shake. A storm was coming in from the west.

I closed the door.

Inside, I sat down in a chair by the fireplace, feeling utterly empty. I bent down and picked up Karly’s diamond earring and rolled it between my fingertips.

Oddly, it was Detective Bushing’s visit that finally convinced me of where I was. I felt as if one last little mystery had been solved. I’d stumbled upon Betsy Kern’s body during my missing weeks, and that experience had worked its way into my explorations.

It was over now. The Many Worlds were behind me.

This was reality, just as Eve Brier had said.

As that thought struck me, I realized what it meant. I’d never see Karly again. She was really gone. No matter what I’d learned about myself, I was too late to change the past. Once you lose someone, you’ve lost them forever.

I sat in the chair, cupped my hands over my face, and spent the rest of the night crying for my wife.

Chapter 35

In the morning, the rain came.

There was nothing for me to do but start living again, so I drove through the storm to the LaSalle Plaza downtown. Black clouds hung over the city and refused to move. A deluge poured across my windshield, making it almost impossible to see where I was going. The streets became lakes under my tires, and streams ran along the curbs and sidewalks, carrying Chicago debris.

I got to the office before anyone else, as I usually did. There was no dawn outside, just darkness. My desk was neat, the way I always left it, and I saw new contracts with my signature on them, reminder notes taped to my monitor, catering orders I’d placed in the past week, and phone messages with customer names for callbacks. I’d been working here for days, even if I remembered none of it. Yesterday, in Eve’s office, appeared to be the only day of work I’d missed.

There were a million things to do, which made it a typical morning. This was my job; this was my life. I tried to get on with it, but as the early hours slipped by, I found I couldn’t concentrate on any of the details. I picked up the phone and put it down. I turned on the computer and switched it off. The responsibilities that had kept me up nights and forced me to stay late so many times now felt insignificant.

Something had changed for me. Everything had changed. I had to face the fact that I was not the same Dylan Moran who had worked here for years. The Many Worlds had killed him. He was gone, and he was never coming back. I needed to become someone new, but I still had no idea how to do that.

Outside, the rain continued to fall, as heavily as it had since it began. I stood up from the desk and leaned against the window frame, watching the drops run down the glass. The city and the lake were hidden from view behind a gray curtain. Despite the raging storm, I felt restless inside. A compulsion or obsession in my mind drew me to leave this place, to drive away into the rain, to find something I’d lost. I was supposed to be somewhere else.

But where?

“There’s a flood.”

I heard a voice behind me and turned around. Tai stood in the doorway of my office, her clothes soaking wet. Her words made me shiver. “What?”

“Half the downtown streets are flooded. That’s why I’m so late.”

“That’s okay. No problem.”

“Good morning, by the way.”

“Yes, good morning.”

“How did yesterday go? You were going to try Eve Brier’s new therapy. What happened?”

Tai showed no reluctance about asking me to share intimate confidences. Once upon a time, I would have done that, but not anymore.

“It went fine.”

“That’s all? Just fine?”

“That’s all, Tai.”

“Oh. All right.”

I watched her hesitate, trying to understand why I was acting so distant. She took a step into the office, as if she were debating whether to come closer. Talk to me. Touch my shoulder. Tell me that if I needed anything, she was here for me. If I felt lonely, I could come by for a drink tonight and for anything else that might happen.

But she saw the dismissal in my face. I couldn’t hide it. When I looked at Tai now, I saw all my mistakes with her come to life. I knew what it was like to sleep with her and share a bed together. I’d seen a world where we were husband and wife, and it was one more bad choice. None of it was real to her, but it was real to me, and I couldn’t get past it.

“We should talk about the Seaton wedding,” she said, her voice turning cool.

“Let’s do it later, okay? I have to go out for a while.”

“Okay. Whatever you want.”

I turned away toward the window, shutting down our conversation. There was a long pause behind me, and then I heard her footsteps as she left.

As she did, a voice called from the doorway.

“Come find me. I’m still here.”

I spun around. “What did you say?”

Tai was halfway out the door, and she stopped. “I said, when you get back, come find me. I’ll be here.”

“Sure. I will.”

She gave me a confused look and walked away.

When she was gone, I wasted no time getting ready to leave. I couldn’t get away fast enough. I turned off the lights and closed the office door. My coat and umbrella were in my car in the garage, but I didn’t bother going to get them. I went to the lobby, ignoring the people who tried to talk to me. I had to get outside. I needed space, oxygen, light. I felt as if I were running out of breath, trapped underwater. A beast sat on my chest, weighing me down.

Tai was right about the streets. They were flooded. The rain on Michigan Avenue flowed six inches deep. Buses and cars plowed through the water, throwing up waves. My drenched clothes clung to my skin, and my hair was pasted down. I had to squint, because the wind drove the torrent hard into my face. Even the summer rain felt ice cold. I headed into the park, which I had virtually to myself, because everyone else was sheltered inside.

What was I doing here?

Where was I going? I didn’t know.

I made my way to the bench near the fountain where I’d met Eve Brier. Except I hadn’t met Eve here. Not really. Not in this world. I sat down and thought: Say the word. That was what she’d told me to do when we were together. Say the word. I said it out loud to the storm, as if I were somehow still locked away inside my head, a doll inside a doll inside a doll inside a doll.

“Infinite.”

I held my breath, hoping that my world would transform, but the rainy Chicago day went on exactly as before. Whatever had happened to me was over and done. Why couldn’t I accept the fact that this was the end of the road?

Why did I keep looking for something more?

I sat there in the park, a solitary man with the city all to himself. My city. Then I checked my watch, and I remembered with a curse: Edgar. He was waiting for me. Storms, blizzards, and tornadoes wouldn’t keep him from the Art Institute on Thursday. I got off the bench and walked past Buckingham Fountain, which jetted water into the air despite the water pelting it from the sky. I splashed along cobblestones, the city skyscrapers going in and out of low clouds ahead of me. Around me were flowers, trellises, and topiaries, all drowning in the storm.

When I got to the museum, I hurried up the steps past the stone lions. Inside, tourists escaping the rain crowded the lobby. The smell of wet people got in my nose like the wormy stench of the river. I climbed the grand staircase to the upper level and squeezed through the busy galleries. When I passed La Grande Jatte, I found myself looking for Dylan Moran in a leather jacket. I expected to see his face — my face — eyeing me with a steely blue gaze. I expected all the faces around me to become my face, as if I were back inside the portal.

Instead, it was an ordinary day at the museum.

I found Edgar in the wing where he always was. He wore a raincoat and a fedora that had to be decades old. From the back, he looked a little like the mystery man in Nighthawks, whose face you never saw. I navigated the crowd, and he shot me an impatient stare as I came up beside him.

“You’re late,” he said, his breath engulfing me with its tobacco smell.

“I know.”

“I hauled my ass halfway across the city to get here. You’re, what, four blocks away? The bus took forever, and the streets are flooded. My feet are soaked.”

“Sorry, Edgar. I’m having a bad day.”

“Well, try being ninety-four, and then tell me what a bad day is.”

I didn’t want to argue with him. For all our battles over the years, I owed him a lot — for opening up his life to me, for putting food on the table, for taking shit from me as a bitter teenager and not kicking me to the street. He’d played the cards he was dealt, and yes, he complained about getting a bad hand until I didn’t want to hear it anymore. I still loved him. I hadn’t said that to him nearly enough.

“Why don’t you tell me the story?” I said, putting a hand on his bony shoulder. “That’ll make you feel better.”

“What story?”

“You and Nighthawks.”

Edgar gave me an impatient look. “What are you going on about, Dylan?”

“The man you saved on State Street when you were a boy.”

My grandfather clucked his tongue in annoyance. “Saved? I watched a guy get flattened on the street when I was a kid.”

“What?”

“Killed right in front of me. I still get nightmares about it.”

I turned away from Edgar, and for the first time, I stared at the gallery wall.

That was when I realized that Nighthawks wasn’t hanging in front of us.

I took a couple of steps in surprise, assuming we were in the wrong location, but then I looked around at the rest of the wing and realized that we were in our usual place. All the other paintings were exactly where they were supposed to be. But Nighthawks was gone.

“Where is it?” I asked, more to myself than Edgar.

“Where’s what?”

“Nighthawks.”

“Huh?”

“It’s missing. Nighthawks is missing.” I pointed at the wall, which now featured a painting of the Harlem jazz scene by Archibald Motley.

“Same painting’s been in that same spot long as I can remember,” Edgar told me with a shrug.

I shook my head. “No, this isn’t right.”

I looked around the gallery and found a museum docent on the far wall. I went up to her and asked, “Where’s Nighthawks?”

She gave me a polite smile. “Nighthawks? You mean the Edward Hopper painting?”

“Yes, where is it?”

“I don’t know, sir. I assume probably the Whitney or MoMA in New York.”

“Is it on tour?”

“I really have no idea.”

“It’s supposed to be here,” I insisted. “Right on that wall.”

“Here at the Art Institute?” she said with surprise. “No, I’m sorry, you’re mistaken. You must be thinking of a different painting. We’ve never had Nighthawks on display here.”

“What are you talking about? Daniel Rich acquired it from Hopper himself in 1942. It’s been here ever since.”

“Daniel Catton Rich? The former museum director? Mr. Rich died in 1941, sir. He was killed in a traffic accident here in Chicago.”

I turned away from the docent and bumped into the people around me. I rubbed the dampness on my face; this was sweat, not rain. A tingling went up and down my skin like the fingers of a ghost. I came up next to Edgar again and found myself staring at Motley’s painting, but all I could see in my head was Nighthawks. The lonely people at the diner. The empty city street. I could remember every brushstroke.

This was all wrong.

This wasn’t how the world was supposed to be.

“Edgar, I have to go. Can you get back home by yourself?”

“I can with twenty bucks for a hot dog and a beer.”

I dove into my wallet and found a twenty-dollar bill, which I pressed into his hand. Then I turned and retraced my steps through the pulsing museum crowd. Their overlapping voices made a deafening noise in my head, like the crash of a waterfall. I stumbled down the grand staircase and made my way out the doors onto the museum steps. Rain continued to flood from the sky, even harder than before, its impact as painful as pellets of hail. The black sky made it practically night. Traffic came and went on Michigan Avenue with lights on, horns honking, spray kicking up from the tires. People huddled under the overhang and ran through the downpour.

I needed to find Eve Brier.

Then I saw that she had already found me.

Eve was waiting at the base of the museum steps. She was dressed all in black like a mourner at a funeral, a black long-sleeve top, black slacks, and black heels. She held a black umbrella over her head, and she wore black lace gloves on her hands. Her face bore a teasing smile, and her glittering eyes latched onto mine. The pedestrians ignored us, as if we were both invisible. Somehow, Eve got brighter and clearer in the midst of the dark day, and the rest of the world blurred into gray shadows.

I ran down the steps and stood in front of her. I was strung out, breaking into little pieces. The rain poured ferociously over my head, but Eve was completely dry, not a drop of rain on her.

“This world isn’t real,” I said.

“No, Dylan, it’s not.”

“None of it. Nothing I’ve seen. It’s never been real.”

“No.”

“Where am I?”

“You tell me. Where are you?”

“I don’t know! All I know is that I don’t belong here. I’m supposed to be somewhere else.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know! Tell me! Tell me the truth! You lied. You said it was over.”

“I lied because you needed to figure out the truth for yourself.”

“You put me through hell!” I shouted at Eve. “I watched people die. I’ve had to lose everyone I care about, over and over and over. And for what? So you can play games with me? So you can send me to world after world? I’m done with this. I quit.”

Her eyes never blinked, not even once. “Quit? When you’re so close?”

“Close to what?”

“To what you want more than anything.”

“Stop with the riddles! Tell me what’s happening!”

“You don’t need me for that. You already know.”

“I don’t! I don’t know what’s real anymore!”

“Where did your worlds split apart, Dylan? Where did it all begin?”

“Here,” I said. “It happened right here at the Art Institute. I saw that other Dylan in the leather jacket. That’s why I went to your event at the hotel that night. That’s why I found you.”

Eve shook her head. “No, you were well on your way by the time you came to me. You didn’t have to go looking for the Many Worlds. They’d already found you.”

I tried to let it come back to me. I pushed on my temples to think, but my brain felt starved of oxygen, unable to process. Then I realized she was right. To get to the beginning, I had to go further back. I had to return to the one place that my mind didn’t want to go.

“Wait. No. I was in the water. I made it to the surface, and I saw him on the riverbank. Me. That was the first time.”

“Then what happened?”

“I dove down for Karly, but I couldn’t get to her.”

“How did you get out of the water?”

“What?”

“How did you get out of the water, Dylan?”

“I don’t — I don’t know. The police asked me that, but I don’t remember.”

“Why are you here, and Karly isn’t?”

“I don’t remember!”

“What do you remember?”

“Nothing! Nothing at all! I was trying to get to Karly, but I couldn’t find her. That’s when — that’s when everything stopped.”

“Yes.”

“That’s when everything else began.”

“Yes.”

I backed away from Eve, feeling an electric charge travel through my whole body. I looked up at the sky, which poured down a flood of rain over my head. I felt a tightness in my chest again, and I couldn’t breathe. Blackness darkened my eyes. Something briny and dank filled my senses.

“Oh, my God.”

“See? You know.”

I did know. A curtain parted, and I saw through all the illusions. It was as if Eve were a magician, and I finally understood the trick. I knew where I’d been, while my mind passed from world to world to world. I had traveled in a circle so I could go back to the place where my story began.

“What do you want, Dylan?” Eve asked me. “What do you want more than anything else in life?”

It was a question that had only one answer. “A second chance.”

“To do what?”

“To save Karly.”

Eve twirled her umbrella with a flourish. “Then you need to hurry.”

I ran. Yes, I ran. I ran like a madman through the Chicago streets, because I finally knew where I needed to go. I knew where my life was. I knew where I was supposed to be. I heard Karly calling out to me. She’d been calling to me ever since this began, and I hadn’t listened. Her voice was muffled. The sound had to reach me through the thickness of water, because that’s where she was.

In the river.

“Come find me. I’m still here.”

Chapter 36

I had no map to guide me back, but I didn’t need directions. The river drew me with the irresistible pull of a magnet. With each mile I drove, the storm intensified, as if this final world knew I was trying to escape and didn’t want to let go of me. It threw up a maelstrom in my path. Angry branches of lightning shattered the sky, and thunder growled at me in a deep voice to turn back.

Chicago disappeared like a dream into the fog behind me. So did the suburbs. Soon I was in terra incognita, heading past open fields and deserted towns, where it felt as if I were the only person alive. I started out in daylight, but as the hours passed, night fell. No lights came on, leaving me blind as I headed deeper into the middle of nowhere. The only relief from the swath of darkness came from blinding shock waves that speared like tridents between the clouds. With each orange burst, I saw emptiness around me. Silhouettes of cornstalks in the fields. A few lonely farmhouses, devoid of light. The leafy crowns of oaks and maples. A rippled layer of clouds in the charcoal sky.

I drove and drove and drove, through flat mile after flat mile. I was a man in a bubble, hearing nothing but the drumbeat of rain and seeing only the cramped silver glow of wet pavement through the headlights in front of me. I lost track of time and distance, but eventually, the heaviness in my chest told me the river was close. I slowed down; I peered at the road ahead. I felt the way a soldier must feel when he’s about to meet the enemy.

There it was.

I was back where I started.

Among the cornfields and trees, the flood monster loomed ahead of me, rolling, tumbling, like a dragon unleashed. I stopped in the middle of the road and got out into the teeth of the storm. The pavement ended just ahead of me, and the wild river began where the bridge should have been. The mud and water had become a kind of lava, whipping debris from the fields and roads in its teeth. I saw a highway sign making cartwheels like a circular saw. An electrical pole, dangling wires. Then an entire tree, its branches grasping for the surface like the crooked fingers of a skeleton.

I ran to the fringe of the water and followed it off the road into sodden fields. I kicked off my shoes, took off my belt and my shirt, anything that would slow me down. The wind gusted with a roar, nearly pushing me over. Rain stung my eyes, and another huge branch of lightning turned night to day. Barely a second passed before thunder exploded like a bomb. The storm was right on top of me now, not moving, firing all its weapons at me. I wiped my face and tried to see where I needed to go.

Where was the car?

Where was Karly?

I couldn’t be far, but the river covered everything under a blanket of deep, frenzied rapids that wound over the land in both directions. Debris rolled past me, floating up and down on the waves, as if all the animals on the merry-go-round had been set free. I looked for some clue, something, anything breaching the surface to let me find her. A tire. A fender. The car was near me, trapped under the water along with my wife, but there was nothing to tell me where she was.

I stood there, needing help. Please!

That was when the Many Worlds sent me... myself.

Dylan Moran burst from the river right in front of me. We weren’t even ten feet apart. He rose up like a sea creature, covered in mud and slime, spitting out water and gasping for breath. It was déjà vu in reverse. I was him. He was me. This was the moment when it had all started, but now we’d changed places.

He was in the water, and I was the man on the riverbank.

When the lightning flashed again, Dylan spotted me across the surging flood. It took a moment for him to register what he was seeing. I knew the feeling, because I’d already been through it. His face twisted with confusion, just the way mine had, because the man on the riverbank couldn’t be real. But I was.

“Help me!” he shouted. My words.

The lightning faded to darkness, and he called out again: “My wife is drowning! Help me find her!”

Then he was gone, diving down into the water. With a kick of his feet, Dylan disappeared, but I knew he wouldn’t find Karly. I’d been where he was, and I’d failed. He would search and search and come up empty. He would swim into nothingness. He would swim into other worlds.

Saving her was up to me now.

I waded into the water, where the wild current knocked me sideways. My feet spilled out on the slippery ground beneath me. I landed hard on my back, and the river sucked me into a whirlpool before I even took a breath. In an instant, the rapids spun me downstream in crazy circles. I choked, rising and falling, and finally, I fought back to the surface, where I gagged out water and desperately inhaled. The river swept against me like a speeding truck, but I kicked furiously with my hands and feet to fight the flow and stay where I was.

The car had to be submerged close by, but I couldn’t see it. Once I was down below, I would be swimming blind. I was running out of time. I only had one last chance.

I swelled my lungs with a series of deeper breaths. In. Out. In. Out. I forced myself to go slowly, taking in more air each time as I got ready to dive. On the last one, I held my breath with my chest full. For a split second, I bobbed on the surface in the tumult of the storm, and then I shot deep down below the water and was immersed in blackness and silence.

The river was my enemy. Invisible debris swept from miles of fields shot through the narrows and assaulted me. Tree limbs punched my stomach, trying to drive the pent-up air from my lungs. Sharp objects flayed my skin. My eyes were wide open, but I saw nothing. I cast my arms as wide as a skydiver and felt a strange, slick sensation of speed as the current whipped me along. I didn’t fight it. Wherever the flood had carried the car, I wanted it to carry me, too. Any second, we would collide in the channel, this huge obstacle in my path, like running full speed into a brick wall.

It happened so fast that I almost sailed right by it.

I felt myself bumping against the mud and jagged tree roots of the riverbank. One second, there was nothing, and an instant later, cool, slippery metal glided under my fingers. The car was right there, stuck in place against the bank, but I felt the river stripping me away from it. I grasped for any kind of handhold to keep me where I was, scratching at steel and glass, digging into the dirt of the riverbank with my nails.

Then something banged into my palm. By instinct, I snapped two fingers around it and held on. The river began to carry me away, but my body jerked to a stop. I struggled with my knuckles bent back and the water prying away my fingers. I thrust out my other hand and grabbed whatever had rescued me. With a solid hold, I felt the metal under my hand and recognized what it was. A side-view mirror.

I was there. I was at the car. The current dragged me sideways like a flag in a strong wind, but I clung to the mirror and used my free hand to thump on the windshield of the car. To alert her. To give her hope. To tell her that I was here. Through the black, dense water, I heard something that made my heart soar.

Karly thumped back from the other side of the glass.

I beat on the windshield again — Hold on! — and then urgently, I felt my way along the car door. The glass was unbroken. The window I’d used to escape was on the opposite side, buried in mud. My only hope was to get the door open. With the current fighting me, I stretched out my hand to find the door handle, and I curled my fingers around it.

I pulled hard. The door swung open a couple of inches, then slammed into an obstruction and refused to move. There was no room for Karly to escape. I yanked repeatedly, trying to get it loose, but the car was trapped against the riverbank, with a wall of dirt and stone blocking the door from opening farther.

The chassis of the car seesawed as the river assaulted it. A solid shock would set it free. I wedged my foot against the side of the bank and pushed. Again. Again. And again. The car shimmied drunkenly but stayed where it was. I thrust hard with both feet, feeling each effort screaming in my lungs. My chest was on fire, and I was running out of time. My air was almost gone, and I needed to breathe or die. Those were the only two choices.

My whole body coiled into a tight spring. I bent both knees, levered my feet against the mud, and snapped every muscle, every atom of energy I had, into one last ferocious kick. The car lurched in the water. The frame rose up. Something shifted hard, and the entire vehicle floated free. Almost instantly, the current grabbed hold of it and shot the car downstream. Suddenly unobstructed, the door swung wide open, nearly ripped from my hand. I spun wide and felt the car pulling me behind it, like a rider unsaddled by a horse. The wheels hit the riverbed, and as the frame somersaulted, I heard a groan of metal bending, threatening to tear. I reached out for the interior of the car.

Karly reached back to me.

We had one instant together. Just one.

Our hands met. Her fingers laced with mine. I felt the touch of her skin. As I pulled hard, her body spilled out of the car, and then I released her. Like a rocket, she rose upward toward the surface of the river inches away. Somewhere above me, she broke into the night air, rain on her face, sweet oxygen filling her lungs.

I let go, too. I had no time left.

I kicked hard to follow her, but just as my arms broke through the surface, I jerked to a stop and felt my body pulled downward again. I tried to rise, to get free, to float, to swim, but an incredible weight held my leg in its grasp and wouldn’t let go. I pulled hard, but I was caught.

The seat belt.

My ankle was trapped in the seat belt. The vast beast of the car dragged me with it downstream. I bent over, trying to free myself, but as the current spun us around, the knot wrapped itself around my leg. I pulled desperately, but I could feel the car and the river laughing at my efforts.

The air in my lungs began to leach into the water. Bubble after bubble escaped from my nose and mouth. Black clouds descended on my consciousness, and my heart began to beat crazily, an uneven rhythm. Unable to hold it back anymore, my chest gave way. I exhaled with a rush, feeling the last of my oxygen seep away.

I needed to inhale now. I couldn’t stop myself.

I took a breath, knowing there was no breath there. I opened my mouth, and my lips formed a last soundless word.

“Karly... ”

Then the river swam hungrily into my lungs.

Chapter 37

“Dylan?”

“Dylan?”

“Dylan, are you there? Talk to me.”

“Dylan, come back. I’m still here.”

I knew that voice.

I didn’t know where it came from, but even in the depths of darkness, I could picture the face that went with that voice, like a speck of light at the end of a long, long tunnel. There was a woman waiting for me there, if only I could find her. If only I could find my way out.

“Dylan, I’m holding your hand. Can you feel me holding your hand?”

I did feel it. Something warm squeezed my fingers, and the touch felt familiar and good. It brought memories that floated in my head like dreams. There had been times when I would lie in bed in the middle of the night, and the only sensation I felt would be that hand holding mine. As long as I held that hand, life was worth living. With that hand in mine, I wasn’t alone.

“Dylan?”

“Dylan, open your eyes.”

“Dylan, please, open your eyes.”

“Dylan, come back to me. I’m here.”

I wanted to do what she said. I would do anything for her. To open my eyes, I had to break free from the darkness, but I didn’t know how to do that. The darkness had held me in its arms for a long time, and it was hard to say goodbye and let go. There was a strange comfort in nothingness. But I also felt an ache, a longing, a need to see the woman who was talking to me, who was holding my hand, who was waiting for me at the end of the tunnel. I felt as if I’d been searching for her forever.

I knew her name. It was Karly.

I tried to do what she asked. I tried to let go of where I was and go back to where she was. I began to be aware of my body. Sensations slowly came back to life. I was conscious of being warm. I was aware that it hurt when I breathed. I had muscles I could move and control if I thought hard about how to do so. As Karly squeezed my hand, my fingers squeezed hers back.

I could hear, smell, touch. I was awake now. My eyelids fluttered.

Above me, I heard a sharp gasp, an intake of breath.

I opened my eyes. Closed them. Opened them. Even the dimness made me squint, and I struggled to make sense of what was around me.

At first, all I saw was a halo of light, but inside it, I recognized a face that made everything better. Karly stood over me. Slowly, as if not believing what she was seeing, she put her hands against her cheeks, her fingers trembling. Her lips moved but made no sound. As I stared up at her, her face dissolved into uncontrollable tears. She sobbed, and then she fell to her knees and threw her arms around me and held me tighter than anyone had ever held me in my life.

“Dylan.”

Three weeks, Karly told me.

She waited until my disorientation had mostly gone away, which took several hours. By then, I was aware of being in a hospital room.

Three weeks, she told me.

Three weeks I’d been in a coma.

It was what they called a medically induced coma, in which they kept me sedated in order to give my brain and lungs a chance to heal from my lack of oxygen under the water. Nobody had known whether I would ever wake up.

“You got pneumonia in the early days,” she told me, sitting with me by the bed and not letting go of my hand. “You could hardly breathe. They thought you were going to die. God, I was so scared.”

“My chest hurts,” I said, in a raspy voice.

“Try not to talk. Your lungs still need to heal. Let me talk.”

“Okay.”

“The doctors weren’t sure about — about whether you’d come out of this with your brain functions intact. They said I needed to prepare myself for bad outcomes. But Alicia said the scans showed your brain activity was strong the entire time. In fact, she said the activity was hyperintense, like your mind was going through some kind of frenzied experience. She was sure you’d come out of it okay. She said Roscoe was looking out for you somewhere.”

I smiled without saying anything. Part of it was gratitude, for surviving, for Karly being there for me, for coming through the experience of nearly drowning with my awareness and motor skills intact. Part of it was also the thought of Roscoe watching over me.

I’d seen him again, and that was a gift. Everything I’d been through was a gift.

The nurses called it a miracle. They didn’t throw that word around lightly. I’d been without oxygen for nearly four minutes, which was dangerously close to the point at which brain damage would be irreversible. The day nurse had already been in after I awakened, asking me questions, testing my cognition. What’s your name? What year is it? What city are you in? Apparently, I passed the test.

However, she was puzzled by the one question I asked her.

“Where is Nighthawks?”

I asked it several times, and finally, she called in Karly for help. My wife gave me a strange look, but she answered the question. “It’s in the Art Institute, where it always is. Thanks to Edgar, of course. He’s been by to visit you several times. Every time he was here, he told you the story again.”

That was what I needed to hear. All was right with my world. With that, I was able to sleep.

I recovered for another full day before Karly said, “Do you remember what happened at the river?”

I shook my head. What I remembered I didn’t trust.

“Do you want me to tell you about it? We don’t have to do this now. We can wait until you’re stronger.”

“Please,” I murmured.

“Okay. Well, we were driving home from our weekend away. The river had overflowed the highway, and we — we drove right into it.”

“I’m sorry.”

Karly put a hand on my cheek and stared at me with a deep regret in her eyes. “Don’t use that word. That’s my word. Dylan, there’s so much I need to say to you, but let me get through this first.”

“Go on.”

“The car submerged. We were both trapped. I’ve never been so terrified. A tree came through the car window and nearly took our heads off. You were able to get out, but as you pulled me with you, the river ripped the car away. We were separated.”

She described the experience in a monotone, as if it had happened to someone else. I think that was the only way she could talk about it.

“I was alone. You were gone. I was running out of air in this little pocket near the windshield. I tried opening the car door, but it was blocked. I realized I was going to die. I was trying to make peace with it. And yet — I don’t know — I knew you would never leave me. I knew you’d come back and find me and save me. I just knew it. I don’t know how much time passed. Probably only a few seconds, but it felt like forever. Then you were thumping on the windshield to let me know you were there. Somehow you dislodged the car and got the door open, and I was able to get out. I swam to the surface and made it to the riverbank. I thought you were right behind me. But then I realized you weren’t coming up. You were still under the water. Thank God someone was there. A man from a nearby farm had seen the accident, and he’d already called 911. I could hear the sirens. I screamed to him that you were still down there, that you must be trapped. He went in after you. He found you by the car, with the seat belt wound around your ankle. He had a knife and was able to cut you free, but by the time he got you out, you weren’t breathing. The ambulance was there, but I could see in the faces of the paramedics that they didn’t think you were going to make it.”

I brought her hand to my lips and kissed it. “The farmer who cut me loose. What did he look like?”

“Look like?”

“Did he look like me?”

A curious smile crossed her face. It was an odd question. “A little bit, I guess. You’ll get to meet him. Once you have your strength back, we’ll drive down there and thank him together. His name is Harvey Bushing.”

I laughed, which made me cough.

“What’s funny?” Karly asked me.

“Life. Fate. God.”

She was still holding my hand. We sat silently, as an echo of horror rippled over both of us and slowly receded. I watched Karly open her mouth to say something more, then close it again. Her eyes filled with tears. It was a dam bursting, letting out guilt and shame and remorse. I knew how she felt, because I’d felt all the same things.

“Dylan, what happened before — what I did—”

I squeezed her hand. “Stop.”

“I’m just so sorry. Please, please, say you can forgive me. If I hadn’t been such a fool—”

“Stop,” I said again.

“I love you. I love you so much. You’re my world. What I did, how I betrayed you, I can’t believe that was me.”

“Karly.”

She clamped her mouth shut and wiped her face. Her messy blond hair dangled across her cheeks.

“It wasn’t you,” I told her, struggling with the words.

“Don’t talk. You shouldn’t talk.”

“I have to. Listen to me. This was my fault. I almost lost you, because I couldn’t let go of my past. You saw something in me the day we met, and I’ve never been able to live up to it. I’ve spent my life angry and bitter and frustrated with the whole world, instead of treasuring what the world gave me. You. Well, that other Dylan is gone. I killed him. I just hope it’s not too late for the two of us.”

Karly started crying again. “It’s not. Believe me, it’s not.”

“You married one Dylan Moran,” I told her, “but I swear to you, I’m not the same, not anymore. I’m not him. I’m a different man.”

Later that day, Karly went home to shower, and I slept in the hospital bed. My sleep felt absolutely dreamless, which was just what I wanted. Then I opened my eyes and recoiled, seeing a woman in a white hospital coat looking down at me. Underneath the white coat, she was dressed in black.

All at once, I felt as if I’d jumped down the rabbit hole again.

“Mr. Moran? I’m Dr. Eve Brier.”

It was her. She hadn’t changed at all. She gave me that mysterious smile that was all too familiar. Her eyes had the same seductive quality that I remembered from—

From what?

From a dream?

Or from other worlds?

“I know who you are,” I said.

That made her hesitate. “You know me? Well, your wife probably mentioned that I’m the doctor who’s been monitoring you while you were in your coma. You had us all very worried. It’s a great relief to see you doing so well.”

“Thank you.”

I kept looking for a sign in her face, for some kind of recognition that she knew what had been happening to me. I wanted her to admit that she was still my conjurer. My magician.

Instead, she checked my vitals, and that was all.

“We’ll still need to monitor you closely for a while, Mr. Moran, but right now, everything looks extremely promising.”

“Good.”

“You may find you have memory lapses,” she added, as if I were lying on her couch in Hancock Center, twenty-nine floors above the endless lights of the Lucent sculpture.

“Not so far,” I said. Then I added pointedly, “I remember everything.”

“I’m pleased to hear it, but you may still experience side effects from the oxygen deprivation. You may become aware of cognitive difficulties that require some relearning and rehabilitation. I also suggest that you think about getting counseling after you’re released. The physical implications of what you’ve been through are serious enough, but there are likely to be emotional and psychological ramifications, too. Don’t feel that you have to manage those things alone.”

“If I have Karly, I’ll be fine.”

“I understand, but you may want to consider professional counseling, too.”

I said nothing. Dr. Brier looked disconcerted by my attitude. She checked my pulse, which she’d already done, and the touch of her fingers was warm. Her nails were long, and they pressed slightly into my skin. Then she bent over to check my lungs with her stethoscope and asked me to breathe as deeply as I could. While she was close to me, I caught a faint aroma of perfume, like roses, which took me back to the embrace she’d given me near the Buckingham Fountain.

“Your lungs are clear,” she said. “That’s excellent.”

“Good.”

“Are you in pain? I can give you something.”

“I don’t want anything.”

Dr. Brier stood up and slipped the stethoscope out of her ears. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at me in bed. “You know, Mr. Moran, patients who are in induced comas often have disturbing experiences.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Extremely vivid nightmares are common. Some patients describe them as hallucinations or phantasms. They experience terror, paranoia. Elements of the real world can creep into their dreams, albeit in distorted fashion. The sensations can feel quite real, and they can linger for a while once you regain consciousness. Did you go through anything like that?”

“I’m still processing what I went through,” I replied.

“Of course. Well, I’ll let you rest.”

She gave me that strange intimate smile again, and I thought to myself: You know, don’t you?

When she got to the door, I called after her. “Dr. Brier?”

“Yes?”

“Say the word.”

She came closer to the bed. “What?”

“Say the word.”

We stared at each other. Doctor and patient. Illusionist and fool. Puppet master and doll. I expected her to let the truth slip. I thought she’d put up a finger to remind me to be quiet and then soundlessly invite me to read her lips.

She’d mouth the word and wink.

Infinite.

But no. She played her part to the end. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Moran.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I replied. “Thank you for everything. I mean that.”

“You’re welcome.”

“You changed my life, and I’ll always be grateful. Eve.”

“It was my pleasure. Dylan.”

Then she was gone.

And me? I was home.