“Navy Pier?” Bushing asked. “Really?”
“Yes. I was sleeping on a bench. Actually, a police officer woke me up. I’m sure he made a note of it.”
“Navy Pier is more than ten miles from here. How did you get there? Did you walk? Take a bus? Did someone take you there?”
“As I said, I don’t remember.”
“Well, what’s your last memory?” Bushing asked.
I hesitated, because nothing that had actually happened in this world meant anything to me. “Everything is pretty blurry. I remember I had dinner with my grandfather on Monday night. Chinese food.”
“But nothing after that?”
“I don’t think so.”
Bushing focused on Tai. “When did you say your husband left home?”
“Tuesday evening around nine. He was going to take a walk in the park.”
He turned to me again. “You don’t remember that, Mr. Moran?”
“No.”
“Do you remember anything at all from that evening?”
“Not a thing.”
“Have you ever had a blackout like this before?”
“Never.”
“Were you drinking that night?”
Tai interrupted. “My husband rarely drinks. The occasional beer or glass of wine, and that’s all. On Tuesday, I made Filipino food for dinner, and we had salabat with it. That’s ginger tea.”
I was surprised to learn that, in this world, Dylan Moran had no problems with alcohol. He’d also shut down his emotions and his temper. And he’d married Tai. Different man. Different choices.
“Do you usually follow a particular route when you walk?” Bushing asked.
“No, not really.”
“Did you see anyone?”
“I already told you, I don’t remember. If Tai says I left the house to go for a walk, that’s what I did. But after that, I have no memory until I found myself on that bench near the lake.”
Detective Bushing dug into the inside pocket of his ill-fitting sport coat and extracted a piece of paper. He unfolded it and handed it to me, and I saw a photograph that matched the picture I’d seen on the front page of the Tribune. It was the woman who’d been killed in River Park.
“Do you recognize this woman?” he asked me.
I shook my head. “No.”
“She doesn’t look familiar at all?”
“No.”
“Have you ever seen her around the neighborhood?”
“I told you, no. Who is she?”
Tai murmured near my ear. “She was murdered.”
I pasted surprise on my face. “Murdered? That’s terrible.”
“In fact, she was stabbed to death in River Park on Tuesday night, Mr. Moran,” Detective Bushing went on. “Her roommate said she went out for a run, right around the same time that you took a walk. Same time, same night, same park. Her body was found the next morning. You can understand why your disappearance was of considerable concern to us, Mr. Moran. Two people in the park, one dead, one missing. I can’t help but wonder if whatever happened to you was somehow connected to the murder.”
“I wish I could help you, Detective. I didn’t know this woman, and I don’t remember anything about Tuesday night.”
The detective’s eyes shifted to my left hand. He took note of the purplish bruises. “What happened to your hand, Mr. Moran?”
I wiggled my fingers, because they still hurt. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t remember how you injured yourself?”
“No.”
“It looks like you hit someone.”
Next to me, Tai laughed. “Dylan? Hit someone? That’s ridiculous.”
“I wish I could tell you what happened, Detective, but I can’t.” Then I added impatiently, “Is that all?”
“Yes, that’s all I have for now. If you do remember anything, please call me right away. Oh, and I wonder if you’d mind if I bagged the clothes you’re wearing and took them with me for analysis.”
“My clothes? Why?”
“Well, I’d like to run forensic tests that might fill in some of the blanks in your memory. For all we know, you may have seen the murder taking place and tried to intercede. If you were involved in some kind of fight in the park, perhaps the person you struggled with left behind traces of DNA on your clothes. Whoever that person is could be a killer.”
His hawk eyes stared at me, and I knew what he was thinking. Or maybe Betsy Kern left her DNA on your clothes. I was pretty sure that he didn’t believe my story of having no memory of the past two days. He thought I was lying, and he wanted me to know it.
“I’m sure my husband won’t object to any tests you want to run,” Tai said. “We both just want to find out what happened to him.”
I interrupted her politely but firmly. “Actually, Detective, I do object. Sorry. No warrant, no clothes. I’ve read about too many innocent people who got railroaded by the police while trying to do the right thing.”
“Dylan,” Tai said, her voice shocked.
Detective Bushing shrugged his bony shoulders as he got out of the chair. “That’s all right, Mrs. Moran. Your husband is within his rights. The fact is, we already have a DNA sample for Betsy Kern’s killer. He hit her while he was trying to subdue her, and he left some of his blood on her face. We’ll find a match.”
“He hit her?” Tai murmured, with an uncomfortable glance at my hand.
Detective Bushing curled his fingers into a fist and tapped it against his own chin. “Yup. Right in the jaw. You sure you don’t remember how you hurt yourself, Mr. Moran?”
I stared back at him without blinking. “I have no idea.”
I took a pounding shower to wash away days of dirt, but the water on my body was a kind of torture. Instead of clean, hot water from the tap, I imagined the slime of the river coating my skin like an oily film. When I closed my eyes, I was back in the blackness, assaulted by waves of debris whipped along by the swollen current. I held my breath as I dove to find Karly. Somewhere, lost in the river, was her voice. I swam hard, but her scream kept getting farther away.
Dylan, come back! I’m still here!
I shut off the water and crumpled into the shower wall. I pounded a fist against the tile in frustration, and the searing pain reminded me that my hand was probably fractured. The dripping water felt like cold fingers scraping down my back.
Outside the shower, I dried myself with a pink towel. Karly would have hated the idea of pink towels. I went back into the bedroom and stood in front of our open closet, which was now neatly organized to reflect Tai’s OCD tendencies. As I looked at the clothes, I was reminded of the fact that they weren’t mine. They belonged to someone else. Obviously, Tai had picked out my shirts, my ties, my pants. A few items matched things I’d bought in my single days, but Goodwill had apparently made out well after my marriage.
I wondered how long she and I had been married. How had I proposed? Where? What had led me to think that Tai was the one?
On my nightstand, I saw monogrammed cuff links, something I’d never owned. There was also a bottle of cologne, something I never wore. The Dylan who lived here had the same kind of computer tablet I had in my other life, but when I opened it and tapped in my pass code, it didn’t work. Of course not. My pass code had been Karly’s birth date, and there was no Karly in this life. However, I knew Tai’s birth date, and when I entered it, I found myself on the tablet home screen. I scrolled through a few photographs, staring at pictures of Tai, photos taken inside the LaSalle Plaza ballroom, and a few selfies of us near the lake. It was painfully obvious that the person in those pictures wasn’t me. The expressions weren’t the same: no joy, no anger, no life. There was a bland nothingness in my eyes.
I didn’t think I’d like this Dylan Moran. He seemed like a sanitized version of myself, someone who’d learned the wrong lessons from the death of his parents. Not that I was proud of the things I’d done, the drinking, the fighting. But at least I’d lived. I’d fallen in lov
e, head over heels in love with Karly. Even if I’d made mistakes, even if I’d lost her in the river, I’d still had her in my life. I found it hard to imagine that this Dylan even knew what love was.
At the same time, I also wondered: Where is he?
This was his home. He lived here with Tai. He was the one who’d been missing for two days, not me. He’d gone into the park on the same night as Betsy Kern, and he’d never come back. I realized that any moment, he might return home, and it would be matter and antimatter meeting face to face.
“Dylan, what’s going on?”
I turned and saw Tai in the doorway. I was naked, and my first instinct was to cover myself. But she was my wife, so I let her see me that way.
“Nothing’s going on,” I said.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Tai, I wish I could explain, but I can’t.”
“Are you cheating on me? Is there someone else? Is that where you were?”
“I’m not cheating on you.”
She was silent for a while, and then she came and sat on our four-poster metal bed, which was covered by a frilly lavender comforter. “Did you hurt that woman?”
“Are you serious? How can you even ask me that? No.”
Tai shook her head. “You’re so closed off. Sometimes it makes me wonder what you’re hiding. You’re like a pressure cooker that’s ready to explode.”
“That’s not me,” I protested, but maybe it was me. The me who lived here.
“I just wish you’d open up, Dylan. You tell me you love me, you marry me, you sleep with me, but you never tell me anything. I’ve always accepted that you are who you are, and I loved you regardless. But now you’re making me feel like I don’t even know you.”
“I’m sorry. I’m not trying to make you feel that way.”
“Roscoe warned me about it, you know,” Tai went on. “He talked to me before the wedding. Just him and me. He told me if I wasn’t happy with who you were, I shouldn’t go through with it. He said if I thought that getting married would change you, I was going to get my heart broken. The thing is, I was willing to take that risk, because I loved you. Now you have to be honest with me. Was I wrong?”
This was one of those moments where a relationship teetered on the brink and could swing one way or another depending on what you said next. By not answering her, I was at risk of blowing up this other Dylan’s life with Tai. That was terribly unfair of me to do, but I couldn’t focus on anything other than the name she’d said.
“Roscoe.”
“I know he’s your friend, but he was trying to help me. Even so, I never doubted my decision about marrying you. That’s the truth.”
I grabbed clothes and began putting them on. A burgundy dress shirt that I left untucked. Black slacks. “Tai, I have to go.”
“Now? Dylan, no, don’t walk away from me.”
“I have to talk to Roscoe.”
“You can see him anytime. You need to talk to me.”
“I told you, it’s hard to explain, but I have to see him right now.”
I spotted car keys on the nightstand and put them in my pocket. I was on my way to the back door when I stopped at the noise behind me. Tai was crying. Her eyes were closed, her head down. I froze with indecision, then went and knelt in front of her. I caressed her cheek.
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “I know you want answers. I wish I could give them to you.”
“Do you love me?” she asked, looking up and wiping her face. “Have you ever loved me?”
I didn’t say anything, which was the worst thing I could do. I wanted to tell her what she needed to hear, but I couldn’t lie. In the silence, she hung her head again and kept crying.
“It’s not you, Tai,” I murmured. “It’s me. Believe me, I’ve never known who I am, either. But I’m trying to find out.”
CHAPTER 17
The South Side Catholic church where Roscoe served as a priest was a century-old redbrick building with a massive rose window built into its face. I’d been here many times to help him with raffles, book fairs, and food parties, but I hadn’t been back since the day of his funeral four years ago. I wasn’t a churchgoer anyway, and I found it hard to stand in the shadow of all those monuments to God after he had taken away my best friend.
It was early evening by the time I got there, with the summer sun barely hanging on above the trees. I let myself in through heavy double doors. The interior was cool, as it always was, and the tap of my shoes echoed from the high ceiling. As I walked down the center aisle, I was alone in this place, just me and the spectacle of the church. White columns soared over my head. The multicolored stained glass glowed darkly in the walls, and candles flickered in the shadows. Jesus was backlit on the altar, arms spread wide, welcoming me.
I took a seat in one of the pews near the crossing. This was where I’d been seated for the funeral, close enough that I could go up to the lectern under the watchful eyes of the saints and angels to give Roscoe’s eulogy. I was on crutches from the accident then. Karly had helped me. I could still remember the things I’d said through my tears, about the utterly selfless man Roscoe was, about the many ways he’d tried to save his best friend even when I had no interest in being saved.
I missed him so much. He’d left an emptiness behind in my life that I could never fill.
And then, risen from the dead, there he was. I saw him. Roscoe came from the north transept in his black suit, a Bible and a small leather notepad in one hand. It was the first moment that I believed, truly believed without any doubts, that what was happening to me was real.
He crossed in front of the altar and knelt, and then he went to the pulpit, where he stood on a platform to give himself more height and began making notes as he flipped through tissue-thin pages in his Bible. No doubt he had a sermon to give that night. He had his head down in concentration, and he didn’t see me. I tried to call to him, but my throat choked up, unable to form words. He’d barely changed from the man in my memory. Maybe he’d put on a couple of pounds and lost a little more hair, but that was all. His thick glasses were in the same black frames. His beard made a trimmed square around his lips and mouth. He hummed as he worked, the way he often did, a tuneless grumble that was easy to hear in the acoustics of the church.
As he considered his sermon, he tapped a pencil against his mouth and then looked up pensively. That was when he finally saw me sitting in the pew. His face broke into a warm smile, and I tried to hold it together, to not cry. To him, this was an ordinary moment, his boyhood friend paying him an unexpected visit. To me, it was a gift that only came for a few moments in the occasional dream. My companion, my anchor, my confidant, was here with me again.
“Dylan, what a nice surprise,” Roscoe said, in a voice that was much deeper than anyone would expect from his size.
He came down from the pulpit. For a small man, he always walked quickly. I stood up, and he pulled me into a hug. His hugs were long, he said, because life was short. Then he took the back of my head in his hands and kissed both of my cheeks. It was a habit he’d picked up on a summer trip to Italy, and he never let go of it. That greeting from him was something I’d never thought I would experience again.
The two of us sat down next to each other in the pew. I stared at him like he was an old photograph come to life, and he stared at me with an equal intensity. His keen eyes narrowed with surprise as he took a close look at my face. Somehow, I’d known that I wouldn’t be able to hide the truth from him. This man knew me better than anyone other than Karly, and like a parent with identical twins, he could tell immediately that the man in front of him was different from the man he knew.
I was not the Dylan Moran that this Roscoe Tate had grown up with. He couldn’t explain why, but he knew that something was wrong.
“This is very odd,” he said.
“What is?”
“Well, you’ve changed. I can’t put my finger on how.”
“It’s just me, Roscoe.”
> He shook his head. “No. No. There’s definitely something new.”
“When did I last see you?” I asked.
“Two months, I think? Too long, for sure. But it’s not that.”
“Then, what is it?”
Roscoe stroked his neat beard and considered his answer seriously, the way he always did. “I have a one-hundred-year-old Chinese man in the parish. We’ve had the most amazing talks. I’ve learned some incredible things from him. I think he would say that your qi is different.”
“Better or worse?”
“Neither. It’s just not the same.” Roscoe shrugged, as if some mysteries had no explanation. “Anyway, that isn’t important. I’m glad you’re here, but why are you here? What’s wrong?”
“Does something have to be wrong? I just wanted to see you.”
He chuckled. “Never play poker with me, my friend. I can always read your face. It’s not just your qi. In addition to everything else that seems off about you, I can tell you’re struggling with something. Talk to me.”
I had no idea what to say.
I was still overwhelmed by the fact that I was really here, talking to my best friend, four years after he’d died next to me behind the wheel of a car. Part of me wanted to confess everything, because after all, that’s what you do with priests, isn’t it? Confess. But if I told him what was happening to me—or what I believed was happening—he’d think I had gone insane. I couldn’t expect him to take me seriously with a story like this. And yet I also needed the counsel that Roscoe had always given me. When I veered off course in life, he steered me back. Right now, I felt like a stranger in a strange land, and even though I knew this was not my Roscoe, he was still my best friend.
I also knew that I could not, would not, lie to him. That was a pact we’d made with each other years ago. Never judge, never lie.
“I don’t even know where to begin,” I said.
“Well, are you okay? Is it your health?”
“No, I’m fine.”
He leaped to the next obvious conclusion. “Is it Tai? Or rather, you and Tai? You’ve been married more than a year now. The two of you are past the honeymoon and into real life, which is much harder.”
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