“Are you sure?”
“Of course it wasn’t. It was me talking to me. All I know is, when I came out of my coma, most of the poems from that book were already in my head. I knew what I needed to do with my life. I was finally ready to let go of the past and become a different person.” Suddenly, Karly pushed her chair back and stood up. “God, what am I doing? This is nuts. Please don’t tell anyone I said this.”
“I won’t.”
“I need to go.”
“No, wait, stay. I want to talk more. There are things I need to tell you.”
“I’m sorry, I really have to go. I’m meeting a student in my office. I don’t know how you found me, Dylan, but I’d rather not discuss any of this again. I shouldn’t have said what I did.”
She gathered up her laptop and her papers, but I put my hand gently on hers. The hand where I wore my ring. “Meet me tonight,” I said.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Please. I want to tell you a story.”
“It’s better if you and I don’t share anything more. We don’t know each other.”
“Karly.”
She stopped. I saw a faint tremble in her whole body. “What is it?”
“Don’t give up on me.”
Her hand covered her mouth. She didn’t say a word. Instead, she stared down at the table and hugged her laptop to her chest.
“Meet me tonight,” I said again.
Without looking up, Karly nodded. “Nine o’clock. Right here.”
Then she hurried away.
After she left, I was flying.
I was so high I couldn’t see any way back down, which is a dangerous thing. The higher you go, the farther you’re likely to fall. Even so, I allowed myself to dream that I could tell Karly the truth, and she might believe me. I began to wonder if she and I could really start over in this world and rebuild what we had. That was the first moment of happiness I’d had since the accident.
Then I went to see Roscoe, and he sent me plummeting back to the ground.
I told him everything that had happened in the past day—including finding the body of his Dylan by the river—and when I was done, he bowed his head in grief. When he finally looked up again, his eyes were as cold as I’d ever seen them. This was not Roscoe the priest. This was Roscoe the friend, and I’d disappointed him.
“I told you that you didn’t belong in this place,” he snapped at me. “I told you to go back home before more people suffered. Now look what you’ve done. Look at the wreckage you’ve already caused.”
“What happened by the river wasn’t my fault,” I protested.
“Is that true? Can I believe anything you tell me? You arrive out of nowhere with this story of parallel worlds, and now you tell me my real friend is dead. Murdered. How do I know that you didn’t decide to do this yourself? Get him out of the way, take over his life, all so you can find a way to be with Karly again.”
I shook my head. “Roscoe, you know me. I would never do anything like that—”
“Actually, you made it clear that I don’t know you. And you’re right. Yesterday you promised me that your only interest in Karly was to protect her from this so-called killer. Now here you are, telling me you think you can get her back, just as I predicted. I’m sorry, Dylan. Haven’t you done enough damage?”
“How is it damage if she and I are meant to be together?”
Roscoe exhaled slowly and loudly. He took off his black glasses and wiped them on his sleeve. Then he positioned them on his face and focused his hard eyes on me. “Do you know what I spent an hour doing just before you got here? I was talking to Tai. She’s devastated. Confused. Afraid. She thinks she’s lost her husband, a man she deeply loves, and from what you tell me, she’s right. I don’t care whether there really is a dead man by the river or not. I don’t care whether your story of parallel worlds is true or a delusion. What I care about is seeing my friend—a man I love—turn his back on his wife and pursue a relationship with someone else. That is not who you are.”
“Roscoe, I feel bad for Tai, but I don’t love her. She’s not my wife.”
“In this world, she is!” Roscoe shouted, his voice echoing off the high ceiling of the church. He closed his eyes, then spoke more softly. “I’m sorry. If you’re going to live in this world, you have responsibilities to this world. You can’t come in here and expect things to be the way they were. You made decisions here. You made choices here. You have to honor them.”
I clenched my fists. “Roscoe, try to understand my situation. I love Karly, and I lost her. I never believed there was any way to have her back again. But now I realize she went through something similar to what’s happening to me. It’s not a delusion. She’ll listen to me.”
“Really? How do you think that goes, Dylan? You’re the suspect in the murder of a woman who looks just like her. You told her that your wife died, but pretty soon she’ll discover that your wife is actually alive and you’ve lied to her. You think she’s going to ignore all of that and fall in love with you? You think there’s any way this ends well?”
“Roscoe—”
My friend shook his head with the sharpness of a door closing. “No. I’m sorry, Dylan. You can’t simply undo the choices you regret from another life. That’s not how it works. All you can do is learn from them and become a better man.”
“I’m trying to do that. I swear, I’m trying to change.”
“Change requires sacrifice. Change requires acceptance of your sins. Is that what you’re doing? Or are you still pursuing your own selfish desires? I’m telling you, walk away. Walk away from Karly. If you think you can’t be with Tai, then walk away from this world altogether.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I do. Believe me, I do.”
“Roscoe, I came to you as my friend. I need your help.”
“Yes, I know. Believe it or not, help is what I’m giving you. I know you think I should be loyal to you, and I’ve told you many times that I’d always be there for you. But you’ve also made it clear that you’re not the man I know. My friend is dead. Don’t you understand? The longer you stay here, the worse it’s going to get. You are a trespasser, Dylan. You need to leave.”
CHAPTER 23
When I got home, Tai was packing. Grabbing clothes by the handful, she stalked back and forth between our closet and a pink suitcase on the bed. Her long black hair was mussed, her golden face streaked with tears. I stood in the doorway, and she pretended to ignore me, but I could feel the depth of her hurt. Watching her, I knew that Roscoe was right about everything. I’d come to this world and ruined her life. She deserved better.
Her husband, her real husband, was gone. He was dead by the river, and he was never coming back. Meanwhile, the husband who was living in her house was in love with another woman.
“Who is she?” Tai asked, as if she could read my mind.
“What?”
She stopped in the middle of the bedroom and let the dresses she was carrying fall to the floor. “I followed you this morning. I saw you talking to that blond woman at Northwestern. Who is she?”
I hesitated, but there was no point in trying to hide it. “Her name is Karly Chance.”
“Are you having an affair with her?”
“There’s no affair.”
“Don’t lie to me. I saw you. Do you think I can’t read your face? Do you think I haven’t looked for that expression when you stare at me? But I’ve never seen it. Not once. You’ve never looked at me the way you were looking at her.”
“It’s impossible to explain,” I told her. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Save your explanations. I don’t care. I’m leaving. I’m going to stay with a girlfriend.”
“Tai, I’m sorry.”
She shook her head. “No, you’re not. That’s the worst thing. You say the words, but you’re not sorry at all.”
“That’s not true. I hate that I’ve hur
t you.”
“Everybody warned me. My family. Roscoe. Hell, even Edgar warned me. They said I was making a mistake by marrying you. I should have listened.”
There was nothing I could say to that.
“Is it love?” Tai went on. “Are you in love with this woman? Or is it something worse?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not an idiot, Dylan. I see the resemblance. She looks like the woman who was murdered across the street from us. She looks like the woman you were stalking behind the dorm at Northwestern. What kind of man are you? Who did I marry?”
“You have it all wrong,” I insisted.
“Do I? Well, I guess we’ll see about that. I gave Detective Bushing the clothes you were wearing when you came back on Thursday. I told him to get your DNA and test it. If you killed Betsy Kern, they’ll find out.”
“I don’t care what the test shows. I didn’t kill anyone.”
“In other words, you already know the DNA will match.”
“I’m telling you, this is not what it looks like.”
She started packing again. “Go away, Dylan. Leave me alone. I don’t want to be in the same apartment with you.”
“Tai, please—”
“Go!” she screamed at me. “Get out! If you don’t go, I’ll call 911 and have them drag you out.”
I held up my hands in surrender. “Okay. Whatever you want. I’ll go.”
I left the apartment, because I didn’t want her to get any more upset. She was wrong about me, wrong about who I was and what I’d done, but then again, she wasn’t wrong. No, I wasn’t a killer, but the DNA would probably say that I was. No, I wasn’t having an affair, but I was in love with Karly and would take her back in my arms if I could. I’d been cruel to Tai in this world, but it’s not like I’d been a saint to her in my own world. I’d led her on and told myself it was innocent, because I had no bad intentions. But it wasn’t innocent at all.
After I left the apartment, I took the stairs to Edgar’s place. My grandfather and I didn’t have a great relationship in any world, but I was running out of people to talk to. Roscoe and Tai had both thrown me out. I was feeling increasingly isolated by my mistakes.
Through the door, I heard the blare of a game show on his television. I had a key, so I let myself in. He was asleep in a recliner, his snores blowing like a trumpet. Seeing him like that, alone, gave me a shiver. Despite the six decades between us, I can always see the family resemblance. It’s not just him and me. I can see my father in both of our faces, too. His ghost is never far away.
When I shut off the television, the sudden silence jarred Edgar awake. He blinked with surprise, seeing me sitting on the sofa opposite him.
“You’re up here?” he growled. “Am I dying or something?”
I gave a sad smile. “No.”
“Then what’s going on?”
“I just wanted to see how you were.”
Edgar reached for a warm open can of Budweiser. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”
“Okay. Well, if you want the truth, Tai is downstairs packing. She didn’t want me around.”
“She leaving you?”
“Yes.”
“You cheat on her?”
“It’s complicated. Mostly, I think she just figured out that I wasn’t in love with her.”
Edgar snorted. “I’m pretty sure she knew that from the beginning.”
I thought about the Dylan whose life I’d taken over and the choice he’d made to be with Tai. I still didn’t understand it. “She said you told her not to marry me.”
“That’s right.”
“Sounds like everybody told her the same thing.”
“Yeah, so? Were we wrong?”
“I guess not.”
“So what are you going to do?” Edgar asked.
“What is there to do? She’s leaving.”
“Yeah. Give up. That sounds like you.”
“I don’t love her, Edgar. According to you and Roscoe, I never did. The best thing I can do is let her find someone who really does love her.”
Edgar laughed so hard he nearly spat out his beer. “That’s the best thing? For who, you or her? Aren’t you forgetting something? That girl was nuts about you from the beginning, and I assume she still is. Everyone told her you were damaged goods and she should run away, but she didn’t. That takes some balls, I’ll tell you. It’s not like she didn’t know what she was getting, but she saw something in you that you didn’t see in yourself. I gave her a lot of credit for that. Honestly, I gave you credit, too. I expected you to bail on her, but you stuck it out, at least until now. You worked your butt off to make a life with her, and it seemed to me like it was paying off. This past year, you were as happy as I’d ever seen you.”
I hadn’t heard that word very often in my life. “Happy? Tai made me happy?”
“Sure looked that way to me. I was beginning to think the two of you would go the distance. That would be a first in our family. I screwed things up, and your father—well, we both know about him. But you and Tai seemed to click. Made me glad to see it. I don’t know what the hell happened to ruin that, and I’m not judging anything you did, because I’m sure no angel myself. But it’s a shame. That’s all I’ll say. It’s a shame.”
Edgar’s admonition hit me like a punch to the gut.
Since I’d been here, the only thing I’d processed was the idea that the Dylan Moran who was married to Tai didn’t really love her. Not the way I loved Karly. That was all I needed to know. I saw a man who was nothing like me in any way other than our bodies. He was without fire, without passion, without a wife who was his soul mate. I looked into his closet and saw clothes that I hated and cuff links and cologne I’d never wear. It had literally never occurred to me that he was actually satisfied with his life. That he was wearing that cologne because his wife picked it out for him. That he went to Disney World and Hawaii because it made him happy to be with her. That he was trying hard to rise above his past and build a marriage that worked.
He was not me, and their relationship was not mine. But I’d taken that away from them. I’d destroyed their lives by coming here. Tai was about to walk away with her dreams shattered and her faith gone, and she had no idea why. She’d question herself and find it impossible to trust again. The man she’d loved had proven himself to be a total stranger, someone she didn’t know at all.
Because of me. Because I was a stranger.
Son of a bitch. What had I done?
“I have to go,” I told Edgar.
I knew what to do. Whether it was crazy or not, whether she believed me or not, I finally had to tell Tai the truth. I couldn’t let her walk away thinking that her Dylan had changed. The mistake wasn’t hers. I had to lay it all out and explain why her life had been turned upside down in a few short days. I also had to give her the hard truth that her real husband wasn’t coming back.
I left Edgar. I ran back downstairs and let myself inside our place.
“Tai!” I shouted.
She didn’t answer.
“Tai, I need to tell you something!”
And still there was only hurt silence.
“Please. Listen to me.”
I glanced out the windows. Her car was still at the curb; she hadn’t left. I went into the bedroom and saw her pink suitcase still on the bed, half-packed. The bathroom door was half-shut. The light was on inside. I went over and tapped my knuckles against the door.
“Tai? I’m sorry—I know you told me to go, but I really need to explain. It’s important.”
Still she ignored me.
I listened at the door, expecting to hear quiet tears, but all I heard from the other side was the noise of water running. When I looked down at my feet, I saw a stream of water creeping under the crack beneath the door, growing and spreading across the bedroom floor. My heartbeat took off with fear. I pushed the door open and went inside. Water flooded around my feet. When I glanced to my left, I saw the tub
overflowing, cold water running down the fiberglass wall like a river overflowing its banks.
I took two steps and looked into the tub, and I wailed in disbelief. From under the crystal-clear water, Tai stared back at me, eyes wide open, mouth wide open. She wore the yellow dress she’d been wearing a few minutes ago, its sunny fabric now pasted to her skin. I knew she was dead, but I turned off the water and grabbed her torso and pulled it toward me. Her body was a limp weight, unmoving, her skin already frigid. Her face never changed; her fixed eyes stared at me with the same terrified expression.
“Tai,” I murmured, shaking my head. “Oh, my God, Tai.”
I knelt on the wet floor and held her. Water dripped and sloshed around me. I shook her and kissed her forehead, and I gently closed her mouth with my hand and used my fingers to shut her eyes. She looked peaceful that way, but I was caught in a storm. My mind struggled to catch up to what had happened. It took me until that moment to realize that someone had killed her.
Someone had grabbed her and overpowered her and run the water and held her down where she couldn’t breathe.
Someone. Me.
I heard a footstep behind me. Tai’s body slipped from my arms, and I spun around. I tried to get up quickly on the wet floor, but I was too late.
He was there, looming over me. I was there.
Dylan Moran stared down at me, his mouth bent into a hard frown, his blue eyes as implacable as a stormy ocean. The leather jacket he wore was wet, where Tai had soaked him as she fought for her life. He had a dirty red brick from the back patio in his hand. Before I could get to my feet and put my hands around his neck, he swung the brick toward the side of my head. I saw it coming, heard the rush of air. I tried to duck, but I wasn’t fast enough.
A white-hot eruption of pain went off inside my skull like fireworks, and then I was gone.
CHAPTER 24
I awoke to a raging headache and the coppery taste of blood. My eyes blinked open. At first, I saw only the ceiling fan rotating slowly above me, making a low rattle. Then I shifted my head and saw that I lay in bed. When I tried to move, I found that I was tied down, spread-eagled, my wrists and ankles tightly bound with silk neckties to the four corners of the bed frame.
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