Infinite(39)

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

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

I wanted to see her face.

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

The door opened, and there was my wife.

It wasn’t Karly. It was Tai.





CHAPTER 16

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

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

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

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

Except I was in that world right now.

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

“Yes, I know.”

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

“I’m sorry.”

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

“No, I’ll be all right.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Of course she was.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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