Infinite(52)

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

Then my gaze froze.

My heart stopped.

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

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

That woman was Karly.

Perfect. Gorgeous. Alive.

That woman was my wife.



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

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

I was crushed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What?”

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

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

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

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

“No problem,” I said, walking away.

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

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





CHAPTER 21

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

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

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

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