Infinite(77)

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.