So she said, “Terrified by what?”

He set aside the stripped stem of a fig, swallowed a bite of fruit, blotted his lips with his napkin, took a sip of wine, blotted his lips again, and during all that, his face paled so much that the candlelight could not conceal the loss of color. His eyes, the pure blue of a deep clear sky, became the blue of the sky reflected on water, as tears brimmed but didn’t spill.

“Some things I’ve seen can’t be discussed at table, not if I’m to keep down the lovely meal you prepared. I’ll describe a parallel world that was hideous, but not as horrible as some others. You may nevertheless need your wine.”

“I already do.”

“I mean, your glass is empty.”

She poured another serving for herself. And one for him.

He stared into the chardonnay, as though the wine, in which swam scintillant shapes of candlelight, could be consulted regarding the designs of fate, as if it were a liquid crystal ball.

With a solemnity new to him, he said, “There is a timeline in which the United States endures a societal convulsion similar to the French Revolution, but even worse. It is led by modern Jacobins, not spawned by the lower classes but by the highest, by privileged young men and women made ignorant by the most expensive universities and schooled in violence by the culture of death that produced them. It is as though Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities had been rewritten by a violence-porn hack, filmed by the most deranged talent in Hollywood. The streets run with blood, as they did in the Dickens novel, as in fact they did in France between 1789 and 1794, during the Reign of Terror. Everywhere, scaffolds are erected in the streets, and the condemned are hung by their wrists to be eviscerated. Children are beheaded in front of their parents, the parents stoned to death by mobs. Tracts of houses and apartment buildings are set afire to exterminate residents who’ve been declared moral vermin. What we think could never happen here happens there, as it happened in Germany in the 1930s, as it happened in China under Mao. Nihilism and irrationality spread like a plague. Crazed, bestial emotion replaces logic and reason. Madness is redefined as moral clarity. The past is destroyed and reinvented to ensure a future of utopian justice, though justice no longer exists, has become mere revenge, often revenge against enemies more imagined than real, even revenge of Jacobin against Jacobin, as the insanity breeds more paranoia. I’ve seen women gang-raped in the streets by men urged on by other women waving banners of female solidarity. I’ve seen the heads of babies, from families of the revolution’s enemies, scattered across a day-care playground like so many spoiled cabbages discarded by a grocer.”

Ed lost the ability to withhold his tears. Lambent light glazed his wet face. His mouth had gone soft, and a tremor afflicted him.

Pushing aside her glass of wine, Michelle not only returned to sobriety in an instant, but she also abandoned the doubt with which she had thus far received his story. In his voice, demeanor, and tears, she recognized a truth that she only wished might be a lie.

She said, “And that wasn’t the worst world you’ve seen?”

He found his voice again. “Understand, many timelines are as hospitable as this one, some even better. But across an infinite multiverse of worlds, you can find all the evil realms that humanity has imagined—and some beyond imagining. I’m burnt out on travel. I haven’t the nerve for it anymore. My heart can’t take it. I was a pacifist once. A pacifist! I’m not anymore. I am armed. I can kill. The things I’ve seen . . . they’ve changed me. I don’t want to be changed more than I’ve already been. I don’t want the multiverse. All I want is a home, books, and the peace to read them.”

Michelle stared at the key to everything, which lay between her and Ed. As the candles pulsed, plumes of light and plumes of shadow seemed to flow across the table to the device, as if it possessed a gravity that would in time draw all things to it.

“You’re terrified of what’s out there, the places this thing can take you, worse even than the terror of that other America you described—and yet you want me to use it.”

“Only carefully, with my guidance. To undo the tragedy, connect with a version of your husband and child who live elsewhere and have lost you, bring back together a family that should never have been torn asunder. During this past year, I’ve come to love you as I might a daughter, Michelle. I want to cure your sorrow, put an end to your loneliness, so you can be happy.”

Maybe it was real—this science, this incredible promise. But if it was a false hope, it would be worse than no hope at all.

She said, “It sounds very nice, a dream, a fairy tale. But if you don’t want to ‘port’ anymore—”

“For you, only to make this happen, I would port again.”

“Yeah, well, with an infinite number of worlds to search, the chances of finding Jeffy and Amity alone, needing me—they’re zero.”

Color returned to Ed’s face, and he found again the smile that tears had earlier washed away.

“Just wait,” he said.

“For what?”

“You’ll see!”

Muttering to himself, he fumbled through the compartments of his coat, like the White Rabbit searching for a pocket watch.

“Another book?” she asked. “You carry the Library of Ed with you?”

“No, no. What would a book prove?” He produced a folded piece of paper, opened it, smoothed it flat. “This is from his Facebook page.” He slid the photograph across the table.

“Whose Facebook page?”

The answer was in the photo, and it stunned her speechless.

Here was her Jeffy, older than he had been on the day he died, smiling that goofy smile of his.

The hope that abruptly flooded into Michelle was so powerful that it filled her until her breast ached with the pressure of it, until she could not draw a breath, as if she might drown in hope.

With Jeffy was a lovely girl who looked eleven, a girl who had been four the day that she’d been run down by an Escalade and killed with her father. Spared from death, blessed with life, this Amity had changed so much, so very much, but there could be no doubt who she was.

“I found them,” Ed Casper Harkenbach said.

Michelle couldn’t look up from the photo, for fear that when she lowered her eyes to it again, Jeffy and Amity would be gone, the paper blank.

If this image was not Photoshopped, then they had died, yes, but not in all the worlds where they lived.

The word miracle was inadequate.

“If this isn’t true, don’t do this to me, Ed.”

“In that world,” he said, “you aren’t in their lives, haven’t been for years. He still loves you very much and misses you. And the girl—she’s a wonderful girl, a treasure—she yearns for you. We can do this, Michelle. We can do this. I guarantee you. I have prepared the way.” He picked up the key to everything and came around the table. “Shall I give you a demonstration?”

“What demonstration?”

“You’re not ready to meet them. But a small trip to prove what I’ve said . . . ?”

He pulled her chair back, and with some trepidation, she rose to her feet. He escorted her to the door to the hallway but didn’t pass through it.

“Take my arm,” he said. “Hold tight.”

The screen of his device brightened with pale-gray light.

As she watched him tap a button marked SELECT and then work with a keypad when one appeared, her doubt returned. She felt foolish for participating in what would certainly result in an assurance that, gee, what a surprise, it always worked before.

“Here we go,” he said.

The kitchen vanished.

They were afloat in a realm without shape or dimension. Blinding light washed over them, dazzled through them, light so intense and strange that they might have been standing for judgment in the brightness of God.

Then they were in the kitchen again, but it was dark. When Ed flipped the light switch, Michelle saw a familiar room yet one with numerous small differences, the absence of her personal things.

“This is Jeffrey’s house on Earth one point ten, a world where he never married, where Amity was never born. He lives alone here, a bachelor. Currently he’s on the road for two weeks, checking swap meets and antique barns, looking for his radios, Bakelite jewelry, period posters.”

As Ed led her through the bungalow, Michelle’s legs felt weak. Her breath repeatedly caught in her throat at one sight or another. The place was stocked with all the things that her lost husband had loved to collect and restore and share with his customers. Because the rooms were so imprinted with Jeffy’s passions, they were warm, cozy, welcoming—yet ineffably sad. She didn’t believe she imagined the air of loneliness that faded the charm of the bright, stylized Art Deco objects and images. Jeffy was outgoing. He thrived on companionship. He had not been born to live alone.