“I’ll do that.”

Detective Bushing retraced his steps to his car. He got back inside but didn’t drive away, and I knew he was waiting to see what I would do. I couldn’t really wait outside any longer. I headed across the street toward my apartment building. When I got to the door, I was relieved that my key worked, and I went inside and closed the door behind me. On the street, Bushing’s gray sedan cruised past the building and disappeared.

I didn’t turn on any lights. I stayed in the shadowy hallway, looking across at the park, which was now sinking into the grip of night. Finally, I let myself into the downstairs apartment. It had a different smell, not like my place and not like the apartment where a different Dylan had lived with Tai. I couldn’t place what the aroma was. The only word that popped into my head to describe it was creamy, which wasn’t a smell at all. It reminded me of how our home used to smell when I was growing up with my parents.

The building itself was dead quiet. I didn’t feel the presence of my doppelg?nger or the aura of menace that followed him. The only sensation here was that strange creaminess, which I didn’t understand. Even so, I couldn’t afford to linger. I needed to make sure the apartment was empty, and then I needed to leave before the other Dylan and Karly came home. I didn’t want to risk leaving any footprints in their lives. I’d promised Roscoe I wouldn’t do that.

But I was too late.

I had just started down the hallway when the front door rattled behind me. I froze where I was, and there was no time to hide. The living room lights went on, blinding me.

When I could see again, there she was. Karly.

I captured that moment in my head like a photograph, because I knew it wouldn’t last. She wore a striped T-shirt and blue capris that hugged her willowy body. Heeled leather boots made her taller than me. Her hair was blonder and longer than my own Karly had kept it, and even her breasts seemed to swell larger from her torso than the woman I remembered. But her face was the same. Her blue eyes gravitated to mine like a magnet. Her mouth broke into a wide smile, and in that heartbreaking smile was everything I’d lost.

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.

“Can I see what you wrote?”

“Sure. I’ll read it to you later when we’re in bed.”

I covered my disappointment, because I wouldn’t be here for that. “Okay.”

“Would you get me a cup of tea, sweetheart?”

“Of course.”

I stood up from the chair. I wanted nothing more than to spend the evening like this, in the dim glow, with music playing. Then I would put my daughter in her crib and go to bed with my wife. My hunger to stay in this life overwhelmed me, but all good things had to end. Like a jumper on a bridge railing, I finally took the plunge, but I regretted it as soon as I fell.

“I think I’ll stretch my legs outside,” I told her. “I need to clear my head.”

“Are you all right?”

“Fine. I just want to get some air. Do you mind? Are you okay here?”

“I don’t mind, but please stay out of the park. Did you hear about that woman disappearing? I don’t like you walking home that way at night. I know the park is a shortcut, but I want you to stay on Foster.”

“Okay. Whatever you want.”

I went into the kitchen to make her tea. I knew the kind Karly liked: mandarin orange with a hint of cinnamon. It was too sweet for me, but she loved it. I could do this one last thing for her, but then I had to go. While the water boiled in a mug in the microwave, I got myself ready. I grabbed a light jacket from a hook near the back door, and I slipped it on.

Then I took a long, sharp knife from the butcher block on the counter and tucked it into the jacket pocket.