CHAPTER 31

Despite Karly’s warning, I headed straight for the park. It drew me into its darkness. There was no one around, just empty sidewalks and shadows where the glow of the light posts didn’t reach. The night hid me, but it hid him, too. I walked across the wet grass to the dense trees lining the riverbank, where my gaze couldn’t penetrate the wall of tangled brush. The sewery dankness of the water intensified as I got closer, like the blooming of a corpse flower. The wind was dead still, letting the smell hang in the air.

I thought about calling out to him. I was sure he could hear me. Let’s end this now. You and me. But I didn’t think he’d show himself yet. He was like a virus, stalking his victims silently and only coming into the open when he saw that they were vulnerable.

In the quietness, I listened to the chirp of a lone cricket, like a spy issuing a warning. A mosquito whined in my ear, and I batted it away. Keeping my eyes on the riverbank, I returned to the trail and headed north. As I walked, I curled my fingers around the handle of the knife in my pocket. Every few steps, I looked back, trying to pick out a silhouette in the trees.

No one was there.

I kept looking for the Dylan who lived in this world, coming home from work. I wasn’t sure what emotions I would feel when I saw him. We’d have the same face, the same body, the same walk, but he had so many things I didn’t. Karly and Ellie were waiting for him. When he was back in our apartment, he’d kiss his little girl and sleep next to his wife. I had no one waiting for me in my own world. They were all gone.

All I could do was make sure that this Dylan Moran got home safely to his family.

At least, that was what I told myself I was here to do.

Ahead of me, the trail split. One way led up to Foster Avenue. The other way led down into a tunnel beside the water. I took the tunnel, where lights illuminated rust, swirls of graffiti, and a swarm of bugs. The last time I’d done this, I’d found Dylan Moran’s body in the process of being consumed by rats. It made me wonder if I was already too late. Maybe the Dylan of this world was never coming home from his job. Maybe my doppelg?nger had left his body beside the river, his decomposing flesh contributing to the rotting smell in my nose. But I couldn’t let myself think that way. I had to keep going.

On the other side of the tunnel, I climbed the wet grass to the north side of Foster. A few cars lit me up with their headlights. I walked several blocks to the neighborhood of North Park University. My mother, Eleanor, had gone there. I walked as far as Kedzie and saw a one-story office building across from the entrance to the university campus. I could see white lettering stenciled on the tall windows.

Chicago Housing Solutions.

This was the nonprofit run by Dylan Moran.

The lights were on inside. I could see a few workers, but I couldn’t make out individual faces. All I could do was wait for Dylan to head home and then follow him. I was near a McDonald’s, and I was hungry, so I took a minute to get myself an order of fries. I brought them back out and ate them one at a time as I perched on the top of a low fence that ran along Kedzie.

I’d been there about twenty minutes when a voice behind me said, “Mr. Moran?”

It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d be recognized here. I looked back, thinking about how to explain myself. A plump black woman in her sixties stood next to the door of an old Camry in the McDonald’s parking lot, with a brown takeaway bag in her hand. A boy no older than ten held her hand. Seeing my face, she gave me a wide, gap-toothed smile.

“Oh, Mr. Moran, I knew that was you. You taking a little dinner break?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

She looked down at the boy who was with her. “William, you go shake that man’s hand, all right? Do it right now. He’s a very special person.”

The boy looked nervous as he came up to the fence, but his grip was strong as he reached up to shake my hand. “My name’s Bill,” he said.

“Nice to meet you, Bill. I’m Dylan.”

The woman approached the fence, too. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

I began to apologize, but she waved it away.

“No, no, don’t you worry about that. With all the people you meet every day, I’m not surprised at all. I’m Cora-Lee Hobart. You helped my son Lionel last year. Saved him is what you did. You saved all of us, including me and my grandson here. Lionel fell behind on our rent when he was out of work for a couple of months. I needed looking after when I had my heart attack, but do you think the landlord cared about that? He was going to kick us out on the street. You wouldn’t let that happen. You made calls and wrote letters and got lawyers and people from the city on our side, and the landlord, he backed right down. Let Lionel catch up on the rent again when he went back to work. Without you, heaven only knows where we would be right now. God bless you, Mr. Moran.”

I smiled at her, but I felt envy again.

Envy that no one had ever spoken to me with that kind of gratitude in their voice. Envy that I’d never changed someone’s life like that.

“Well, it’s good to know you’re all doing so well,” I told her.

“That we are.” Cora-Lee looked around the parking lot and lowered her voice. “I’m not sure if you realize this, Mr. Moran, but people around here know your story. You made mistakes, and I’m sure you feel bad about what you did, and I know you paid a price for it. All I can tell you is, I thank God for your mistakes. They’re what brought you to us. Ain’t no accident, that’s for sure. You’re here for a reason.”

I shook my head with a kind of wonder. “That’s very nice of you to say.”

“It’s the truth.”

Her grandson shook my hand again. The two of them got into her Camry, and Cora-Lee waved at me as she pulled out of the parking lot. They drove down Foster toward the river, and I was alone again. When they were gone, I crossed the street to stand outside the offices of Chicago Housing Solutions. I hoped the darkness would keep me invisible on the other side of the windows. I needed to see this Dylan Moran up close—not just his face, but who he really was inside.

It wasn’t a big-budget operation. All the furniture looked secondhand. The yellow paint was dirty, with posters that read “Housing Is a Human Right” stuck crookedly on the walls with masking tape. The gray industrial carpet was worn and stained. Despite the late hour, almost a dozen people worked the phones and computers as if it were the middle of the day. A couple of them wore business clothes, but most wore blue T-shirts with the CHS logo, identifying them as volunteers. I saw two Lou Malnati’s pizza boxes on one desk, several liters of Mountain Dew, and a beat-up coffee machine with an oversize red tub of Folgers next to it.

My stare went from face to face. Then I saw him.

With his feet up on a desk and a phone propped on his shoulder, Dylan Moran drank Folgers from a paper cup.

He looked just like me. He hadn’t cut his hair or shaved. His clothes were similar to mine, a dark slim-fit button-down shirt and khakis, and leather shoes that had been through a war. As he talked on the phone, I saw a range of expressions that I regularly saw on my own face in the mirror and in photographs. We smiled alike; we frowned alike. Our blue eyes had the same heat. If you stood the two of us next to each other, we’d look like twins you couldn’t tell apart. Even Karly had accepted me as him. We were the same person.

But to my eyes, he was a completely different man. Our similarities were skin deep, and underneath all of that, we were strangers. Even the killer wearing my father’s leather jacket resembled me more than this Dylan Moran did. I couldn’t decide what it was that made him so foreign to me. I tried to unlock the riddle in his face, but I found myself unable to decipher it.