CHANCE PROPERTIES

I remembered it because it made me think about chance. Chance ruled everything. Chance determined who lived and who died.

“I’m him,” I said again. “My father lost control that night. That’s what happens to me.”

Roscoe took a loud breath. I had no way of knowing it was practically his last one. “Why?” he asked me.

“What?”

“Why did you attack that man? Why did you go after him?”

“Because he hit that girl.”

“Exactly.”

Roscoe eased his foot onto the accelerator and started across the intersection. He was distracted, and he forgot to look right. If he had, he would have seen the headlights of the truck coming down the one-way street and barreling through the stop sign. I was off in my own world and didn’t see it either.

“Buddy, you’re not your father,” Roscoe told me.

That’s the last thing I remembered until I woke up and saw Karly’s face.

CHAPTER 5

This was where we’d met.

The ash tree on the corner still bore the scars of the accident. The truck hit us so hard that it drove Roscoe’s car over the curb and wrapped it around the tree trunk. I ran my fingers over the jagged crevices in the bark, which were the only remaining evidence that something violent had occurred here.

I hadn’t really intended to come back to this place, but Alicia’s office wasn’t far away. The day had turned dark, and rain began to spit on my face. I looked up at the old apartment building at the corner of the intersection. That was the building that had been for sale back then, with Karly as the listing agent. It was one of her first properties. She was twenty-five years old, determined to get a top price to impress her mother. She’d been working late out of a vacant apartment, and she’d fallen asleep, when the noise of the accident awakened her. That was when she rushed downstairs to find me in the car, broken and bleeding.

This beautiful stranger promised not to leave me, and she kept her promise.

Karly rode in the ambulance with me. She stayed in the hospital room with me and nursed me back to health in her own bed. For weeks, she held together the pieces of a shattered man who blamed himself for his friend’s death. I fell in love with her almost immediately, but I couldn’t understand why she’d fallen in love with me, too. The closer she got to me, the more I kept telling her to walk away.

I’d made too many mistakes in life, too many bad choices. In my heart of hearts, I didn’t think I deserved to have those bad choices lead me to someone like her. Sooner or later, I expected her to see who I really was, and that would be the end of us. When she slept with Scotty Ryan, I felt as if she’d finally proved me right. I didn’t want any explanations. That whole weekend in the country, I refused to listen.

Until the last night. Until her last words.

As we were heading home, with our bags in the car and the rain pouring down and our marriage in ruins, she stopped me at the door and said with resignation in her voice: “May I say something?”

I didn’t answer. I simply waited.

“Dylan, you never asked me what I saw in you after the accident, but if we’re really done, I want you to know the truth. From the moment I met you, I realized that we were exactly alike—no, wait, let me finish. I know you don’t believe that, because you have this strange, twisted vision of yourself. But we’re the same. We both grew up in cages we built for ourselves. And when I met you, I thought, here was a man who could help me become the person I wanted to be, and I could do the same for him. I still think that’s true. The thing is, I’m ready, Dylan. I can’t wait anymore. I’m not happy with my life, not because of you, but because I need to be someone different. I’ll do it without you if I have to, but I’d rather do it with you. And deep down, I think you want that, too. My question is, are you willing to try?”

That was a good question.

That was a very good question, and I knew what I wanted to say. I wanted to rise above the anger I carried—for the world, for her, but mostly for myself. Karly needed me to forgive her, and that was what I needed to do, too. Instead, I failed both of us. It was another of my mistakes, another bad choice. I should have kissed her right then, but all I did was walk past her and get in the car. That was how we drove out into the rain that night, with a bitter silence lingering between us.

You see, there are moments in your life you are desperate to take back as soon as they happen, but the clock ticks, and they’re gone. You make your choice, and an instant later, nothing is the same.

By the time I was ready to tell her how I felt, we were already in the water.

I couldn’t stay at the accident scene any longer. I walked down the side street toward the green fields of Horner Park, which I knew from my childhood. As I did, I learned that my life was still governed by Chance with a capital C, because in the next block, across from the park’s basketball courts, I noticed a two-story house with a familiar red-and-black sign mounted in the yard. The house was for sale, and the listing agent was another woman at Chance Properties whom I’d met once or twice.

However, I didn’t care about that.

Instead, I focused on the white pickup truck parked at the curb. The truck had a painted logo on the door for Ryan Construction.

Scotty Ryan.

He was inside the house.

I heard a roaring in my head, a thump-thump-thump as my heartbeat took off. I hadn’t had a drink all day, so there was no excuse for making a foolish mistake. No good could come from seeing him.

It didn’t matter. I couldn’t stop myself. I walked down the sidewalk and stood in front of the white picket fence. The house was neatly put together, freshly painted, with flowers growing in the window boxes. The front door was open, and I could hear the whine of a power saw inside. My common sense sent me a very clear message to walk away, which my heart ignored. I let myself inside the fence and headed for the steps. I hesitated only briefly at the house’s screen door before I ripped it open.

The interior had the sweet smell of cut wood. Plastic sheeting lined the living room floor. The noise of the saw deafened me, but then it cut off, leaving a stark silence. Scotty Ryan stood behind the saw, holding up a long length of oak trim to examine the cut. As he did, he saw me.

His whole body stiffened. When he recovered, he took off his noise-canceling headphones and his safety goggles and canvas gloves. He was dressed in jeans and work boots, with a loose Black Hawks jersey over his long torso. Sawdust made a film on his arms.

“Hello, Dylan,” he said.

“Scotty.”

We faced each other across the room. The standoff between us was like two tough dogs growling in an alley.

Scotty Ryan was forty years old, so nearly a decade older than me. He was half a foot taller, too, with a lanky, almost rubbery frame. He had wavy reddish-blond hair, and his face was sunburned pink from time spent in the sun. When he talked, he had an aw-shucks drawl in his voice, and his words always came out slowly, like honey from a jar. His casual good humor made him a difficult man to dislike, but believe me, I’d found a way.

“I’m really sorry,” Scotty said, which covered a lot of ground. “You can’t imagine how sorry I am.”

“You should be.”

My verbal blow rolled off him without causing any damage. He brushed his hand through his thick hair, and I could see the glow of sweat on his face. “I can’t believe she’s gone. I’m crushed. I’m sure you must be, too.”

“Wow. You think?”

Scotty shrugged his wide shoulders. “Hey, it’s hard to tell with you, Dylan. Karly always said you kept things locked up tight. You never showed her anything. That drove her crazy. No offense.”

Because adding “no offense” made everything better, coming from the man who’d slept with my wife.

“I have a question, Scotty.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“How long were you in love with Karly? How long were you hiding that little secret?”

Scotty rubbed his jutting chin and took his time to answer, the way he always did. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this now, Dylan.”

“How. Long?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Probably from the day I met her. I’ve known her a lot longer than you. I think she was only eighteen back then, but I never thought of her as young. She was so smart, confident, full of herself. I knew she was way out of my league, but yeah, I guess I had a crush on her from day one. Not that I ever intended to do anything about it.”

“Or you were just biding your time. Waiting until she was vulnerable.”

“That’s not how it went down. I swear. That’s not what happened.”

“Then what did happen?”

I took a couple of steps toward him. The plastic sheeting crinkled under my feet. He watched me warily, like a fighter in the ring.

“Look, what else do you want to know? I’m sure Karly already filled you in. When she called me, she said she was going to tell you everything.”