“You talked to her? Are you kidding me? When?”

“The day after,” Scotty admitted. “She was upset, blaming herself, said she couldn’t believe she’d made such a stupid mistake. She was going to tell you the truth, and she wanted me to know. For what it’s worth, I told her to keep it to herself and not risk her marriage over this. Believe me, I knew she had no intention of leaving you for me. That’s not what it was about. Whatever that night meant to me, it was just a drunken error in judgment to her. You should know what that’s like. You’ve made enough of those yourself, am I right?”

I didn’t take the bait.

“The details, Scotty. How did it happen?”

Scotty shook his head. “I don’t know what to tell you, Dylan. Karly and I have been friends for a long time, and yeah, it’s always been more than that for me. If she knew how I felt, she was classy enough not to let on and embarrass me. But the last few months, she started telling me things. Personal things. Confiding in me about her problems. She needed to talk to someone, because you weren’t listening.”

“And there you were, with a shoulder for her to cry on.”

“You think Karly was the only one turning to someone else? She said you told your assistant Tai more than you ever told her.”

I felt slapped. “There was nothing between me and Tai. There never was. Karly knew that.”

“Did she?”

“Don’t try to put any of this on me.”

Scotty rolled his eyes and stared at the ceiling. “I’m not. Seriously, man, I’m not. I’m just telling you the way it was. You were running so fast in your life that you never saw that Karly wanted to slow things down. She was ready to quit, Dylan. To tell her mother that she wanted out of the real estate business. She was always more like her dad than her mom—you know that. A book type. A poet. Karly was ready to have kids. She wanted all of that more than anything, but she didn’t think you’d ever go for it. It was eating her up inside.”

“I never said anything like that to her.”

“I don’t care what you said. I’m telling you what she heard. That night? Her and me? She’d landed a buyer on that place in Schaumburg for Vernon Hotels, and the renovations were all done. I opened champagne for us, and yeah, we had too much. But if that’s all it was, nothing would have happened. Except the more she drank, the more Karly started talking about wanting a different life and not knowing how to tell you. She didn’t blame you for it, if that’s what you’re thinking. She was just upset, and she started crying. I hugged her. I wanted to comfort her, and one thing led to another. Neither one of us planned it, and Karly hated herself for letting it happen. You can believe this or not, but I’m sorry it happened, too.”

I didn’t need a drink now to be losing control.

“You killed her,” I snapped. “It’s your fault she’s gone. We were out there in the middle of nowhere because of you.”

Scotty’s casual demeanor hardened into anger. Our nerves were both fraying. “Hey, you can blame me for the affair. I’ll take that. But I’m not the reason she died. If you want someone to blame for that, look in the mirror.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I mean, what happened in that river, Dylan? Explain it to me. Tell me the truth. Why are you here and she’s not?”

“I tried to save her. That’s what happened.”

Scotty opened his mouth and then clamped it shut. His sunburned cheeks flushed even redder, like steam building up in his face.

“Do you have something to say?” I asked.

“No.”

“Don’t hold back, Scotty. Say it.”

He pushed into my space, his scarlet face inches from mine. His voice became a snarl. “Fine. You want me to say it? I will. You should have died out there. If it was me in that car, I would never have come out of that river without her. Either we both lived, or we both died. But there’s no way I would have let her die alone.”

My left hand flew. I didn’t even feel it happening. I never did when I lost control. My arm swung like a rocket left to right, and my fist collided with Scotty’s mouth. The impact was like hitting a wall. Blood sprayed from his lips and nose, and I felt the shudder knifing through my forearm. I wondered if I’d broken my fingers. His head snapped sideways, and he staggered back, spitting out a tooth like a kernel of popcorn.

I tensed, waiting for him to charge me. He was big enough and strong enough to give me a beatdown if he wanted. A part of me hoped he would. I wanted to feel the pain of his fists until I was unconscious on the floor. I deserved punishment. I’d failed, and it felt as if I was doomed to relive that failure over and over. Whenever I closed my eyes, I was in the water, swimming through nothingness, searching for the car where Karly was trapped. I had to find her. I had to save her. I dove and swam and searched, but each fragile second dragged her farther away from me. Her voice stopped calling my name. Her cries vanished. All that was left was a terrible silence in my head, a silence of guilt and death. She was gone. My wife was gone.

I hit Scotty because I knew he was right.

I’d let Karly die alone.

When it was obvious that Scotty wasn’t going to fight back, I left the house, nursing my bruised and bloody hand. I was consumed by a mix of adrenaline and despair. At the sidewalk, I met an elderly woman walking her Westie. She studied my face with suspicious eyes and noted the blood on my fingers.

“Is everything all right?” she asked me.

“Fine.”

“I heard loud voices. An argument.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Should I call the police?”

“Everything’s fine, ma’am,” I told her, continuing into the street.

“This is a nice neighborhood!” she called after me, with the reproach of a schoolteacher. “We don’t like that kind of thing around here! People shouldn’t fight!”

I didn’t answer her. I crossed through the traffic to Horner Park and then into the wet, open grass of the park’s baseball field. I used to come here as a kid. Roscoe and I would toss a football around and tackle each other in the mud. We’d talk about playing quarterback for the Bears, and believe me, they’ve had worse.

The drizzle had turned into showers, and the rain soaked me as I stood there. No one else was around. I winced, feeling the sharp burn in my hand. My fingers felt stiff as I tried to move them.

The sheriff called me a violent man.

You’re not.

But my history said otherwise.

Ahead of me, I saw a lineup of trees where the park ended at the narrow ribbon of the Chicago River. A fence discouraged kids from hiking down the riverbank and falling into the water. Not that it worked. As teenagers, Roscoe and I had explored the banks on both sides of the river, playing spies, throwing rocks, hunting rats. Today, in the rain, I walked all the way up to the fence and took hold of it with both hands and closed my eyes. I leaned my forehead against the mesh.

Without Roscoe, without Karly, I didn’t think I’d ever felt more alone. They’d gone on to other worlds, and I was still here. However, when I opened my eyes again, I realized that I wasn’t alone anymore.

He was with me.

I can’t tell you how I knew. I didn’t hear footsteps on the trail. I didn’t see anyone watching me. The trees were close in around me, and the gray sky made it seem like night. A stranger could have been six feet away, and I wouldn’t have seen him. But someone was on the other side of the fence, hiding on the riverbank the way I used to do when I was a kid. Like he knew this was where I’d go. Like he’d been waiting for me to come here. I tried to be patient, to stand there like a statue in silence and see if he’d show himself.

He was back. I was back.

My doppelg?nger.

I stared into the brush, watching for movement in the shadows. I could see the tree trunks like soldiers, and among them, I finally spotted a dark outline that looked out of place. A person. I hadn’t been this close to him before. Only a few feet separated us. I also realized, as I had in the museum, that this wasn’t just about me. He knew I was here, too. He was aware of me, just as I was aware of him. We were connected. And what I felt emanating from him was an aura of sheer sadistic rage. It was like I’d handed this shadow all my anger, all my bitterness, all my frustrations.

I looked around to be sure that no one else was nearby. Just him and me. My hallucination. My mental breakdown.

“I know you’re there,” I called to him in a low voice. Then I added for the hell of it: “Talk to me.”

I waited for an answer, but I didn’t expect to get one. Hallucinations didn’t talk back. Even so, by speaking to him, I felt as if I’d taken a leap into a rabbit hole, and I had no idea where it would lead me.

“Who are you?” I asked.

I still got no reply. The silence around me was punctuated by the patter of rain on the leaves.

Then, like a statue coming to life, a voice spoke from the darkness. My voice, as if I were on the radio, when you can’t believe that’s how you sound to everyone else.