“Everybody warned me. My family. Roscoe. Hell, even Edgar warned me. They said I was making a mistake by marrying you. I should have listened.”

There was nothing I could say to that.

“Is it love?” Tai went on. “Are you in love with this woman? Or is it something worse?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not an idiot, Dylan. I see the resemblance. She looks like the woman who was murdered across the street from us. She looks like the woman you were stalking behind the dorm at Northwestern. What kind of man are you? Who did I marry?”

“You have it all wrong,” I insisted.

“Do I? Well, I guess we’ll see about that. I gave Detective Bushing the clothes you were wearing when you came back on Thursday. I told him to get your DNA and test it. If you killed Betsy Kern, they’ll find out.”

“I don’t care what the test shows. I didn’t kill anyone.”

“In other words, you already know the DNA will match.”

“I’m telling you, this is not what it looks like.”

She started packing again. “Go away, Dylan. Leave me alone. I don’t want to be in the same apartment with you.”

“Tai, please—”

“Go!” she screamed at me. “Get out! If you don’t go, I’ll call 911 and have them drag you out.”

I held up my hands in surrender. “Okay. Whatever you want. I’ll go.”

I left the apartment, because I didn’t want her to get any more upset. She was wrong about me, wrong about who I was and what I’d done, but then again, she wasn’t wrong. No, I wasn’t a killer, but the DNA would probably say that I was. No, I wasn’t having an affair, but I was in love with Karly and would take her back in my arms if I could. I’d been cruel to Tai in this world, but it’s not like I’d been a saint to her in my own world. I’d led her on and told myself it was innocent, because I had no bad intentions. But it wasn’t innocent at all.

After I left the apartment, I took the stairs to Edgar’s place. My grandfather and I didn’t have a great relationship in any world, but I was running out of people to talk to. Roscoe and Tai had both thrown me out. I was feeling increasingly isolated by my mistakes.