I raised my hands in apology, then waited for a gap in the cars and hurried to the opposite side. I steadied myself against a light post and took a few deep breaths. I couldn’t help but think about the irony of almost dying as a truck ran me over. In my head, I could hear Edgar’s raspy voice telling me the story of Daniel Catton Rich, director of the Art Institute, who would have died the same way in 1941 if my grandfather hadn’t accidentally tackled him.

It made me think again that Roscoe was right. Fate had a way of making the elements of our worlds converge. What I called fate, he called God.

Standing at the corner, I got my bearings. I was on the park side of the street, across from the Hilton, a few blocks south of the LaSalle Plaza. I had no idea why my exit from the Art Institute had taken me here, but a moment later, I heard someone calling my name.

“Dylan?”

Looking toward the lake, I saw Tai heading my way from Grant Park.

Seeing her gave me a shiver of disorientation. My last nightmarish memory of Tai was of seeing her face under the water in our apartment. Now she was back, alive and unharmed.

She walked up and gave me an awkward kiss on the cheek. “Dylan, it is you. What a nice surprise.”

She said it in a way that told me it really wasn’t such a nice surprise. We were definitely not married in this world.

“Hello, Tai.”

“How long has it been? I mean, it must be four years.”

I tried not to blurt out my surprise: Four years? How could I not have seen Tai in four years?

“It’s been a while,” I said, stumbling over my reply. “How are you?”

“I’m good. Really good. Things at the hotel are fine. I mean, not the same without you, of course.”

“Sure.” I had no idea what she meant. Then I added, “You look good.”

“Thanks.”

She really did look good. She’d chopped off her long hair, now sporting a modern androgynous cut. She wore a tailored burgundy suit, with a skirt that didn’t quite reach to her knees, which showed off her legs. Her stilettos matched the suit. She’d always been pretty, but now she radiated confidence to go with it. She didn’t look young anymore.

“You look good, too,” she added, mostly as an afterthought.

“Still the same.”

“No. No. Definitely different. But I like it.”

“So the job’s okay?” I asked, trying to understand why I’d left the hotel years earlier.

“It is. I mean, believe me, I did not want to take over the way I did. And without you, I felt like I was jumping into the pool to learn how to swim. For months, I didn’t know which end was up.”

“I doubt that.”