Meeting Edgar felt like an ordinary day in an ordinary life, but nothing about my world was ordinary anymore. I walked briskly toward the museum, along sidewalks I’d taken throughout my life. It would have been faster to take a cab, but I wanted to preserve my cash for when I really needed it.

When I was back in the heart of the city, I cut through Millennium Park, passing the Pritzker Pavilion, where the wide-open stretch of green grass was crowded with people eating picnic lunches. On the sidewalks, every bench was taken. I passed an old man who was reading a copy of the Chicago Tribune, and he’d left the front section on the bench next to him. My eyes went to the headlines automatically, and I spotted a notice on the very top of the page about the Cubs completing a three-game home sweep of the Phillies. That made me stop in surprise. Not just because the Cubs had swept anybody. No, if there’s one thing I keep a close eye on, it’s Cubs baseball, and I knew they weren’t supposed to be hosting Philadelphia until next week.

Then I glanced at the date on the paper and saw that it was next week.

It was Thursday, just as Edgar had said. I didn’t understand how that was possible. Somehow, I’d lost almost an entire week of my life after my encounter with Eve, and I remembered none of it.

I thought about her question: Have you been having blackouts, Dylan?

Up until that moment, I would have said no, but I’d sat next to Eve Brier on Navy Pier in the early hours of Friday morning. Now it was six days later, and I had no idea what had happened in between.

The old man on the bench looked up from the sports pages. “Help you?”

“I was wondering if you’d finished the front section of the paper.”

His eyes narrowed as he studied the state of my clothes, but then he shrugged. “Yeah, take it. I’d just throw it away.”

“Thank you.”

I took the front section with me and kept walking until I found an empty bench. I sat down and ripped through the pages, not even sure what I was looking for. Somehow, I wanted to believe that I’d made a mistake. Or maybe I hoped I would see a news article that would trigger my memories of the past several days. Instead, the stories confirmed that events in the world had gone on without me. Nearly a week had passed, and I hadn’t been here to see it.

With my headache getting worse, I closed the paper.

That was when I noticed an article in the lower left corner of the front page. The headline jumped out at me:

Woman Stabbed to Death in River Park