This was not my home. And yet it was. Photographs crowded the mantel, all of them showing me and Tai in places I couldn’t imagine being. The two of us side by side in front of Cinderella’s castle in the Magic Kingdom. The two of us wearing leis near the firepit of a Hawaiian luau. Me in a tux, her in a wedding dress. Husband and wife. Instinctively, I shook my head at the idea of any of this happening. Tai was smart and sweet, and she was a friend, and I wanted her to be happy. But I couldn’t imagine a world where I’d fallen in love with her and married her.

Except I was in that world right now.

When I didn’t say anything, Tai put both hands on my face. “Dylan, are you okay? Do you have any idea how terrified I’ve been? You’ve been gone almost two days.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Not a call, not a text, nothing. You didn’t show up at work. Your phone was off. I’ve been trying to reach you. I had visions of you being dead somewhere.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Do you need a doctor? You look terrible.”

“No, I’ll be all right.”

“Dylan, what happened to you? Where have you been?”

I didn’t have time to formulate a lie. A knock on the door interrupted us. Tai kissed me quickly, on the lips this time, and then she hurried to the outside door. I heard voices, and when Tai returned, she was with a man I recognized immediately. I couldn’t let on that I knew who he was, because in this world, we were strangers.

The tall skeletal man was Detective Harvey Bushing. He didn’t seem to have changed. When he looked at me with those sunken eyes, I thought he could see right through me and guess everything that I was hiding. I felt like running, the way I had when we first met, when he accused me of multiple murders. I had to remind myself: He doesn’t know about any of that. For him, in this place, none of that had actually happened.

Except for a murder a hundred yards away in River Park.

I was no fool. I’d been missing for two days, and a woman named Betsy Kern had been killed near my house two nights ago. Detective Bushing wasn’t going to consider that a coincidence.

He introduced himself, and we shook hands again, his grip as dry and limp as it had been the first time.

“It’s good to see you home safe and sound, Mr. Moran,” Bushing told me. “I was just coming over to see if your wife had heard from you, and here you are.”

“Good timing, Detective. Yes, here I am.”

“I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that your wife was pretty panicked.”

“Of course she was.”