Sometimes I wonder how things might have turned out if I changed my mind and called in sick, as I had any right to do, having just been married the day before and seen my new husband off to jolly England a few hours later. But you can’t second-guess yourself, I’ve found. You don’t know what lies in that parallel dimension, you don’t know what fate is contained inside those infinite hypothetical worlds in which you made other choices. Anyway, what can you do about them? They’re like the past itself, they’re gone. You can’t just get on your bicycle and travel there.

In this world, the world in which I hung up the telephone and stared at the wall and said to myself, Harry Oakes is dead, he’s been murdered; the world in which I ran a bath and scrubbed away the sweat and salt, the remnants of Thorpe from the hollows of my body, and the water felt like ice on my skin; in which I dressed and brushed my hair and bicycled to the canteen, repeating Harry Oakes is dead to the rhythm of the bicycle wheels, and served a hundred and seventeen men their bacon and eggs and coffee; in which I pieced together gossip about what was happening down at Westbourne—most of which turned out to be false—and then borrowed Mrs. Gudewill’s Buick for the ride out to Lyford Cay: in this world, in this history I now recount, I never did discover what Jack meant to say to me, and whether it would have made a difference.

In disregard of the heavy sky, I drove Mrs. Gudewill’s Buick with the top down, all the way along New Providence Island while the draft warped around me and the ocean spread out to the horizon. I passed the drive to Westbourne, now crawling with men, without stopping. Harry Oakes is dead, I thought, but still the words made no sense, so I kept driving. The white beaches went by, mile after mile, and I thought how lovely it would be to stop and bathe in that sea, to lie on that beach with your lover, your husband, the sand on your skin, his hair in your hands. The road streaked west along the extreme edge of the coast, while the palmettos and the scrub crawled past on my left. Above the pitch of the Buick’s engine, I heard a different noise, deeper and larger, and I looked up and saw a massive airplane dropping gracefully from the hazy sky, wheels down, aiming for Windsor Field. The din was enormous, like the end of the world. Foolishly I ducked my head as it passed. The screech of tires followed a moment later. Ahead, I saw a commotion to the right, away from the road, on the beach. I brought the automobile to a stop.