At the same time, I also wondered: Where is he?
This was his home. He lived here with Tai. He was the one who’d been missing for two days, not me. He’d gone into the park on the same night as Betsy Kern, and he’d never come back. I realized that any moment, he might return home, and it would be matter and antimatter meeting face to face.
“Dylan, what’s going on?”
I turned and saw Tai in the doorway. I was naked, and my first instinct was to cover myself. But she was my wife, so I let her see me that way.
“Nothing’s going on,” I said.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Tai, I wish I could explain, but I can’t.”
“Are you cheating on me? Is there someone else? Is that where you were?”
“I’m not cheating on you.”
She was silent for a while, and then she came and sat on our four-poster metal bed, which was covered by a frilly lavender comforter. “Did you hurt that woman?”
“Are you serious? How can you even ask me that? No.”
Tai shook her head. “You’re so closed off. Sometimes it makes me wonder what you’re hiding. You’re like a pressure cooker that’s ready to explode.”
“That’s not me,” I protested, but maybe it was me. The me who lived here.
“I just wish you’d open up, Dylan. You tell me you love me, you marry me, you sleep with me, but you never tell me anything. I’ve always accepted that you are who you are, and I loved you regardless. But now you’re making me feel like I don’t even know you.”
“I’m sorry. I’m not trying to make you feel that way.”
“Roscoe warned me about it, you know,” Tai went on. “He talked to me before the wedding. Just him and me. He told me if I wasn’t happy with who you were, I shouldn’t go through with it. He said if I thought that getting married would change you, I was going to get my heart broken. The thing is, I was willing to take that risk, because I loved you. Now you have to be honest with me. Was I wrong?”
This was one of those moments where a relationship teetered on the brink and could swing one way or another depending on what you said next. By not answering her, I was at risk of blowing up this other Dylan’s life with Tai. That was terribly unfair of me to do, but I couldn’t focus on anything other than the name she’d said.
“Roscoe.”
“I know he’s your friend, but he was trying to help me. Even so, I never doubted my decision about marrying you. That’s the truth.”
I grabbed clothes and began putting them on. A burgundy dress shirt that I left untucked. Black slacks. “Tai, I have to go.”
“Now? Dylan, no, don’t walk away from me.”
“I have to talk to Roscoe.”
“You can see him anytime. You need to talk to me.”
“I told you, it’s hard to explain, but I have to see him right now.”
I spotted car keys on the nightstand and put them in my pocket. I was on my way to the back door when I stopped at the noise behind me. Tai was crying. Her eyes were closed, her head down. I froze with indecision, then went and knelt in front of her. I caressed her cheek.
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “I know you want answers. I wish I could give them to you.”
“Do you love me?” she asked, looking up and wiping her face. “Have you ever loved me?”
I didn’t say anything, which was the worst thing I could do. I wanted to tell her what she needed to hear, but I couldn’t lie. In the silence, she hung her head again and kept crying.
“It’s not you, Tai,” I murmured. “It’s me. Believe me, I’ve never known who I am, either. But I’m trying to find out.”
Chapter 17
The South Side Catholic church where Roscoe served as a priest was a century-old redbrick building with a massive rose window built into its face. I’d been here many times to help him with raffles, book fairs, and food parties, but I hadn’t been back since the day of his funeral four years ago. I wasn’t a churchgoer anyway, and I found it hard to stand in the shadow of all those monuments to God after he had taken away my best friend.
It was early evening by the time I got there, with the summer sun barely hanging on above the trees. I let myself in through heavy double doors. The interior was cool, as it always was, and the tap of my shoes echoed from the high ceiling. As I walked down the center aisle, I was alone in this place, just me and the spectacle of the church. White columns soared over my head. The multicolored stained glass glowed darkly in the walls, and candles flickered in the shadows. Jesus was backlit on the altar, arms spread wide, welcoming me.
I took a seat in one of the pews near the crossing. This was where I’d been seated for the funeral, close enough that I could go up to the lectern under the watchful eyes of the saints and angels to give Roscoe’s eulogy. I was on crutches from the accident then. Karly had helped me. I could still remember the things I’d said through my tears, about the utterly selfless man Roscoe was, about the many ways he’d tried to save his best friend even when I had no interest in being saved.
I missed him so much. He’d left an emptiness behind in my life that I could never fill.
And then, risen from the dead, there he was. I saw him. Roscoe came from the north transept in his black suit, a Bible and a small leather notepad in one hand. It was the first moment that I believed, truly believed without any doubts, that what was happening to me was real.
He crossed in front of the altar and knelt, and then he went to the pulpit, where he stood on a platform to give himself more height and began making notes as he flipped through tissue-thin pages in his Bible. No doubt he had a sermon to give that night. He had his head down in concentration, and he didn’t see me. I tried to call to him, but my throat choked up, unable to form words. He’d barely changed from the man in my memory. Maybe he’d put on a couple of pounds and lost a little more hair, but that was all. His thick glasses were in the same black frames. His beard made a trimmed square around his lips and mouth. He hummed as he worked, the way he often did, a tuneless grumble that was easy to hear in the acoustics of the church.
As he considered his sermon, he tapped a pencil against his mouth and then looked up pensively. That was when he finally saw me sitting in the pew. His face broke into a warm smile, and I tried to hold it together, to not cry. To him, this was an ordinary moment, his boyhood friend paying him an unexpected visit. To me, it was a gift that only came for a few moments in the occasional dream. My companion, my anchor, my confidant, was here with me again.
“Dylan, what a nice surprise,” Roscoe said, in a voice that was much deeper than anyone would expect from his size.
He came down from the pulpit. For a small man, he always walked quickly. I stood up, and he pulled me into a hug. His hugs were long, he said, because life was short. Then he took the back of my head in his hands and kissed both of my cheeks. It was a habit he’d picked up on a summer trip to Italy, and he never let go of it. That greeting from him was something I’d never thought I would experience again.
The two of us sat down next to each other in the pew. I stared at him like he was an old photograph come to life, and he stared at me with an equal intensity. His keen eyes narrowed with surprise as he took a close look at my face. Somehow, I’d known that I wouldn’t be able to hide the truth from him. This man knew me better than anyone other than Karly, and like a parent with identical twins, he could tell immediately that the man in front of him was different from the man he knew.