“Infinite monkeys typing infinite Hamlets?”

“Yes, in an infinite universe, wormholes have to exist. All possible worlds exist. In fact, there are no possibilities in an infinite universe, just eventualities.”

“What do you think it is? Finite or infinite?”

“Oh, I don’t know what I think, but I know what I want. I want an infinite universe.” She rolled onto her side to face him. “Think about what it means if literally anything is possible. We could be anything you can think of.”

“Anything?”

“This entire universe we’re in right now could be tiny, fitting in the palm of some being’s hand so far beyond us, we’re like ants to a giant. And the giant keeps us in jars on her windowsill. We’re a computer simulation. We’re characters in a storybook left on a train by a girl late for dinner. We’re a dream an ancient god is dreaming, and any minute now…he will wake. Ask any question in an infinite universe, and the answer is yes. Always yes.”

All worlds are possible? Jeremy wanted to believe there was a world where he and Rafe never left Shanandoah, a universe where they’re still there, riding out with Skya on their horses, Freddy and Sunny, killing Bright Boys, hunting snow deer and drinking sweet rainberry wine, climbing the great spring trees to watch the firemoths come out and flash their autumn-red wings…

In an infinite universe, he and Rafe haven’t spent the last thirteen years apart. That’s the universe he wants to live in, a universe where he could say to Rafe, “Do you miss me as much as I miss you?” or “Do you love me as much as I love you?” and the answer is yes, yes, forever yes. Even if that universe existed only on the pages of a book written by a storyteller in another world in another time in another dimension. Did it matter?

He and Chi parted ways very amicably when he was called back to his work. When she asked him if they’d meet again, he reminded her that if the universe were infinite, they undoubtedly would, which made her smile when she kissed him goodbye.

In an infinite universe, all stories were true stories.

When you begin to question your sanity, remind yourself that the fact that something impossible happened doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

It had been almost fifteen years since Jeremy left Shanandoah, since he’d lost Rafe, and he still hadn’t found the missing princess. Maybe he never would. Maybe she’d be lost forever and so would he.

Then his mother died of a stroke, died so fast he wasn’t able to make it home to tell her goodbye.

In his grief, he sleepwalked through his mother’s wake, forgetting the names of her colleagues and students as soon as they introduced themselves. Later, he’d remember only one person he met that day. A woman in dark blue shook his hand and said, “Jeremy, dear, I know your mother was so proud of you. She told me all the time.”

“Thank you,” he said for the thousandth time.

“I also knew your father, Jeremy. I was at his funeral too. Shame.”

He turned back and looked at her. “You were?”

“So young. I’m so glad you’re doing so well. We were all a bit worried.”

“Worried about what?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s hereditary, they say. Schizophrenia. But you’re quite well, obviously. A hero even. It’s…Well, it’s good to see you. Only wish it was under better circumstances and—”

He left. He just left her standing there, prattling on. His father had schizophrenia? His father had schizophrenia, and his mother had never told him? Depression. That’s all that was ever said about it. That he was overworked and depressed and no one would publish his books, and in a weak moment, he drove his car into the garage and left it running.

He sat on his mother’s sofa with his head in his hands. Why? Why wouldn’t they tell him? And then he knew. The woman in blue had told him why.

Hereditary.

His mother didn’t want to scare him.

He’d found two different women with schizophrenia. Their families and doctors had told him what to expect when he encountered them. Delusions. Delusions of persecution. Evil creatures were out to get him. Bright Boys? Delusions of reference. Something normal happens, and you think it’s happening just to you and for you? A former missing child with a special talent for finding other lost people? Delusions of grandeur. In another world, he served a queen who sent him on a quest?

Delusions and hallucinations and it was hereditary…

Jeremy didn’t leave the house for a week. He barely ate, hardly slept. It explained everything, didn’t it? That’s why Rafe didn’t remember Shanandoah. Because they never went there. They were lost in the woods or maybe they had been kidnapped? Those scars on Rafe’s back…not from the Bright Boys but from some maniac who’d held them in his basement?

He tried to remember hunting in the woods or banging down doors or anything other than Queen Skya, the Moonstone Palace, putting his sword into the bellies of Bright Boys and watching them turn into smoke and waft away.

What was real? Was any of it real? Did Rafe ever even love him? Or was all that a delusion too?

On the seventh day, someone rang the doorbell. He didn’t want to answer it but then came a knock. Another knock. Jeremy crawled off the floor and went to answer it.

A man in a suit looked at him like he’d seen a ghost. Did Jeremy look that rough? Probably. When was the last time he’d showered?

The man, properly English in every way, plastered on a bland expression and introduced himself as the administrator of his late mother’s estate. Certain property had been put into storage for Jeremy, and he was delivering it. He pointed to a small white moving van parked in the drive.

Two young men carried in a large wooden crate and set it in the living room. Jeremy signed some forms without reading them, and then he was alone again.

Even in his despair, he couldn’t help but be a little curious. He found a hammer and used the claw end to pry open the crate.

On top of a pile of straw, he found a note from Bobbi Howell of all people. Rafe’s mother? What the hell would she have shipped all the way to Oxford in a wooden crate?

Dear Mary,

These are for Jeremy. Ralph painted them in art therapy. He put them out with the trash, but I know he’d want Jeremy to have them. You know our boys. Can’t admit how much they need each other. I don’t even know if you should show them to Jeremy. Would it make it better or worse? I swear they’re like those twins in stories that step on their own toes and punch their own faces so the other one feels it.

I wish I could see you again, Mary. You’re the only one in this world who knows what it’s like to lose one son and get back a different one.

Love you.

Bobbi

Jeremy dug through the straw and packing material and found that the crate contained paintings. He lined them up along the walls.

They were all of him.

Age fourteen or fifteen, sitting at his mother’s piano at their old house on Park. He could almost hear the music coming out of it…“Primavera” by Ludovico Einaudi. And a red crow is perched on the open top.

Another painting…Jeremy kneels before a young queen holding a sword on the stone steps of a palace.

Another…Jeremy in dark leather armor facing off against a silver tiger.

And another…Jeremy walking a sorrel stallion through a field of rainberry blossoms.

The style was wild and expressionistic. He could almost see the paint moving like wind across water.

Rainberries don’t exist. Not here. But they exist in Shanandoah.

Jeremy hung the painting of himself playing the piano over the fireplace in his mother’s music room. He sat at her baby grand and played “Primavera” by memory. He couldn’t even picture the notes on the sheet music. It was simply muscle memory, the same muscle memory Rafe used to paint red crows and rainberries. Shanandoah wasn’t a delusion. It was real. Somehow, Rafe still remembered rainberries. Not his mind, no, but his hands. His heart. Like the music was in Jeremy.

When he woke up the next morning, he had an email from a TV show wanting to tape a segment in Bernheim Forest in Kentucky. Kentucky, next-door neighbor to West Virginia.