“I know, Mrs. Gomez,” Amanda says. “I don’t know how to explain it.”

“We should get inside,” Jonas urges, finally dropping all pretense of calm.

“Why? What’s going on?”

“I’ll explain once we’re inside. It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.” He takes her hand again and—

Somewhere, a car backfires. Jonas startles. In front of him, Amanda’s worry morphs into confusion. “Jonas?”

Her face remains baffled even as her legs give way, and she crashes to the pavement like Mrs. Gomez’s groceries. Jonas has no idea what’s happening, but then he’s on his knees, pulling Amanda to his chest. Mrs. Gomez is screaming in Spanish. Jonas’s hands feel damp and slick, and when he turns one over to examine it, the wetness is red.

Jonas can’t breathe. In a panic, he jerks his head back over his shoulder and glimpses Macon behind the passing traffic, still on the other side of the street.

“Jonas?” It’s Amanda. Still looking up at him with a child’s puzzlement.

“It’s going to be okay,” he reassures her, because that’s what one does.

“I warned you,” comes another voice.

Jonas turns his head in its direction. Behind him—on the sidewalk, standing just a few feet away with a gun in his hand—is Victor.

“I gave you fair warning,” Victor says. “You’ve got to allow me that much.”

“Jonas?” Amanda again.

“I’m here. I’m here.” A wail of sirens seeps into Jonas’s limited perception. Hope. “Help is coming.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he catches the wink of light that accompanies Victor’s escape from this reality.

There are gasps and exclamations, various reactions to the incredible phenomenon of Victor’s disappearance into thin air, but they sound to Jonas like they’re coming from a million miles away.

“How . . . ,” Amanda is saying. “How did you find me?”

“I love you.” It’s both an assertion and an explanation.

With trembling fingers she reaches to touch his cheek. “I should have known . . .” Every word is a labor. Each one launching tiny droplets of blood, which spatter her chin. “. . . that you’d keep your promise.”

NOW

Jonas hadn’t cried when he came to beneath the Centralbron, awakening to see Amanda hanging lifeless next to him. He hadn’t cried when the police confirmed the worst, that his wife was gone. He hadn’t cried at the funeral or at the reception afterward. He hadn’t cried after the friends and former colleagues and well-wishers had all departed, and the apartment he had once shared with Amanda felt as lonely as a grave. His grief had been profound, and it expressed itself in a multitude of ways but never as crying.

But Jonas is crying now. Quiet, plaintive tears. They escape unbidden. He’s not even aware of them as they carve lines down his face. In his darkest hours, he had consoled himself with the faith that he’d lost everything there was to lose, that nothing remained inside him to be broken. He now knows he was wrong, as that last surviving piece of himself—that lonely, unbroken quadrant of his soul—fractures.

“I tried,” he whispers, unsure whether he’s speaking to Amanda or himself. “I tried so hard.”

This was my last chance. The thought strikes him center mass. When Amanda died the first time, a small corner of his consciousness was already hard at work on finding a way back to her. That ephemeral strand of hope had sustained him through a despair so deep that it appeared bottomless, that his descent would be forever.

Her lips move, and after a second or two, words manage to escape. They’re barely audible against the approaching sirens and the tumult swirling around them. But she invests them with a commitment that makes them emanate from the depths of her soul.

“I love you too much,” she says.

Jonas’s lips tremble, his mouth trying to form the words of the response—I love you more—but he can’t. There’s a wrongness to Amanda right now. It stabs at his heart, torturing him with the irony that he can still feel. That he’s still capable of experiencing grief. That loss and despair can still find him. It’s her eyes. They’re . . . glassy. Vacant.

Desperate, he shakes her. “Amanda?” But she’s limp in his arms. “Please. Please don’t go,” he pleads, knowing she’s already gone. “Don’t go. Don’t go.” Then, beseeching, this time to the God who delivered him to this moment. “Not again. Please. Not again.”

The world goes blurry with the flood of tears obscuring his vision. Someone is pulling him to his feet. His legs are rubber. He pushes away the cloud of grief and sees two paramedics working to revive Amanda. But the sight of her body, rag-dolling in sync with their ministrations, sickens him. Her head lolls to the side and back as they work in vain to stanch her bleeding and start her heart. But Amanda’s dead, and any manipulation of her body, short of burying it, is perverse.

The hands that pulled him to his feet are strong. A man’s hands. Jonas fights against them, struggling. He wants to be down on the concrete with Amanda. He needs to be with her. He strains and writhes against the man’s grip. Inconsolable.

“Calm down, pal,” the man is saying. He has an accent dipped in Brooklyn. He wears a blue uniform. Short sleeves for the spring. A shield on his chest. A police officer. “Let these guys do their jobs.” He relinquishes his hold on Jonas as more police descend on the scene to hold back the tide of onlookers. Jonas begins to drift backward down the sidewalk, away from the paramedics. But the cop with the Brooklyn accent follows him. “I’ve gotta ask you some questions,” he says authoritatively, narrowing the gap between them.

Answering questions is the last thing Jonas wants to do. He quickens his step, walking backward for a couple of feet before turning around. He’s walking fast now, but the cop keeps pace.

“C’mon,” he says, “you know how this works. I gotta detain you.”

“What?”

“This is a crime scene now. All witnesses gotta be brought in for questioning. C’mon, it’s been this way ever since 10/16.”

Ten-sixteen. Jonas had forgotten he’s in an entirely different reality from the one he knows. He sees the officer’s hand wander down to the handcuffs on his belt.

“I’ve gotta take you in for questioning back at the station,” he says. “It’s mandatory. I’ve got no discretion here.”

A second passes in which Jonas considers letting the officer take him into custody. Let the police arrest him. Let them confiscate his tether, and he can spend the rest of his life passing between universes, like a specter soullessly wandering the earth, unable to find its final rest.

The cop’s meaty fingers reach for his arm when Jonas bolts. He has no idea why. Some instinct propels him to run.

He darts into the street. His arms and legs pump, propelling him forward. His escape is unexpected, and the element of surprise gives him a head start measuring in seconds. He darts into traffic and threads through cars positioned like linebackers. Behind him, the cop is giving chase.

A traffic light must have changed, because now the cars are hurling toward Jonas. A chorus of angry horns Dopplers past as Jonas flies against the steady vehicular flow. One car swipes him, the impact of its side-view mirror nearly spinning him around, but he keeps his balance and continues on. He feels the policeman behind him. The cop’s breathing is labored, but he’s fast.

Jonas jumps a curb and races down a perpendicular street. The cop is yelling now, imploring the crowd to “Get outta the way!” and “Make a hole!” The bystanders barely react. The reputation New Yorkers have for jaded apathy is well earned, no matter the universe.

Jonas is leaping into a congested intersection when a voice from some distant precinct of his brain asks what his plan is. He has no idea. Maybe the cop will get winded and give up. Maybe he’ll trip or get taken out by one of the dozens of cars charging at them both. This is a game of seconds, and whoever ends up with one more than the other will win.

And that’s when the city bus lurches up on him.

Its horn blares a warning, but it’s too late. It might as well be a building flying at him. Jonas has the impulse to throw himself to the pavement, ducking beneath the bus as it surges over him, but a quick, instinctual calculation warns him that he’s too close. The bus will smash through him before he can hit the ground. All these thoughts laser through his mind in milliseconds as he’s swallowed in the shadow cast by the oncoming bus.

Amanda . . . I’m coming.

The cop tackles him with enough force that the impact almost knocks out Jonas’s teeth. He feels the man’s weight carrying them both out of the path of the bus, whose tires clip the sole of Jonas’s left shoe as the sidewalk crashes upward toward him.

His skull bounces off the concrete. He hears a ringing, and tiny projectiles comet around in a starburst pattern, obscuring his vision. He wills himself not to pass out.

The officer is pulling at his arms. It feels like he may dislocate them. “Sonofabitch,” the cop repeats, over and over. It’s unclear whether he’s cursing or addressing Jonas. He expertly pins Jonas’s wrists behind his back with one hand, while the other retrieves the handcuffs. Their jangling reminds Jonas, strangely, of bells ringing. “Struggle and I’ll break your arms,” the cop promises. Jonas has no reason to doubt him.

And then he remembers that he doesn’t have to wait for that to happen. He doesn’t have to be here at all. The fact that he still has his tether was obscured by his grief and his efforts to outrace the officer. His fingers scratch at the ring, but they’re too slick with Amanda’s blood. As he struggles, the cop slaps one handcuff on his wrist, tight enough to close off circulation, tight enough to hurt, to punish Jonas for the temerity of running. Jonas fights against it all, but the tether continues to avoid his grasp.