Chapter 11: The Loop in the E

We sat on the cold stone terrace with a pot of coffee neither of us touched.

Cormick had said only: "Tell me. All of it."

So I told him.

I told him I had died on those stairs at twenty-four.

I told him I had woken in a dining chair on the night of Davis's birthday.

I told him the whole way through, in order, in a flat voice that did not shake.

When I was done, he was holding the edge of the table.

"You think I'm lying," I said.

"No."

"You think I'm insane."

"No." He let go of the table. "I think I have never seen anyone say something so unbelievable with so little drama."

"Everyone else in my life reacted for me. I stopped bothering."

He looked at his hands.

"In the other life," he said carefully. "Where was I?"

"Singapore."

"For how long?"

"Four days. Maybe five."

"Nobody called me."

"Davis told you I'd asked for space."

His face did something I hadn't seen before.

It closed, and then it opened again, and what was underneath was grief for a version of himself I'd never met.

"I would have come home," he said.

"I know."

"You don't know that."

"I do now," I said. "I didn't then."

He nodded once. It cost him something.

"I believe you," Cormick said.

"Now I need to prove it.

"I need to put your father in front of someone who isn't me."

"With what?"

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