Chapter 1

When I woke after my LASIK surgery, my eyes still wrapped in gauze, my boyfriend Denys Sanchez's voice had aged a great deal.

He was gripping my hand tightly, telling me he had come back on purpose from forty years in the future, just to see me.

I used six questions to confirm he really was Denys, because those six secrets were things only he could know.

I was overjoyed. He really was Denys, the old-man version of him!

Then I asked six more questions, shaking his arm to make him answer each one.

"First one. Forty years from now, is there really the technology to travel through time?"

"There is. I'm the best proof of it. But it costs a fortune."

"Second. Did you marry me properly, the whole big affair?"

"I did. The year you turned twenty-three, we threw a huge reception, forty-eight tables."

"Third. Were you good to me after we married?"

"I was. One night you said you wanted the wonton soup from that diner on South Street, and I ran across half the city for it."

"Fourth. Did we have children?"

"The year you turned twenty-five, our daughter was born."

I laughed until the tears came, feeling this whole life had been worth it.

"Fifth. In your whole life, have you loved only me?"

He went quiet.

The hand shaking his arm stopped. "Is that a hard question? Yes or no?"

"Yes." His voice shook a little.

Satisfied, I asked the last one. "Then did we grow old together, side by side?"

His tight grip on my hand loosened.

It was a long time before he spoke.

"We grew old."

"But not side by side. Because we divorced."

……

1.

I grabbed at Denys's sleeve.

"Why did we divorce? When did it happen?"

He didn't answer right away.

I couldn't see. All I could hear was his breathing, a little quick now.

"You just came out of surgery. You can't get worked up."

Denys laid his hand gently over the gauze, his fingertips trembling.

"When they take the bandages off, I'll tell you."

"What does the divorce have to do with the bandages?" I wouldn't let go. "Did you do something to me? Something you couldn't take back?"

His cuff slipped out of my fingers, bit by bit.

"Be good, listen to me. Rest first."

His footsteps faded away.

I braced against the edge of the bed, trying to sit up, when a gentle voice reached me.

"You just had eye surgery. You mustn't get too upset, okay?"

The nurse steadied my IV line for me and propped the pillow higher.

Her movements were practiced, and when her palm cupped the back of my neck, something about it felt strangely familiar.

I caught hold of her wrist.

"Nurse, that man who just left. How old did he look to you?"

Her arm stiffened faintly.

"Sixties, maybe."

Something kept nagging at me. Time travel was too absurd to believe.

"Does he have a very faint mole at the corner of his left eye?"

"I think so, yes." Her voice came out a little off.

I slowly let go of her.

That mole was from a bicycle fall Denys took at seventeen.

Could he really be Denys, come back from forty years in the future? But how could my Denny ever divorce me?

At midday, I slept deeply.

In the dream, I was standing in the chapel in a white wedding gown.

The crystal chandelier overhead was dazzling, and applause filled the air all around me.

Denys stood in a black suit at the far end of a long red carpet, holding out his hand to me.

I had just taken one step when the chapel doors were suddenly pushed open.

A woman in a red gown stood there, backlit.

She took off her sunglasses and smiled at me.

I tried to make out her face, but everything went black before my eyes.

When I woke, my hand groped through the air a few times and touched a warm one.

"Denny?"

"It's me."

I gripped him tightly and told him everything that had happened in the dream.

"Did our wedding day go smoothly? Did anyone come bursting in?"

His body stiffened, plainly.

Then, quickly, he tucked the blanket corner in for me, keeping his tone light on purpose.

"The anesthesia hasn't fully worn off. That's why your dreams are all so strange."

"I asked whether anyone came bursting in."

Denys said nothing.

I loosened my fingers, one at a time.

It was a long while before he forced out a line. "That day we had forty-eight tables. There were a lot of people. It was lively."

He answered whether it was lively, not whether anything had happened.

I leaned back against the headboard and tried to find him an excuse.

Maybe something really had gone wrong at the wedding, and it was only that so much time had passed, and he didn't want me to worry.

"With that many people coming, I must have been very happy."

He didn't respond.

"What about you? Were you happy that day?"

Denys stood at the window with his back to me.

"Getting to marry you was the happiest thing in my life."

His voice was rough, as if he were speaking of something lost a very long time ago.

Before I fell asleep, drowsy, I asked him, "That woman in the red gown. Do you know her?"

Still he didn't respond.

He must have thought I was asleep. I heard him get up and walk out of the room.

Through the closed door, the voices in the corridor were pitched very low.

"Joyce Henson, she's not stable right now. Don't you—"

The rest was drowned out by the sound of a cart rolling across the floor.

I clutched the blanket corner tight.

When the door opened again, the nurse came in to take my blood pressure. She felt how cold my hand was and said quietly, "Don't let your mind run off like that. Rest properly."

I turned my face aside.

"Did we know each other before?"

Her hands paused.

"I feel like your voice is so familiar. And just now, when you propped up my pillow, it didn't seem like the first time you'd taken care of me."

She gently freed her hand from mine. "I'm only your on-duty nurse."

The moment I fell asleep, the dream came again.

This time, the woman in the red gown walked into the light. Pinned to her chest was a white corsage, and on it two words were written, clear as anything.

The bride.

The guests rose one after another, calling her Miss Henson.

I looked down at myself.

The wedding gown was gone. I was standing outside the chapel doors, barefoot, and around my feet lay white roses trampled to ruin.

Denys was still standing before the priest, looking at me with something complicated in his face, and he did not come toward me.