Mark turned to the bespectacled brunette woman beside him on the couch. “Who are you? You look like my wife, but you don’t feel like her.”

She leaned back and folded her arms. “Hi, Mark. I’m your real wife, Alice.”

 She seemed like a nice woman, not his wife.

“How long have we been married?”

“Eight years. Our daughter Julia is seven and is waiting for a heart transplant.”

Mark looked at the little girl playing with her doll. “Does she stutter?”

“No. Julia is very articulate.”

“I remember now. I took Julia to school this morning, and it was a nice sunny day.”

Alice sighed. “No. It’s been raining all day.”

Mark stood up, feeling older than he remembered.

He looked at the grand piano. “Do I write songs?”

Alice’s eyes widened. “Yes, you do.”

He walked over to the piano and immediately found himself playing Beethoven’s “Fur Elise.”

One note flowed into the next in a delicate dance of sounds that soothed and enthralled him in his zeal for a better life. The music felt alive. He didn’t.

Alice clapped. “Excellent, Mark. You haven’t played like that since last year.”

Julia walked up and hugged him from behind.

He felt their warmth at the other end of a long tunnel.

“Are we going to the opera tonight, Daddy?” asked Julia.

“When’s it playing?” he asked.

“Seven,” she said, still holding him with her head on his back.

His fingers flowed over the keyboard. “Then we’ll go. All of us, including your mother.”

Julia hugged him tighter. “Mom’s deaf, Dad.”

“Deaf? I just spoke to her.”

“She reads lips, but she’s been deaf since the accident.”

He stopped playing. “Accident?”

“You were arguing with Mom and ran a red light. I was in the back seat.”

His heart sank. “Oh no. Are you disabled too?”

“I was born with a bad heart. Mom says it makes me brave. She lost her hearing in the accident, and you were brain damaged.”

Mark felt a pang of emptiness, as if the room had drifted away from him.

“If your mom is deaf, why would she want to go to the opera?”

“She loves to watch and feel the vibrations.”

Mark stood and Julia took over playing “Fur Elise.”

Mark asked Alice to dance, and they swayed back and forth.

“Remember to tap me on the shoulder so I can read your lips.”

He tapped her shoulder. “Shall we go to the opera tonight?”

Her casual eyes studied him. “We always do.”

“But you’re deaf.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I compensate.”

He huffed. “Do you hate me for causing the accident?”

“No,” she said as she looked out the window. “We both suffered. It stopped raining. Shall we go for a walk?”

They walked outside together into the ion-filled air, crossed a damp field, and continued onto on a red-brick road that wound through a forest.

Mark looked at the woman holding his hand. “It’s strange. When I look away, you seem like my real wife.”

“Do I?”

“But you can’t hear, and I can’t think straight. Neither of us works right.”

Alice smiled. “What in life does?”

“We function at least.”

She smiled. “You don’t need perfection to experience happiness.”

A deer shot through the brush squeaking like a rabbit. Farther on, a family of raccoons scampered in front of them. But even they didn’t feel quite real.

Mark breathed in the clean air, but it didn’t settle inside him. The clouds swirled. His thoughts slipped sideways.

“Booky boober!”

Mark looked at Alice.

 “Alice?”

“No, Diana,” said the woman holding a metal dome.

“Diana?” said Blake.

“Don’t fight your shifting mind,” she said placing the dome over his head. “Just follow the flow from one place to another.”

He felt soothed as Diana pressed her cheek against his and her warmth flowed into him. She felt real. That terrified him.