“Let’s get out and walk,” I said.

  We hiked for an hour without a map or a destination, shedding the city’s weight with every muddy step. Eventually we came upon a small town near the Clarion River. I don’t even remember what it was called. But there was a general store, and we went in to buy something to drink.

  A small bell clanged when the door opened. Behind the counter was a tall Black man wearing a tweed cap. He looked to be in his sixties, with a well-­trimmed graying beard. We were the only customers, and he smiled broadly at us.

  “Here from New York?” he said. His voice was heavily accented.

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  “Well, let me see.” He hooked his fingers together. “You seem weary, as if you have not slept. And you opened the door harshly and entered in a hurry.”

  Gianna and I glanced at each other. Had we really become such ugly creatures of the city?

  “Also,” the man added, pointing to my chest, “there is that.”

  I looked at my T-­shirt, which read manhattan boxing club. The man burst out laughing.

  “I am many things,” he bellowed, “but not a mind reader!”

  We laughed along. Then Gianna asked, “What other things?” She was always picking up on people’s sentences that way.

  Within minutes, we learned the man’s name was Dozie, that he’d emigrated from Nigeria in his twenties and had worked in this general store until the original owner, an elderly woman, passed away and, to his surprise, left him the business in her estate. That was twelve years ago, he said. In a town as small as this, he’d had to learn to wear many hats. Volunteer firefighter. Election official. Tree trimmer.

  “Why did you leave Nigeria?” Gianna asked.

  “Silly me. I fell for an American woman and married her. She used to work here beside me.” He paused. “She passed last year.”

  “I’m sorry,” Gianna said.

  “I am sorry, too. It’s a wonderful thing, to be married to an excellent person.”

  Gianna glanced at me. I could tell she was happy we’d taken this trip.

  “May I ask, are you two . . . ?”

  “Engaged,” Gianna said. She made an exaggerated frown. “Still waiting on a ring.”

  “Ah, well, we can take care of that,” Dozie said.

  He pointed to half a dozen toy rings in a foam rubber display. Gianna plucked one out and put it on her pinkie finger. She held it up, admiring the cheap sparkle.

  “Now, if only you were a justice of the peace.”

  Dozie grinned. “As a matter of fact . . .”

  We looked at each other.

  “You’re joking,” I said.

  “I am not. I have officiated more than thirty weddings in our town.”

  Gianna grabbed my hand. I felt a nervous flush.

  “Alfie,” she said, “do you want to get married today?”

  There were a million things I could have said at that moment. A witty retort. A mushy concurrence. A simple yes.

  But what I said was: “Twice.”

  ✶

  Instantly, I was back in the car that morning, driving through the Holland Tunnel. Gianna was complaining about her magazine editor. I mumbled “Yeah” and “You’re right.” But inside, my heart was racing. I thought about not stopping at that forest. Never going for that walk.

  Yet as we rolled through New Jersey and into Pennsylvania, I realized there was no good reason to wait. I loved Gianna. She loved me. Nobody came close to making me feel as happy, as understood, or as appreciated as she did. Perhaps living life recklessly the first time—­knowing I could always erase things later—­hadn’t prepared me for a moment of real commitment. I’d panicked. I felt ashamed.

  Just then Gianna, for no reason, reached across, took my hand, and without a word, pulled it into her lap as she gazed out the window.

  “Hi, honey,” I whispered.

  She turned and smiled. “Hi, honey.”

  With that, something inside me melted. And for the first time in all the years of my magical undoings, I left everything as it was, because another truth in The Truth About True Love is that when it’s good, you don’t want to alter it. The walk through the woods. The encounter with Dozie. I left every detail untouched, right up to the moment when Gianna asked, “Alfie, do you want to get married today?”

  This time I smiled.

  “I do,” I said.

  Dozie threw his hands in the air. “Wonderful! We only need a few things . . .”

  He moved quickly to the shelves, pulling off several items.

  “Cayenne pepper,” he said, grabbing a shaker, “for the passion, yes? A lemon, for life’s disappointments. Some vinegar, for the challenges you will face.

  “And this . . .” He grabbed a jar of honey. “For the sweetness and joy.”

  He placed the goods on the counter. “If you taste these four elements during your ceremony, it means you will understand what lies ahead in marriage.”

  “That’s beautiful,” Gianna said. “Did you make that up?”

  “Yes. Well. First, I saw it done in Nigeria. Then I made it up!”

  We all laughed. And that is how it happened. In a ceremony officiated by a Nigerian-­born general store owner and witnessed by a mail sorter from the post office next door, Gianna and I recited unrehearsed vows. We tasted those four elements. When Dozie asked if we trusted each other in all things, we said we did.

  “Good,” he said. “Suspicion and belief cannot share the same bed.”

  When he finished, I got down on one knee and sang a chorus of “Try Me” to Gianna. Then I placed the toy ring on her finger. We were officially wed, against a backdrop of chirping birds and a gurgling river. And I wouldn’t dream of changing a moment.

  Until I had to.

  Nassau

  LaPorta hurried through the hotel pool area, past palm trees planted in neatly spaced concrete squares, and rows of open white beach chairs. Sampson, the Bahamian police officer, matched his stride. They ducked in through a side entrance to the casino, moved briskly past the craps tables and the endless rows of slot machines, and turned down a corridor to the security office.

  Although LaPorta was curious to speak with Gianna Rule, he had stopped at the casino first, because a witness had unexpectedly come forward. A blackjack dealer. He was waiting in the hallway, alongside a security guard.

  “In here,” LaPorta said, motioning toward the door.

  The dealer was thin, with a stringy mustache. When they sat him down, he began chewing on his fingernails. LaPorta flanked him on one side, Sampson on the other.

  “You have something to tell us?”

  “Yes.”

  “Talk.”

  His voice was taut with nerves. He said his name was Toussaint. He’d come to the Bahamas from Haiti.

  “Two weeks ago, this man who live in my apartment building knock on my door. He ask if I know a roulette croupier here. I say yes, I know one very good. We come from Haiti together. The man ask if he can be trusted and I say, sure, I trust him with anything.”

  “And then?” LaPorta said.

  “Then he ask if I want to make some money.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I say sure. I like money. But I need my job, I cannot get in trouble, or maybe they send me back to Haiti. He say not to worry, all I have to do is introduce my friend to the American.”

  “What American? What was his name?”

  “I never know his name.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Tall. He have an earring.”

  Alfie, LaPorta thought. I knew it.

  “When did they meet?”

  “Last week.”

  “What did they talk about?”

  “I don’t know. I leave the room. I don’t want to get in trouble. But . . .”

  “But what?”

  “When my friend come out, he is hiding something in his hand.”

  “Did you see what it was?”

  “A ball.”

  “What kind of ball?”

  Toussaint shrugged as if it were obvious.

  “A roulette ball,” he said.

  ✶

  Twenty minutes later, the dealer was on his way to police headquarters while LaPorta and Sampson drove to The Ocean Club Resort, where Gianna Rule was registered as a guest. The downtown traffic was thick with jitneys and rental cars. LaPorta, riding in the passenger seat, stared at the sherbet-­colored buildings dotting the crowded streets. He remembered when he first arrived in the Bahamas, being told the color scheme was intentional. Pink is government, yellow is schools, and green is for police.

  He lowered a window and inhaled the humid air. A clearer picture was beginning to form. Alfie had recruited a croupier. The phony ball was rigged. At a pre­arranged time, the croupier slipped it into the roulette wheel, and Alfie knew when to put his money down.

  There were likely others involved, too. These schemes usually required a lookout, a person to distract security, maybe additional bettors to make the illegal move less obvious. LaPorta had requested video of the roulette table from an hour before Alfie sat down. The faces of everyone who even momentarily stopped there would be run through their system. If anyone else helped pull off this swindle, it would be caught on tape.

  Still, one thought nagged at the detective. How did Alfie know exactly which number to play? A rigged ball might fall heavily to one side of the wheel, but to an individual number? That would require some truly advanced level of technology.

  “Hey, Vincent?” Sampson said, interrupting his thought.

  “Yeah?”

  “This woman we’re going to see. Who is she?”

  “The suspect’s wife. Ex-­wife, actually.”

  “What does she have to do with it?”

  “Well, he sent her the money. We need to find out if she—­”

  Sampson slammed his horn at a jitney that had cut in front of him.

  “Look at this fool!”

  LaPorta blew out air and shifted in his seat. In his briefcase was Alfie’s notebook. At the right moment, he planned to reveal it to Gianna Rule, but not until she tried to deny her part, or maybe even knowing Alfie. That was usually how it went. I never heard of the guy. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  Deep down he was curious about meeting this Gianna, seeing if she matched Alfie’s glowing description, and what it was about her that was so captivating. He thought about his own wife. He took out his phone and dialed her number in Miami.

  “Hey, Vince,” she said, answering.

  “How’s it going?”

  “OK. I’m seeing my mom this afternoon.”

  “Uh-­huh.”

  “And you? Chasing any bad guys?”

  “One.”

  “What’d he do?”

  “Cheated on roulette. Stole two million.”

  Even as LaPorta said the words, he realized he was trying to impress her.

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Just be careful, Vince. You’re not a real cop, remember.”

  And there it was. The stinging comment he could always count on.

  “Yeah, Barbara. You keep reminding me.”

  “Am I wrong?”

  “No, Barbara.”

  “Are you carrying a gun?”

  “No, Barbara.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “Fine.”

  “I’m looking out for you, Vince. So you don’t get hurt.”

  “I don’t need you to look out for me.”

  “Right. Because you’re not a cop.”

  “OK. Good talk.”

  “Look, I’m not trying to—­”

  “It’s fine. Gotta go. Gotta do some not-­a-­cop business.”

  He caught Sampson looking at him. His wife wasn’t wrong. He wasn’t technically a law enforcement officer. And Bahamian law forbade private gun ownership.

  But the bigger truth was that his relationship with Barbara, a second marriage for both of them, was a series of combustible confrontations like these, followed by apologies, then a period of calm, then confrontations again. It was one reason she stayed in Miami when he took this job. They saw each other as often as his work would allow, and for now that seemed satisfactory.

  LaPorta hadn’t really thought about the meagerness of “satisfactory” until Alfie and all his true love talk. It made him reflect on the choices in his own love life and their hollow results. Working in the islands, LaPorta often saw couples arm in arm, spontaneously kissing or groping one another—­on the beach, on the street, in the restaurants. It made him envious. He’d had that once with Barbara. At the beginning, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. But years passed. They started arguing over money and how much time she spent with her mother. Everything cooled. What was it they said about passion and rocket fuel? They both burn fast?

  A tourist bus pulled alongside the police car, and the smell of diesel was pungent. LaPorta rolled up the window and adjusted the air-­conditioning. Then he reached into his briefcase and took out Alfie’s notebook. He tilted it on its side and noticed something odd. A single page had been folded back. It was fairly near the end, which felt like more than a coincidence.

  What are you up to, Alfie?

  LaPorta flipped to that page and began to read.

  The Composition Book

  Things my mother said she loved about me:

  “Your shyness when you meet new people.”

  Now, Boss, comes the part that you might find hardest to believe.

  I became, briefly, famous.

  It happened in the 1990s. By this point, Gianna and I had been married for twelve years. We were in our ­thirties, and as I’ve mentioned in the previous pages, our relationship had shifted toward practical matters. Coordinating work schedules. Saving money to buy a house. And discussing having children, something Gianna yearned for.

  Sadly, I did not. My music career had never taken off, but the press release job revealed a talent for writing that I didn’t know I had. I spent all my time on that now, mostly freelance stories for magazines and newspapers. Music had been so subjective; I could never tell why someone didn’t like a song. But with writing, my gift for jumping time proved invaluable. I could turn something in, find out what the editors didn’t like, then go back a few days, redo it, and give them exactly what they wanted. It got me a reputation as someone who could get big stories done well quickly. Which got me paid more.

  It also meant I could get assignments at any time and have to suddenly go away for a stretch, then bury myself in trying to meet a deadline. I didn’t see how raising a baby would fit with that. And if I’m being truly honest, I bristled at sharing Gianna’s attention. I liked the fuss she made over me. Little notes she’d leave around the apartment. Having my favorite albums playing when I got home. I knew she would embrace motherhood and worried her focus on me would diminish. That’s a selfish view, one I am ashamed to share. But selfishness is always clearer when you’re looking back on it.

  There was also this concern: how would my power work with a child? If I traveled back to before the baby was born, would that baby be the same? And having lost people I loved, my mother, Wesley, Yaya, did I want to become so deeply attached to another soul whose final fate, despite my gift, I could not alter? I convinced myself it was better not to take such risks.

  This, as you might imagine, created friction with Gianna. “Come on, sweetie,” she would whisper in bed, “don’t you want to make a mini me-­and-­you?” Other times, when I voiced hesitations, she’d snap, “Alfie, you have no idea what it’s like to feel your fertility withering!”

  I was tempted to undo those disagreements, go back, erase them from Gianna’s memory. But if I did, I would still remember them. Which would make us uneven. And uneven in love is unhealthy.

  So I left those arguments alone. I took the smooth and the rough with Gianna, because it was us. Part of the tapestry, as she had once said.

  Still, our marriage was shifting, as most do over time. We’d moved to a bigger apartment. We’d traded coziness for workspace. The romantic meals we had cooked together were now more often Chinese takeout. We went to bed at different hours, wearing sweats and T-­shirts.

  Gianna took these changes in stride, and I tried to do the same. But I did miss the spontaneity. The passion. Sometimes, when she was sleeping, I would stare at Gianna’s face and remember the aroused way she made me feel when we were younger, arriving at her door and imagining us in bed before the night was done. What is it about time and love that turns us from red with desire to pale with familiarity?

  ✶

  The famous part of my life also coincided with my becoming, momentarily, rich. Yes, Boss. I once had a lot of money. You might find that strange, seeing as I’ve been living in small apartments or your guest house all these years, and rarely wearing anything fancier than khakis. But remember, this is a story of my lives before this life, and of so many things that were different.

  I want to say that money was never an issue with Gianna. She was decidedly nonmaterialistic, often warning how finances change relationships. And my mother, as I’ve said, had warned me never to use my second tries for wealth.

  But, I admit, I did try once, in our first year of marriage. Gianna’s birthday was coming up and she was still wearing that toy ring from our wedding. I wanted to get her a real one. Something impressive.

  I had read about a computer stock that had soared in price over its first three days on the New York exchange. Figuring even my mother would be on board with a ring for my wife, I twiced myself back a week and found a broker to invest five hundred dollars the day the computer stock debuted. It quad­rupled to two thousand before I sold it. I went to a jewelry store on Forty-­Seventh Street and spent all the money on a small, round-­cut diamond in a bezel setting.

  On her birthday, I took Gianna to an Italian restaurant, and after the food came, I said I had something special to give her. She opened the box and her eyes bugged out. “Oh my God, Alfie, it’s so beautiful.” She put it on and kissed me. She flipped her hand left and right. I was happy.

  “But, Alfie, how can we afford this?”