It still creeps up on him, even now after decades, the conviction, the absolute conviction, that he is supposed to be living his life in Prospect Falls, a high school math teacher and baseball coach with a stay-at-home wife who wears plaid shirts and jeans and has her curly brown hair pulled back in a red, white, and black print bandana. And the kids. Three kids.

Instead, he trails his lifeline like a lizard’s tail, sitting in his insulated office behind his mahogany desk at the rear of the largest of his three plumbing supply warehouses on the western side of town near the police impound lot, a life filled with all the material comforts he could wish, a business he inherited from his father and has grown into the juggernaut it is today, an advantageous marriage into wealth and power and history, but forever chained by the rule of his Church to a woman who dismisses him as unworthy of her and two grown sons who barely acknowledge his existence.

It comes upon him at times like this, the feeling that he is straddling a crack in reality, one foot in each lifeline. He’s half-convinced he’s living on the wrong side of the crack. He wonders if he just up and walks out, gets in his car and drives the thousand or so Interstate miles to Prospect Falls, will his wife and children be waiting for him in their white clapboard house across the street from the baseball field? He’d park his car at the curb and walk across the green patch of lawn to the front door. Looking back, he’d see that the Mercedes sedan had morphed into the old Toyota he is proud to keep running.

None of them would be surprised to see him walk in.

“You’re late again, Michael,” Penny would say from the kitchen.

“Yeah, Dad, what’s with that?” his oldest daughter the tween would say, trying out a mood.

The little ones, five-year-old twins Joy and Bobby, would run up to him laughing, each grabbing a leg at the knee, threatening to bring him down.

What could he say? It’s been a long trip from my other life? No, he’d simply say, “Sorry” and gather the twins up in a group hug before washing up.

But it is almost seven in this life and he’d made a dinner reservation with his accountant at the usual steakhouse downtown because why bother going home, nobody will care now that it is only him and Fern in the big house, and she is rarely home before he is in bed, asleep and dreaming.

So he shuts down the computer and turns off the lights and walks through rows of crowded steel shelving filled with PVC pipe, valves and tubing, porcelain toilets, gaskets and chromed steel hardware, to the side door and out into the sticky summer night and nobody knows he’s gone since he’s long ago given up day-to-day interactions with the staff, leaving that to his managers.

Mike is almost to the steakhouse when he gets a call from his accountant. “So sorry. A last-minute crisis has come up and I have to cancel. Apologies. We’ll reschedule soon.” The voice sounds hollow and far away.

He’s pretty sure there’s not really a last-minute crisis, but what can he say? “Not a problem, Jerry.”

It feels like the last straw, like he is alone in an echoing tunnel; like he is invisible; like he is a ghost. If he disappears the business will continue to run; the boys will continue on with their lives; God knows it won’t affect Fern at all. She probably won’t notice his absence since they sleep in separate bedrooms. Their lives have gone off in different directions now that the boys are on their own.

He has to make an effort to let go of the steering wheel. He stares at his palms and their odd creases, forked lifelines that look like lightning bolts circling his thumbs. He has become invisible, a ghost in his own life.

He feels his other life calling, urgent. Irresistible. On impulse Mike swings the Merc towards the Interstate and tells it to set a route to Prospect Falls.

It is sheer fantasy. Of course there is no family waiting for him, no white clapboard house across the street from a baseball field. He’s no high school math teacher, he’s the owner of the largest plumbing supply company in the metro Richmond area. Or not. He honestly doesn’t know. And so he drives on.

Mike meets darkness about the time he stops for food off the Interstate in Front Royal. He drives in silence, forcing himself to think about nothing except the asphalt ahead of him and the traffic around him. He stops for the night at a Comfort Inn north of Pittsburgh, has a bowl of Cincinnati chili and an Iron City lager, walks up to his second floor room and immediately falls asleep. He dreams his cell phone is ringing, but for some reason he is unable to make his arms move to pick it up. He knows it is Penny calling him. Before dawn he jerks awake, heart pounding, arms flailing, tears running down his face. He grabs the cell phone and realizes the ringing in his dream is the phone’s wakeup alarm, which erases the dream though not the mood.

After washing up and dressing he grabs a quick coffee and a pastry in the hotel lobby on the way out. It is still dark. He stops to top up the gas tank at a station near the onramp to the Interstate. The Merc’s automatic headlights snap off near Youngstown.

He is moving between lifelines, connected to neither, outside of space and time. He exists only as a part of the car, an autopilot whose only purpose is to move it along towards its destination.

Mike makes it from Pittsburgh to Chicago with only a single food, fuel, and comfort stop, pulling into a Hyatt off I-90 around sunset, where he repeats the previous day’s routine, though as he hangs up his suit and shirt he wonders in passing where he’s misplaced his pocket protector, the one he’s kept all his adult life. It has his father’s plumbing business information printed on it, “Marshall and Sons” with a cartoon of a grinning plumber brandishing a pipe wrench as if it is a weapon. It is the last physical connection he has to his father in a past before his lifelines diverged. If only he’d followed his dream and gone to school at Madison instead of staying home and going where generations of his family have gone. If only he’d majored in math instead of business. If only he hadn’t married Fern. If. If. If.

Eventually, he falls asleep. Once again he dreams his worried wife is calling him and once again his body is frozen, unable to respond. Once again he wakes with his heart pounding and tears running down his face.

Mike sits alone in the hotel café drinking bitter coffee, eating greasy bacon and flavorless scrambled eggs. The Channel 9 weather girl is on the big screen TV over the buffet table, apologetic, showing images of a clouded horizon to the north. She points at various numbers on the map behind her with one perky arm and says, “Highs in the mid-nineties though a front is dropping down from Alberta and that should cool us off. The National Weather Service has issued a severe thunderstorm watch for the metro region starting mid-afternoon and continuing until midnight.”

He’ll be driving right into it.

Mike slides behind the wheel and heads for the Interstate. On the way he notices an open surplus store at the same time he notices that his clothes stink. He goes into the store to buy clean clothes. The selection is limited, and he comes out wearing a white short-sleeved dress shirt and cheap khaki slacks. He throws a large plastic bag with his worn clothes into the back seat. He is molting.

To the northwest the morning sky is smeared with ominous clouds, navy, black, and red near the horizon with gray sky peeking through in streaks. The weather matches his mood. It never occurs to him to wait for the front to pass: he’s sure the Merc can handle any weather short of a tornado.

Initially, traffic on the Interstate is heavy with service workers in old Corollas and Civics and beat-up Ford Rangers heading in to early shifts. He rolls through Rockford hardly slowing down, crosses into Wisconsin and through Madison, briefly caught up in rush hour traffic, then launches again onto overlapping Interstates 39, 90, and 94 just as he is a man living overlapping lives.

North of Madison the clouded horizon begins to grow tall and wide until it becomes an immense dark curtain, greenish-black like a deep bruise, directly ahead across the bridge over the Wisconsin River near Dekorra. Halfway over the bridge his car punches into the cloud at 80 miles per hour and the storm swallows him. The Merc’s headlights flick on. Rain batters the windshield like steel pellets and the wipers sweep at them futilely. All he can see ahead is formless gray. His heart races and his mouth is dry.

A bolt of lightning strikes in front of him and the accompanying thunder crack slams the car like a sledgehammer. The world is rent in two by the violence. He does not have time to brake or swerve.

The car speeds through the instantaneous crack in space left by the bolt and leaps into bright sunshine. The highway ahead is clear and light traffic is moving at speed. He does not understand. In the rearview mirror he sees a column of smoke rising from the bridge, but as he watches it is gone, an illusion of a different life. Mike checks the speedometer and is surprised the old Toyota can even do 80 anymore.

He knows what has happened. He has crossed lifelines. His heart is filled with terror and joy. He laughs and cries. Tears run down his cheeks. He is going home.

Hours later Mike slides off the Interstate at the exit for Prospect Falls. He turns right and proceeds past the high school baseball field, its chain-link backstop behind home plate, the warped wood benches and bleachers filled with predatory splinters, the field bright green from recent rain, patches of white chalk here and there marking the remnants of foul lines.

He takes a left onto his street. It is just as he’s known it would be, lined with tall oak and elm and behind them the row of modest ramblers facing the field. Bright window and door trim in black and red and green and blue, and the occasional under-window flower boxes like the one where Penny grows roses in the house where she grew up.

Mike parks in front of the house and turns off the car. He won’t be late for dinner after all. He sags a little. It’s been a long and stressful trip, but now he is home. He grabs his briefcase from the passenger seat‑when had he ever owned an old-style brown leather briefcase?‑and gets out of the car. The air is sweet with the perfume of Penny’s roses. His body aches to hold her.

He opens the door, steps into the foyer, and lays his briefcase against the wall. Inside it smells like pot roast. It is a heavy meal for late June, but he doesn’t mind; he hasn’t had pot roast in so long. The twins come pelting in from the backyard and fling themselves at him. He crumples carefully to the floor, arms around them, laughing.

Penny comes out of the kitchen brushing a rogue wisp of hair from her forehead, smiling at her brood. She is exactly as he knew she’d look, and in that moment he knows he belongs in this lifeline. The thought passes and his need for her overwhelms him. He rises and the twins scoot away to the backyard to investigate the dog’s barking.

Mike flings his arms around her and presses her to him, kisses her passionately, intensely, deeply. She responds in kind as she always has, and they feed on each other until they might as well be one single glowing being. Breathless, they come apart, hands still caressing each other.

“Well,” she says, happy. “Guess you missed me. Rough day?”

How can he tell her how far he has come to be with her in this moment, how long it has taken him to find her, what ocean of space and time he has sailed to be with her? So instead he says, “Do I smell pot roast?”

“You are one big stomach, aren’t you?” she says, playfully patting his belly with her palms. She disappears into the kitchen. “Dinner in twenty minutes.”

Cassandra, twelve, slouches into the dining room muttering. Mike remembers his sons at the same age, walking gloom clouds studded with acne. He says to her, “I’ll help you set the table.”

She ignores him. Nevertheless, they begin to work together in silence laying out tableware and flatware on the walnut dining room table Penny’s father Ike made. He’s been gone five years now, and in quiet moments Penny still mourns him. Mike wonders if Cassie will ever feel that way about him. For now, he knows to be near and patient. He wonders in passing whether crossing lifelines he’s become a different person or whether he is simply aware of the mistakes he’s made before, though “before” no longer means anything. He knows another lifeline exists on the other side of the crack, and he fears its power to pull him back.

Dinner with his young family descends into the usual chaos. He slices the pot roast and lays a slice on each plate as it is passed around the table. Penny adds potatoes and carrots. Cassie picks at her food, refusing to enter into the idle conversation, and replies to questions in monosyllables. The twins squabble over nothing and slip bits of meat to the lurking dog. Mike’s heart is filled with joy.

It is summer in the upper Midwest and the sun sets late, near nine o’clock. The twins go to bed reluctantly, unwilling to end the day before dark. Cassie retreats to her room and her iPhone. Mike and Penny sit out back on plastic lawn chairs. She is holding a juice glass filled with white wine. He holds a highball glass with two ice cubes cooling two fingers of whiskey. He is waiting for it to be time for them to go to their bedroom, to watch Penny undress and put on the nightgown he will slip off over her head. His blood pounds in his body as he imagines her naked.

Penny sips her soda. She turns to him. “We have to talk about money,” she says.

“I know,” he says. “Tomorrow.” Money is the last thing he wants to talk about. There is never enough money. He does not want to think about anything other than making love to his wife. He reaches out and caresses her cheek. “Isn’t it time to go to bed?”

Mike undresses while Penny is in the bathroom. He folds his pants over the back of a chair and takes off the sleeveless white shirt and tosses it over the pants. He stands next to their bed naked, looks at the shirt and wonders where he’s lost his pocket protector.

Penny comes out of the bathroom in her short summer nightgown that barely reaches the top of her thighs, hard nipples pressing the sheer cloth that reveals her breasts: she is ready for him. He is stiff with anticipation. They fall into bed and come together and make love as though it is their first time, urgently, and then languidly, passion building and breaking like waves on a beach.

“I love you,” he says to her.

“I love you,” she says to him.

They sleep, then wake after midnight and steal out to their backyard and make love on the yielding grass under the stars. They sleep again, then wake as dawn breaks and scamper back to their bed before the neighbors or the children can see them.

The twins pounce, clamoring for breakfast. Penny yawns and shoos them away, then climbs out of the bed and wraps a terrycloth robe around her naked body. She follows the children to the kitchen while Mike pads into the bathroom and showers. He is filled with joy. He wishes he could live in this moment forever. At the same time he wishes to dig a deep groove in this lifeline and plow it to his end.

The morning routine imposes itself. Mike comes into the kitchen and pours coffee into a mug. It is his turn to oversee the children. The twins are at the table eating cereal and milk. Cassie has come out of her room in her counselor-in-training uniform, green-on-white t-shirt and green shorts, and sits across from the twins drinking heavily milked and sugared coffee and eating a cup of flavored yogurt. She is twelve and wearing her first brassiere. Overnight she has colored a broad green stripe in her brown hair and she wears heavy eye makeup that makes her look like a startled raccoon. He says nothing.

The camp bus pulls up to the curb in front of their house and honks its horn. The children push themselves away from the table. The twins race out the front door. Cassie follows behind, distancing herself as much as possible from her brother and sister. Mike notices that Cassie has rolled the top of her shorts and her cotton panties peek out as she moves. He can tell she is feeling her hormones and must be attracted to a particular boy. He needs to mention this to Penny. He follows and catches them at the bus, kissing each on the tops of their heads as they climb in.

The bus pulls away with their children. Penny is waiting for him at the open door. “You’re a good father,” she says. She is in jeans and a plaid shirt. Her damp hair lies loose around her face; she has also showered.

“I try to learn from my mistakes,” he says.

“What mistakes?” she says.

What can he say? If you could see the mess Fern and I made of the boys? So he shrugs and smiles sadly. He loves all his kids. There are other things to discuss.

They walk into the kitchen and fill their coffee mugs. Hip to hip they lean back against the countertop and sip. It’s June and school is out. They should have time.

But they don’t. He feels his other lifeline, full of obligations and consequences, tugging at him. The kitchen feels as if it is flickering between real and unreal like a light bulb about to fail. The crack in space and time that opened into this lifeline is snapping shut and he knows he is being sucked back.

He turns to Penny and holds her to him tightly, wishing she can anchor him there. Her hair is soft against his cheek. He whispers “I love you” in her ear.

She folds her arms around his neck. “I love you,” she says.

They kiss.

He blinks his eyes to clear them from the bolt. His ears ring from the thunderclap of air exploding into the vacuum torn in the sky. The car’s engine dies, then catches and roars. His heart is pounding against his ribs and his palms are damp and his mouth is dry. By the slimmest of margins he has avoided being struck by lightning.

Driving rain splatters against the windshield and the helpless wipers. Lightning flashes off to either side of the highway. He crosses the bridge and the storm is failing. The wipers are clearing the windshield and now Mike can see the glowing red taillights of cars and trucks ahead. The worst of it is over. Twenty miles up the Interstate the storm is a memory and summer heat is beginning to dry the asphalt.

She is gone. The children are gone. Mike pulls off to the side of the highway and stops the car. He cannot go on. His heart is broken. Traffic rushes past, buffeting him. He sobs uncontrollably, forehead resting on the wheel.

He puts the Merc in gear and starts up the highway, intent on reaching Prospect Falls before dinnertime, though he knows it will only bring him more pain. He exits the Interstate and turns right and drives past the baseball field, turns left onto the street lined with oak and elm. There is the house she grew up in, though it is painted pale green with black trim and there is no flower box filled with roses. He parks across the street, engine idling silently, unnoticed, as if he is a ghost.

An older Penny is standing on the lawn watering it with a hose. The Toyota Corolla is parked in the short driveway with its hood up. Two people lean into the engine compartment, torsos and heads obscured. They stand and straighten. A young woman holds something heavy in one grease-blackened hand. She gives it to a short and heavy man wearing a stained baseball cap. Together they walk up to Penny and show her the part. She drops the hose. There is laughter. The three of them hug, greasy hands and all.

Mike sees that Penny is happy in this lifeline. Though he’s steeled himself for disappointment, it is too much. He is crushed by despair. He pulls away from the curb and returns to the Interstate heading south, back to the former capital of the Confederacy. He belongs nowhere else.

He crosses the Wisconsin River bridge in full sunlight, Dekorra to the left, driving automatically with no room in his heart for anything but grief. He fights the urge to yank the steering wheel to the right, to smash through the retaining wall and plunge into the river. Twice his hands twitch on the steering wheel. Perhaps it is only the car’s lane assist feature nudging the Merc back into its lane that keeps him from the abyss.

Somewhere between Madison and Rockford, Illinois, his cell phone rings for the first time since he’s started his journey four days ago, proof he’s almost a ghost in this lifeline, too. It is a commercial real estate broker. He lets it go unanswered. He feels the familiar garment of his lifeline enfold him.

Two days later he pulls into the circular gravel drive in front of his house in time for dinner. As he opens the car’s door his old vinyl pocket protector falls out onto the ground. It is the brand his father burned into him before he knew he had choices. Rage and grief rise up in his gorge and he grinds it into the sharp gravel with the heel of his shoe, but it is indestructible. The gardener will pick it up tomorrow and return it to him.

He meets Mrs. Hernandez, their housekeeper, in the foyer.

Drained of emotion now he asks, “Is Mrs. Marshall in?”

She shakes her head, “No, sir.”

Mike doesn’t expect her to be. She might be at the golf club or at one of her committee meetings, the art museum or the garden society or the Republicans. She might even be with a lover.

“Please make a light dinner for me,” he says and heads for the shower.

The hot water melts the numbness and he cries for the life he could have had, tears mingling with the filtered water. Despite his Church’s rules he could divorce Fern, sell the business and—do what? That is the question: do what? He lets the moment of rebellion go, swirling down the drain. The groove he has plowed in this lifeline is so deep.