You will have to keep an eye on her.

By the time Saturday has rolled around, Jerry has come to understand the fundamentals behind his disease. His conversation with Nurse Hamilton is proof he killed somebody, and reading passages from his books over the last few days have shown him the way the world works. It’s about balance. There is, he believes, a reason he has Alzheimer’s, and understanding that reason is the first step on the path to being cured.

He steps into the hallway. He’s been told he woke up this morning a little confused, but this afternoon he knows who he is—fifty-year-old Jerry Grey, killer of one, at least one. He heads to the more common areas of the home, where others are watching TV or playing cards or comparing stories about grandchildren. TV has lost interest for him. It’s impossible to follow a show when you don’t know what happened the week before. There are couches and coffee tables and some people are talking, some are reading books, others are just staring ahead, lost in a thought either real or imagined, confused or not, chasing down a memory they can’t quite grab. There are wheelchairs parked against walls and crutches parked against couches. The TV is muted. There’s a show on about auctions and antiques, only they aren’t really antiques to the core demographic of this show, but items they grew up with.

Eric is busy, so Jerry waits. On a couch. By a window. Fifty-year-old Jerry Grey, killer of one, those words going around in his mind like a skipping record, until Eric is free and comes over.

“I need your help,” Jerry tells him.

“Whatever you need.”

“I need to get out of here.”

Eric doesn’t answer. He just gives Jerry one of those sad smiles everybody who works here knows how to deliver, a smile Jerry is getting pretty sick of seeing.

“Please, it’s important.”

“It doesn’t seem like you need my help to get out of here, Jerry—you’ve done it three times by yourself now.”

Three times, Jerry thinks, where he’s functioned enough to walk twenty miles but not functioned well enough to create the memory. Three times where he’s essentially been sleepwalking. Only it should be called wake-walking. He is Jerry Grey, fifty-year-old crime writer, killer of one. He is the resident wake-walker. Maybe more than three times, he thinks, if he’s snuck his way back in.

“What do you need to get out for?” Eric asks.

He’s been wondering how much to reveal, and has decided the best way forward is to tell Eric everything. There is no shame in needing help.

“I know why I have Alzheimer’s. It’s because the Universe is punishing me for the bad things I’ve done. I hurt somebody, maybe even more than just one person. The only hope I have of the Universe returning my memories is if I confess to my crimes. I have to go to the police.”

Eric’s smile has turned into a frown. Jerry remembers somebody telling him once that a frown uses more muscles. The guy who told him that got shot in the back of the head during a drug deal in the back room of a furniture factory. Jerry can remember his face going through all kinds of frowning as he knelt there as a gunman stood over him, telling him he had a number in mind that he was counting to, and when he got there he was going to pull the trigger. The number was twenty-nine, only the gunman didn’t say that, he just counted silently as the guy knelt in front of him shaking. Then there was the gunshot. The echo. There was little blood. How does Jerry know this? Is that who he killed?

“Is this about Suzan?” Eric asks.

Suzan. She was the first. “How do you know about Suzan?”

“We’ve had this conversation before, do you remember?”

Jerry shakes his head. If he remembered, he wouldn’t be here.

“It never happened,” Eric says, and he leans forward and puts his hand on Jerry’s arm. “These people you think you killed, it just didn’t happen. Nobody in your street was murdered. You never snuck into anybody’s house and killed them. There is no Suzan with a z.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because we checked. Where you grew up, nobody was murdered. Not in your neighborhood, hell, not even in your suburb.”

Jerry knows the words are true, they feel true, and his body floods with relief. The fear inside him settles. The same way learning he was a crime writer fit like a glove, so does learning he’s not a killer. There is no Suzan. There was no drug deal where he watched some guy get shot in the back of the head after the shooter counted to twenty-nine. They were in his books. He may not remember the details, but he knows he created these people.

Then it hits him. If he’s been a good guy all these years, then why the disease? If he didn’t kill anybody, then how can he repent? His future is as bleak as ever. “Then why am I being punished?”

“There is no why,” Eric says. “It’s just bad luck.”

“So I never killed anybody?”

“The thing is, Jerry, it’s all in the way you created these worlds—they all seem so real. People would read your books and they would become the main characters, they would see the world through their eyes, they would feel their thoughts. It’s no wonder it all seems real to you—it sure seems real to those who read you. It sure seemed real to me. Your books are amazing,” he says. “I’ve been a huge fan since book one.”

“It can’t just be bad luck,” Jerry says. “The Universe is balancing the scales for something.”

“Jerry—”

“I need to think about it,” he says. He stands up. “I think I’ll go rest a while.”

Eric stands up too. They start walking back towards Jerry’s room.

“Do you remember me telling you that I wanted to be a writer?” Eric asks.

Jerry shakes his head.

“I asked you for one piece of advice, and you said write what you know. I said that wasn’t always possible. Do you remember what you said?”

“No.”

“You said fake it. You said, did I really think Gene Roddenberry had been to Mars? Did I really think that Stephen King had been spooked by a vampire when he was a kid? Did I really think Bill and Ted knew how to travel in time? You said write what you know and fake the rest. You said throw some research in there too.”

“And how’s that working out for you?” Jerry asks.

“I’m still working here, aren’t I?” Eric says, then laughs. “The thing about Suzan is exactly that. You didn’t kill her, you just faked it, but she feels as real to you as she does to your readers. Now, you’re not going to try and sneak out again today, are you?”

“No.”

When Jerry gets into his room he sits down by the window. If he isn’t being punished, then what is it? A memory comes to him then, one so strong it could have happened yesterday. He’s sixteen years old, he’s at school and it’s career day and they’re all trying to figure what they want to do with their lives, as if a sixteen-year-old can possibly know. Only he did know. He’s having a conversation with a teacher, telling her he wants to be a writer. The teacher is telling him he needs to plan for a real future first, and to consider writing as a hobby. Jerry says he will do whatever it takes to make it happen. Is that what this is? The Universe taking his remaining years because it gave him the ones he wanted? Did he sell his soul?

“That’s not it,” he says, as much to himself as to the boy from nearly thirty-five years ago. It’s about Suzan with a z. Perhaps not her specifically, but somebody just like her. The sense he has killed somebody is just far too real to ignore.