Chapter 3

Sarah watched Michael leave, the locket heavy in Ethan's hand.

A strange unease prickled her skin.

Michael's detachment was new, unnerving.

He'd always been so... present. Even in his quiet suffering, there was an intensity, a focused grief.

This cold indifference was alien.

"He's just being dramatic, darling," Ethan said, squeezing her hand. He slipped the locket into his pocket. "Probably trying to get a reaction out of you."

Sarah nodded, letting Ethan's reassurance smooth over the disquiet.

Michael was an obstacle, a painful reminder of a life she couldn't recall, a life Ethan insisted was a mistake.

Yes, that was it. He was playing games.

In the small, rented room near the docks, Michael worked with methodical precision.

He'd already sold his old camera equipment, the tools of his abandoned architectural photography passion.

He'd closed the small savings account he'd maintained from before the marriage, a pitiful sum but his own.

Now, it was the physical remnants of his life with Sarah.

Photographs.

Her laughing face, their arms around each other, Leo a tiny bundle in her embrace from a time she still knew who held him.

He fed them, one by one, into a cheap paper shredder he'd bought.

The whirring sound was a grim lullaby.

Letters she'd written him from business trips, filled with longing and love.

Ticket stubs from concerts, plays, movies.

A dried flower from their wedding.

Shredded. All of it.

He remembered the hospital, the stark white walls, the smell of antiseptic.

Sarah, her eyes vacant, staring right through him.

Ethan Cole had been there, a vulture in a bespoke suit.

"Sarah, my love, you're awake!" Ethan had rushed to her bedside, seizing her hand. "It's me, Ethan. Your Ethan."

She'd looked at him, a flicker of confusion.

"I... I don't..."

"The doctors said you might have some memory loss, darling," Ethan cooed, his voice dripping with false sympathy. "But I'm here. I'll help you remember us."

He'd spun a tale of a whirlwind romance, a deep, passionate love that Michael, her supposed husband, had tried to sabotage.

He'd painted me as jealous, controlling, a man she was trying to escape.

And Sarah, her mind a blank slate, had clung to the first friendly face, the first coherent narrative offered.

She'd looked at me, the man who had held her hand through a dozen illnesses, who had celebrated her triumphs and soothed her fears, and she'd asked the nurse, "Who is he? Why is he looking at me like that?"

The pain of that moment was a brand on his soul.

Ethan had smiled then, a small, satisfied smirk.

Had her love been so fragile? So easily erased and rewritten?

The question had haunted him for years.

Perhaps Ethan was right. Perhaps she had been looking for an escape, and the amnesia was just a convenient exit.

The thought was a fresh stab of pain, even now.

But it no longer mattered.

The Sarah he loved was gone. The woman who wore her face was a puppet, and Ethan pulled the strings.

Maria, the housekeeper, found him in the backyard of the house he was supposed to share with Sarah.

A small fire burned in a metal drum.

He was feeding it the last of the mementos – the custom watch Sarah had designed for him, its intricate gears now melting in the flames.

A child's drawing Leo had made, a colorful scribble he'd proudly presented to "Mama," only to have her turn away.

"Mr. Michael, what are you doing?" Maria's voice was soft, laced with pity. She was one of the few who remembered the "before."

"Cleaning house, Maria," he said, his voice devoid of emotion.

He tossed in a small, velvet-lined box. Inside, a lock of Leo's baby hair, and a tiny, worn bootie.

"But these are... these are memories." Her eyes were wide with distress.

"The woman they belong to is dead, Maria," Michael said, watching the flames consume the last vestiges of his past. "And soon, so will I be."

He didn't mean it literally, not in the way she'd understand.

But the Michael Johnson who loved Sarah Hayes, the husband, the partner – he was already ash.

A new life awaited. Mark. Mark and his son, Liam.

Freedom. It tasted like smoke and sorrow, but it was freedom nonetheless.