Chapter 4

I walked back into my own home, the one I shared with my parents. It felt strange to be here, in this time.

My mother, Helen Miller, rushed to me the moment I stepped through the door. "Ethan! You' re back! Where' s Sarah? Did you two... you know, talk things out?"

She was looking at me with hopeful eyes. In the old timeline, she and my father had been the ones to push the marriage forward, eager for the business alliance with the Jenkins family.

"She' s not here," I said, my voice flat.

My father, Robert Miller, looked up from his newspaper, his brow furrowed. "What do you mean she' s not here? It' s your wedding night!"

"She had to go somewhere," I said vaguely.

"Somewhere?" my father' s voice rose. "Where could be more important than this? I' m calling her father right now!"

He reached for the phone, his face red with anger.

"Don' t," I said, stepping in front of him. "It was an emergency. A friend of hers was in an accident."

"A friend?" my mother scoffed. "You mean that musician boy, Mark?"

I didn' t answer.

My parents exchanged a look of frustration and started bickering, the same argument I' d heard a thousand times. My mother complaining about the Jenkins' s flighty daughter, my father worrying about the business deal falling through.

I watched them, and a wave of profound sadness washed over me. I wasn' t just thinking about Sarah. I was thinking about them. In the old timeline, after Sarah' s death, they were devastated too. Not just by the loss of the business connection, but by the genuine grief of losing a daughter-in-law they had, in their own way, come to care for. I remembered my mother crying at the funeral, saying, "She was so young."

The memory was too much.

"The wedding is off," I said, my voice cracking.

They stopped arguing and stared at me.

"What did you say?" my father asked, his voice dangerously low.

"We' re not getting married," I said, looking at them both. "I' m not going to marry her."

My mother gasped. "Ethan, have you lost your mind? The contracts are signed! Everything is set!"

"And I' m... I' m leaving," I added, the decision forming in my mind as I spoke the words. "I' m going to go back to school. I' m going to get my master's degree abroad."

It was something I had wanted to do ten years ago, an offer I had turned down for the sake of the family business and the marriage to Sarah.

My mother looked like she was about to faint. "Abroad? Ethan, no. You can' t. What about Sarah? What about the family?"

The weight of it all, the past and the present, crashed down on me. I sank into a chair, burying my face in my hands. The fight was just beginning.