Chapter 26

GRACE’S POV

For a second, I thought I misheard her.

“Daniel’s what?” I asked, desperate to have heard wrong. 

“Married,” Susan repeated, her voice tight and very controlled in a way that made it worse. “It’s not that they're separated, it's not that it’s complicated. Not ‘we’re figuring things out.’ They're very married. Like fully, completely, happily married.”

The air in the room felt heavy. It was a very wild bomb to be dropped. 

I blinked. “You were with him last night though.”

“I am painfully aware of that,” she said dryly.

I sat up straighter, assuring her I was right there with her. 

“What happened?”

She didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she let out a breath and leaned back, pressing her palms into her eyes like she was trying to erase the memory. The sight made me pause.

“I woke up to screaming,” she said finally.

My stomach dropped. “Screaming? Horror movie screaming?”

“Not horror movie screaming,” she clarified. “The kind where you know exactly what you’re looking at and you wish you weren’t. The kind where you feel like you didn't just see what you hoped to not.”

I didn’t interrupt, I let her carry on the story. 

“She came back early,” Susan continued, her voice quieter now. “His wife. She came back early from a three-day work trip, that's what I gathered from her screaming. She wasn’t supposed to be back until tomorrow.”

I swallowed. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh is right.” she said, letting out a humorless laugh.

The room felt smaller somehow, like the walls were slowly closing in.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“What do you think I did?” she shot back. “I woke up, realized I was in someone else’s disaster, and tried to disappear. The worst part? I couldn't disappear. I just quickly jumped up from the bed, horrified, and wearing just his ugly shorts from last night. I grabbed a random shirt and my things and ran off.”

The scene was clear in my head, like a movie.

“Did she say anything to you?”

Susan hesitated for a brief moment, as if she was trying to recall how best to capture the answer. 

“Not really,” she admitted. “She was too busy staring at him like she didn’t recognize who he was anymore. Hell, he went back to looking like a stranger to me.”

That hit harder than anything else she’d said.

“And him?” I asked carefully.

Her expression hardened. “He kept saying her name, over and over again. Like if he said it enough, it would fix something. Newsflash, it didn't.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

“I’ve never felt so out of place in my life,” she continued. “Like I wasn’t even supposed to exist in that moment. Like I was catapulted into this universe I had no idea about.”

Her voice didn’t shake, but something underneath it did. 

“I just grabbed my clothes and left,” she added. “I didn’t wait, I didn’t look back.”

I nodded slowly, assuring her. “That was the right thing to do.”

“I know,” she said quickly. “Logically, I know that. But..” She stopped herself, jaw clenching.

“But it still feels awful,” I finished for her, already understanding her predicament.

She looked at me, then nodded once.

“Yeah. I'm a girl's girl, you know. I'd never help a man cheat on his wife. I feel like I just destroyed her marriage, and she didn't look like she deserved it.”

Silence settled between us, heavy but not suffocating. Suddenly, I realised this was what exactly played out before I died. She just didn't know it yet, but in ten years, if I didn't change events, she'd be sleeping with my husband, just the same way this happened. Except that she just didn't know this man was married. 

“You didn’t know,” I said gently, refusing to let the anger from my previous timeline reappear.

“I should have,” she replied immediately, angry at herself.

“You couldn’t have.” I said again.

She scoffed. “Grace, the man had a whole wife.”

“And he hid that,” I said firmly. “That’s not something you just miss. He hid it from you, you couldn't have known.” 

She crossed her arms, but I could tell she was listening. “He wasn’t wearing a ring,” she muttered.

“See? How would you have known? It's easy to slip on and slip off a ring.” I said.

“I know,” she sighed. “I know that now.”

She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, staring hard at the floor.

“She looked normal, you know,” Susan said quietly. “She didn't look dramatic, definitely not hysterical. Just hurt. Very hurt.”

“And that’s the part that’s messing with me,” she continued “Because now I’m part of that story. Whether I wanted to be or not. I'm the one playing the destroyer role.”

I took a deep breath.

“You didn’t choose that role,” I said. “He put you in it.” I whispered to her, trying to convince her she wasn't at fault.

“But I was still there,” she said, her voice shaky.

“Yes, you were. But you didn't choose to be there.” I agreed. 

She went quiet again, clearly still thinking. 

It made me wonder, when I caught her and Michael, did she feel this way? I mean, she was my best friend, she knew I was married to Michael, but they went on for a year? Did she regret it? In that timeline, did either of them regret it? Or were they just happy I was gone?

I cleared my throat, desperate to float above those memories. 

“What do you want for breakfast?” I asked her, rising to my feet. 

“I'm not hungry, Grace. I just want to drown in my sin.” She replied, leaning into the couch.

“Fine. How about I just bring you tea? Or coffee?” I offered. 

She stood up and placed her hands on the waist of the shorts. “You know what you should do? Bring me some alcohol or fuel. I'm burning this ugly thing.”