Chapter 3

Early the next morning, Dad's butler called.

"Ms. Harper, your father's been having trouble breathing. The ambulance just took him to the hospital."

I was out the door before I'd even finished buttoning my coat. With my right hand injured, I couldn't drive, so Sophia drove me. The whole way there, Dad's family doctor kept us updated. His heart rhythm was irregular, and the strain on it was getting worse fast. He'd need to be admitted for more evaluation.

When I got to the hospital, Dad was in the monitored unit, hooked up to an IV.

The first thing he saw was the splint on my hand, and the first thing he said was, "What happened to you?"

"I tripped and fell."

He looked at me. He clearly didn't believe it, but he didn't press. He just motioned for me to sit. We held hands over the bed rail, and his palm wasn't as warm as it used to be.

The attending doctor said a specialist would need to evaluate him for surgery. If we wanted to move him to a hospital with better rehabilitation services, we'd have to wait until his condition was stable. We couldn't rush it.

I remembered Noah knew a lot of cardiologists. I was about to pick up my phone when I saw him walking toward me from the other end of the hallway.

I started toward him, but then his phone rang.

"Claire? Are you feeling sick again?"

Noah turned toward the stairwell. He listened for a moment, and his voice instantly softened. "Don't be scared. I'll be right there."

In that moment, I decided not to call out to him.

I went back to the room and asked the doctor to connect me directly with the admissions office. At the same time, I contacted Emily to confirm where the healthcare proxy documents were kept.

At noon, Claire posted a photo of her breakfast on social media. On the table were Noah's cuff links and a coffee mug I knew all too well. She messaged me, "Hey, Evelyn, you already hit me yesterday. You're not going to come after me again today, are you?"

I took a screenshot for evidence and contacted the building management to revoke everyone's access to the private areas except mine. I had Emily file a formal complaint about security hurting me, too. At first, I also reached out to a private investigator to dig up Claire's real medical history.

When my future self heard words like "contact" and "investigate" on the phone, she suddenly grabbed her head and screamed like she'd lost her mind.

"No! That's exactly what happened last time! She vanished into thin air, and Noah swore we'd kidnapped her, and Dad..."

Her words broke off, and her charred face twisted in pain.

I told the investigator to pull only public records and never to follow, corner, or contact Claire. After I hung up, I found my future self curled up against the wall, as if she'd narrowly escaped disaster.

At 11 that night, Noah stormed into the waiting area outside Dad's room.

"Where's Claire?"

I looked up at him. "You're asking me?"

He slammed his phone down on the table. It was playing a clip of parking garage footage that showed Emily's assistant talking with Grant, the head of security. The clip had been edited, the beginning and end trimmed off, and there was no sound.

"Her phone's last location was right around here," Noah said. "Yesterday you said you wanted her gone. Now she's missing. Did you have someone take her?"

"That's my lawyer's assistant. She was there to handle the complaint about security hurting me."

"You expect me to believe that's a coincidence?"

I showed him the meeting email and the lawyer's reply. He skimmed them, but he still wasn't convinced.

"You had plenty of motive, and you've never cared about consequences."

"So with or without proof, you assume it was me?"

"I just want to know where she is right now."

Before long, the police came to the hospital to question me. Cooperating was the right thing to do, but while they were going over the timeline point by point, Dad was in his room waiting for another round of heart tests. I explained exactly why there'd been a meeting in the parking garage, and Sophia gave them proof that I'd been with Dad the whole time. In the end, the officers said they had found no direct evidence linking me to her disappearance.

Noah was pacing the hallway making calls. He didn't hear any of it.

What left me even more disheartened was hearing him say that the private medical transport he'd arranged for Dad couldn't be scheduled for the time being.

"I have to find Claire first," he explained. "The hospital will take care of your father. One car won't make a difference."

"You're the one who promised to help arrange it."

"I can't be in two places at once right now."

With that, he turned and left. I sat outside Dad's door, asking myself the same question over and over. If Claire never comes back, will he leave me under suspicion indefinitely until he has time to look into it?

Early in the morning, Claire contacted Noah herself. She said she'd been resting at a friend's place and her phone had died. But her public post had a location tag for a casino hotel outside the city. I screenshotted it, but I didn't jump to conclusions. Locations could be faked, and proving where she'd really been would take hard evidence.

Noah texted me, "Found her. She's fine."

I replied, "What about me? What about my father?"

No answer ever came.

Outside the room, my future self slowly lifted her face. One corner of the dark brown scar on her left cheek had faded, as if water were rinsing it away.

"You didn't send anyone after her." She reached up and gently touched her cheek, her voice so faint I could barely hear it. "This time, Dad still has a chance to live."

I looked at her, and my fear gave way to a new thought.

Maybe she really had escaped from a fate that had already happened. If I made different choices, the ending could be rewritten.

I called Emily.

"I'm officially hiring you. The divorce can take its time, but I need to make sure Dad gets out of New York safely."

"Evelyn, are you sure about this?"

My eyes fell on Dad, asleep in his hospital bed.

"I've made up my mind. Don't let Noah find out our full plan."