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Chapter 3

Penulis: Shelley
That night, Ethan was in the kitchen making soup.

New England clam chowder, my favorite. The whole apartment smelled like it.

He turned and smiled when I came in: the picture of a perfect husband.

"You're back. Long day?"

I sat at the table and watched him work. My chest felt frozen solid.

He set a bowl in front of me, his eyes warm.

"Jo, I booked us a Hawaii trip for next month. The honeymoon. Tickets are done."

My grip on the spoon tightened, and I managed a smile that didn't reach my eyes.

"Whatever you want."

He noticed something was off and reached over to press a hand to my forehead.

"What is it? Is work too much? I can call the department chair, get you a few days off."

If I hadn't seen those altered charts, I would've cried at how kind he sounded.

I moved my head away from his hand. "I'm fine. Just tired."

Late that night, after he was asleep, I went into the study.

I texted future Ethan.

[Everything else Vivian did. Tell me all of it. Don't leave anything out.]

After a minute, a long block of text came through.

[The worst thing she did wasn't your career. It was your brother. Josh.]

[Josh has a gambling problem. He owed around fifty thousand grand to loan sharks, and you paid it off behind my back.]

[Next month, he's going to rack up a bigger one. Around three hundred thousand grand.]

[That old condo your parents left you is worth exactly three hundred thousand grand. You were going to sell it to bail him out again—]

The text stopped mid-thought.

When I saw Josh's name, my heart squeezed.

Josh was a mess, but I'd always covered for him quietly. Ethan didn't know.

How did Ethan know?

I sent message after message. Nothing came back.

I didn't sleep.

Just before dawn, the next text came through. He'd clearly been holding it back for hours.

[The day you were getting ready to sell the condo, Vivian came to me.]

[She said gamblers like Josh are a black hole, that I couldn't keep enabling him. She said she had a way to end it once and for all.]

[She wanted me to help her put on a show.]

[We hired some guys to play loan sharks and staged a kidnapping. We got you to come out to an abandoned warehouse.]

[We made you watch them 'cut off' one of Josh's fingers.]

[It was fake, a prosthetic finger from the hospital. But you didn't know.]

[You were terrified. You got on your knees and begged them, and you signed the deed transfer right there.]

[After we got the condo, Vivian told me the truth: she was the one who'd gotten Josh into gambling in the first place.]

[I was afraid you'd find out, so I gave Josh thirty thousand and told him to leave the state. Never contact you again.]

[You spent months thinking he'd vanished. You looked everywhere. You couldn't let it go.]

[I never told you, because without the apartment, without your brother, I thought you'd never leave me.]

I finished reading and quietly turned off the phone.

No screaming. No sobbing.

When you hit the bottom of despair, you don't cry.

I drove straight to my parents' house.

I opened the door. Josh was on the couch, feet up, playing a video game.

Empty snack wrappers were everywhere.

He saw me and grinned.

"Sis, you're back? You bringing me cash again?"

I looked at him, his young, slacker face starting to harden, and slid a debit card across the coffee table.

"Seventy-five thousand grand. This is your last chance."

"Take it. Go somewhere no one knows you. Learn a trade. Become a real person."

Josh blinked. Then he grabbed the card and lit up.

"Sis, you've been holding out! I always knew I was your favorite."

I looked at him for a long second. Then I turned and walked out.

Before I drove off, I texted future Ethan one more time.

[What about me? What happens to me?]

His answer came fast and short, like a verdict.

[After Josh 'disappeared,' you broke.]

[Vivian said she'd take care of you. She put you in a private psychiatric facility, and they kept you sedated.]

[By the time I came to see you, you didn't recognize me. You just held a pillow and called for Josh.]

I gripped the phone and looked back at the brother still cheering over the seventy-five grand.

On the way home, I pulled over by the river.

I rested my forehead on the steering wheel as my shoulders shook.

I thought of the boy who'd told me "It's okay, you're already amazing" every time I bombed an exam.

The same boy who'd worked three jobs to keep me fed during the worst year of my MD-PhD.

Ethan. How did he become this?
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  • On My Wedding Day, Husband Called From Three Years in the Future   Chapter 10

    After the call, I put the restored phone in the back of my drawer and locked it.Along with eight years of being young, in love, and wrong.That afternoon, the clinic took an emergency.It was an elderly man with sudden cardiac arrest, in critical condition.I went to work, fast, clean, no hesitation."Defibrillator. Charging to 200 joules. Clear."The shock lifted the patient off the bed.The monitor flatline turned back into peaks.His family was outside, sobbing with relief, thanking me on repeat.I wiped my forehead and walked out of the trauma room, sunlight flooding the hallway.In that moment, I felt it: this was my life.Not anyone's wife, not anyone's accessory: just my own two hands, saving lives.That night I went home, and Josh had dinner ready.He'd picked up cooking at the rehab program, and now he was a prep cook at a restaurant in town."Sis, try this. BBQ ribs, new recipe." He kept piling food on my plate.I watched him moving around the kitchen, completely different f

  • On My Wedding Day, Husband Called From Three Years in the Future   Chapter 9

    Vivian's verdict came down in the fall.Multiple counts: extortion, attempted aggravated assault.The federal sentence was eight years.The news alert popped up while I was feeding a stray cat.That girl in college who used to hide behind me, who called me 'Jo' in that nervous way.And the woman in that courtroom, mouth twisted, screaming 'Ethan put me up to it.'I decided to think of them as two different people.I'd cared about the first one. The second one I chose to forget.Later, I heard Ethan had anonymously donated a top-tier cardiothoracic surgical system to my old hospital.At the unveiling, the department chair gave a speech."The anonymous donor asked me to pass on a message. There is an extraordinary surgeon out there. Her hands were meant to save more lives. Her talent should never have been clouded by anyone else's mistakes."I read that headline once and quietly closed the tab.Some damage doesn't get undone just because someone tries to undo it.After the new year, a Fe

  • On My Wedding Day, Husband Called From Three Years in the Future   Chapter 8

    The letter arrived a few days later.In it, he went through everything 'future him' had told me, point by point, with evidence. He corrected all of it.The joint account had always been mine. Vivian had changed the password without authorization.The surgical sabotage had been planned by Vivian long before he knew anything, and she'd brought him in afterward.The kidnapping had been Vivian's idea. She'd exploited the fact that he was desperate to pay off his family's debts, and she'd walked him into it.At the end, he wrote: [That future me, the one who took every crime on himself, did it on purpose. So you'd hate me. So you'd leave clean.][I don't know why he did it that way. Maybe because he knew it was the only way to give you back your freedom.]Inside the envelope, there was also a signed divorce agreement.And a bank transfer record: three hundred thousand dollars, exactly.The price of the apartment he and Vivian had taken from me.I sat with the letter for a long time.I'd act

  • On My Wedding Day, Husband Called From Three Years in the Future   Chapter 7

    He came out of the detention center and sat down on the curb.The guilt hit him like a wave that wouldn't break, and he couldn't even cry out loud.That was when his phone rang.It was the private investigator he'd hired."Mr. Ethan, I found something. Two weeks ago, your wife's brother Josh was spotted in a small town down south."He didn't have time to drown.He got up, got in the car, and drove for three days straight to a small coastal town.The PI's trail ended there. Josh had passed through once, then nothing.Ethan started doing it the slow way, street by street.Day fifteen.He saw a flyer on the bulletin board of a community clinic: a health talk.Speaker: Dr. Jo.The woman in the photo had cut her hair short. Her features were the same cool and fine ones he knew, but with something new in them, something steady.He stood across the street and looked through the clinic window.Inside, a slim figure was checking a child's temperature. Her movements were gentle and focused.The

  • On My Wedding Day, Husband Called From Three Years in the Future   Chapter 6

    He went to Vivian with the evidence.She was at home with a sheet mask on, perfectly relaxed. When she saw him, she immediately put on a hurt face."Ethan, I heard about Jo. I'm devastated—""You changed the password." His voice was calm, and he cut her off.Her face froze.He dropped the Chase records on the coffee table.The mask came off, and she started laughing, low and bitter."You think you're clean? You loved her, but you never had the guts to tell me where I stood.""You loved the pull between the three of us. Why am I the only one walking away with nothing?"She breathed in sharp, her eyes hardening."So I changed the password. I wanted her to know. You wouldn't choose, so I chose for you."Ethan was silent for a long time."You're right. I should've shut you down the first time you confessed to me.""I didn't. I liked being loved by two women. My weakness and my ego fed yours.""But that doesn't justify destroying her career or going after her family."The three of them. The

  • On My Wedding Day, Husband Called From Three Years in the Future   Chapter 5

    The man on the screen lifted a hand. There was a faint scar on it, in the same place as his."That look on your face. What happened?"Ethan's voice cracked. "Jo, something happened. The apartment exploded. She—"The other him gripped his phone tight, then exhaled slow and long, like he was processing it.He knew Jo. She hated pain, and she wouldn't have chosen something this brutal."Why did she do this?" Ethan said, almost to himself. "What did I do?"Future him gave him a look of pure, weary judgment."Because she knew. Everything you were going to do in the next three years. I told her.""What did I do? What did I actually do?"Future Ethan started listing it, one by one.The affair. The medical sabotage. The kidnapping. The baby.With every sentence, the color drained from Ethan's face.The older version of him watched, cold as a verdict."Let her go. Don't try to find her."He hung up.Ethan crumpled to the ground, gasping like he couldn't pull in enough air.The DNA test would ta

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