The Woman I Didn't Marry

The last thing I remembered was the hospice ceiling, stark and cracked, as I lay paralyzed, trapped, regretting forty years wasted on a woman who betrayed me and a daughter who wasn't even mine. My wife, Nicole, was probably with Matthew, as she always had been.

Then, a sudden, jarring jolt. My eyes snapped open, and I was eighteen again, back in my Cleveland bedroom, the phone buzzing with Nicole's vivacious voice inviting me to a party. This was the night it all began-the night I intervened, thinking I was saving her, only to become the consolation prize she resented for a lifetime.