Chapter 11: Second Chances and Regrets

I didn’t understand. I stared at the winter sky, hoping for some sign, some clarity in the cold blue.

In my previous life, after I married Michael Parker, I never got pregnant. The months turned into years, the hope into heartbreak.

My mother-in-law cried, made scenes, and threatened suicide, trying to force Michael to divorce me and remarry. Her grief was theatrical, her disappointment real.

No matter how much she raged, he refused.

"A bad wife shouldn’t just be cast aside. If I divorce and remarry, what will people think of me?"

"Rachel has been with me for more than ten years. Even if she has no great achievements, she’s worked hard."

"Not having children isn’t a big deal. I’ll take a few girlfriends, and if they have sons, I’ll raise them under her name."

Later, Michael did take two girlfriends. But both only had daughters. The circle of regret closed tighter with each birth announcement.

My mother-in-law consulted a fortune-teller, who said Michael took girlfriends too late. The idea seemed ridiculous, but she clung to it anyway, desperate for hope.

His luck for having sons was before age twenty—after that, only daughters. The math of fate never added up the way she wanted.

Until the day I died, Michael still had no sons. The ache in her voice never faded, only sharpened with time.

My mother-in-law hated me all the more for it. Every Sunday dinner, every holiday gathering, I could feel her blame settling on my shoulders.

"Michael, why?"

After twenty years as husband and wife, Michael understood my gaze almost instantly. Old habits, old wounds, impossible to hide.

Why?

Why didn’t you persist this time?

Michael froze, his eyelashes trembling, lowering his head and avoiding my eyes. The silence between us said more than words ever could.

"I want a son."

"That has always been my lifelong regret."

"Now, everything can still be changed."

But as I stared at the frost on the window, I wondered—if I could rewrite the past, would I ever dare?

A new future, the same old heartbreak—written in the spaces between what we want and what we can never have.