The day my wife died, new words bled across a diary I'd sealed away twelve years ago.

*"Hello, thirty-year-old Dominic Delgado. I am you at eighteen."*

I couldn't breathe. Before the shock could settle, another sentence burned into existence, the ink still wet.

*"Amy has already married you by now, right? She has to be."*

*"I'm so nervous. Hurry up and tell me the result. I'm getting ready to confess to her."*

The diary slipped from my fingers. It hit the floor with a sound like a coffin lid slamming shut.

Amy Ware and I dated for eight years. Married for four.

And for those four years, I watched her drown in a loveless marriage with the cold detachment of a stranger. I never once reached for her hand.

Before she died, Amy left me with only two sentences.

"I will always love the eighteen-year-old Dominic Delgado."

"If he saw you bullying me like this, he would kill you."

The memory carved through me. I scrambled for the diary, ripped off the pen cap, and scrawled across the page so hard my hand shook. The letters came out jagged, half-crazed.

*"Don't confess to her! You're a monster! You will destroy her!"*

——

The moment the last word landed, something inside me shattered.

Tears came without warning—hot, violent, blinding. My knees gave out. The floor rose up to meet me, and I stayed there, gasping for air that wouldn't come.

Amy Ware and I were high school classmates. I harbored a crush on her for three agonizing years.

It wasn't until the day I received my university acceptance letter—confirming we'd be in the same city—that I finally worked up the nerve to confess.

That was the day I started this diary.

The sour ache of secret longing. The dizzying sweetness of mutual love. The hot tears of our first fight. I recorded every moment, pen to paper.

Truthfully, I'd forgotten this book existed. Amy was the one who kept it safe all these years.

Sometimes I'd come home to find her weeping over these pages, fingers tracing the words of the boy who used to love her.

I never asked why.

Not until pancreatic cancer put her in a hospital bed did this diary cross my mind again.

"Do you want me to bring it?" I'd asked, standing stiff and useless beside her.

She wouldn't even look at me.

"No. I don't want him to see me like this."

At the time, I thought the illness had confused her. I missed the profound disappointment in her eyes. The way the light behind them had finally gone out.

Guilt clawed at my throat, sharp and suffocating. I gripped the pen tighter, desperate to write more.

That's when I noticed something strange.

This pen was a cheap freebie from the shop where I bought the diary twelve years ago. It had been clipped to the cover ever since. The ink should have dried up a decade ago.

Yet when I pressed the nib to the yellowed paper, it flowed smooth and dark.

*"I'm begging you, don't confess to her! Let her live a good life without you!"*

I bore down so hard the nib tore through the page.

As the final stroke landed, the full weight of my regret crushed the air from my lungs.

But there was nothing I could do.

No way to undo what I had broken.

I curled up on the floor and howled—raw, animal, inhuman.

*Dominic Delgado, you really are a monster.*

*The one who should be dead is you.*

When I finally lifted my head and wiped the grime from my face, new words had bloomed on the page.

*"Who are you? How are you writing in my diary?"*

*"What nonsense are you spouting? Why can't I confess to Amy? I, Dominic Delgado, will never let Amy Ware down!"*

I stared at the page.

This wasn't a hallucination.

This was real.

On the other end of this impossible connection was my eighteen-year-old self.

The boy who had just received his acceptance letter. The boy who was moments away from changing Amy's life forever.

I dragged my sleeve across my face and wrote back, handwriting urgent.

*"I am you at thirty. Believe me. I would never lie to you."*

I waited.

And waited.

No reply came.

A bitter smile twisted my lips as fresh tears dripped onto the page.

Of course he didn't believe me. He was me, twelve years ago.

How could I not understand him?

He was an eighteen-year-old boy who thought a crush was destiny. Who believed love was an unbreakable vow. Amy Ware was the center of his universe—the girl he'd sworn to protect with everything he had.

If he gave up just because a stranger scribbled a few discouraging words in his notebook, he wouldn't be Dominic Delgado.

I clutched the diary to my chest and curled into a tight ball on the cold floor.

When Amy was still alive, she used to fall asleep like this. Defensive. Lonely.

I didn't know how much time passed before a cacophony of voices dragged me back. The front door banged open.

My mother. My younger sister.

"Where is your brother? The lights are on, but the place is silent."

"Hurry up. Pack up all that jinx's trash and throw it out. Keeping a dead person's things is bad luck."

"I need to get Vivi moved in ASAP. Then I can finally hold a grandson. That useless woman—married four years and couldn't pop out a son or a daughter. Good riddance. At least now we have space."

They barged into the master bedroom. My sister yelped when she spotted me on the floor.

"Brother? You're home? You... you didn't hear anything, did you?"

She recovered fast, sliding on a mask of concern. "Sister-in-law is gone, so Mom and I came to help you tidy up. We were afraid seeing her things would upset you. Don't misunderstand."

I looked at them—the two women who were supposed to be my family. Guilt flushed their faces, but their eyes held no remorse.

A cold realization settled into my gut.

*So this is how they treated Amy when I wasn't around.*

During our four years of marriage, Amy had asked—begged—to live separately from them.

And what did I do?

I scolded her. Called her petty. Told her she was intolerant and unfilial.

My father died young. My mother raised my sister and me alone. I felt I owed her everything. So after marrying Amy, I moved my mother and sister in. Four people under one roof.

In front of me, my mother treated Amy like a princess. Better than her own daughter. The best food, the best clothes. Never let her lift a finger.

Amy tried to tell me it was all an act.

Tears in her eyes, she told me the moment I left for work, my mother would treat her like a servant—piling chores on her, mocking her for being a "hen that couldn't lay eggs."

Every time she brought it up, I shut her down. I was impatient. I didn't want to hear it.

Eventually, Amy stopped talking.

Deep down, didn't I know what my mother was like?

Of course I did.

But I was busy. I was the man of the house. I didn't have time for "trivial domestic squabbles." My mother had suffered her whole life—why couldn't Amy just yield a little?

*Heh.*

I wasn't just a bad husband.

I was scum.

Slowly, I rose to my feet. The temperature in the room seemed to plummet as I fixed a glacial stare on them.

"Vivi and I are finished. She isn't moving in. And you won't be holding a grandson."

My voice came out dead calm.

"The one who can't have children isn't Amy. It's me."

My mother's gasp echoed off the walls.

"Find a new place to live. Didn't I buy you a condo across town? Move there."

"This is Amy's home. Mine and hers. If a single item of hers goes missing, I will hold you personally responsible."

My mother swayed, clutching her chest. My sister barely caught her before she crumpled.

"What... what did you say?" Her voice climbed to a shriek. "How can a man be unable to have children? It's clearly that jinx's fault!"

"And you want me to move out? I gave birth to you! Now that you're successful, you want to toss your own mother aside?"

"What do you mean 'yours and hers'? A home without a mother isn't a home!"

I looked at her.

Really looked at her.

And felt nothing but a vast, desolate emptiness.