Chapter 5 #2
“It’s fine,” Ethan said, his voice coming out rougher than intended. He took a step back, putting distance between them, trying to calm his racing heart. “Really. It’s fine.”
But it wasn’t fine. Because standing there in his kitchen with the scent of blueberries and the phantom softness of her body still imprinted on his chest, Ethan realized something that hit him like a punch to the gut.
He hadn’t thought about Sarah since he woke up.
Not in the usual way. Not when he smelled the coffee, not when he walked into the kitchen, not when Lydia handed him his cup exactly the way he liked it.
For the first time in three years, for the first time since Sarah died, he’d woken up and his first thoughts hadn’t been of her.
The guilt crashed over him like a wave, cold and suffocating. What kind of man was he? What kind of fiancé forgot about the woman he’d loved, the woman he’d held while she died, just because a pretty stranger made him breakfast?
“I need to—” Ethan couldn’t finish the sentence. He turned and walked out of the kitchen, through the living room, out the French doors and onto the back porch where he changed into his boots. The morning air was cold against his flushed skin, sharp and clean and exactly what he needed.
I’m sorry, Sarah. I’m so sorry.
The thought was automatic, practiced, worn smooth from three years of repetition. But this time, it felt different. This time, the guilt that usually sat like lead in his chest felt … lighter. Not gone, but less crushing. And that scared him more than anything.
Ethan descended the porch steps and walked across the frost-white grass toward the tree line at the back of his property. He needed to move, needed to walk, needed to put distance between himself and the woman in his kitchen who made him feel things he had no right to feel.
The woods behind his house were old-growth forest, oak and maple and pine that had been standing since before the Civil War.
Sarah had loved these woods. Had talked about building a trail through them, about teaching their children to identify trees by their bark, about summer evenings walking hand-in-hand through the dappled shade.
They’d walked here together exactly twice before she died.
Ethan followed the deer path he’d maintained over the past three years, his boots crunching through frozen leaves.
The morning sun slanted through the bare branches, painting everything in shades of gold and shadow.
It was beautiful in the way that wild things were beautiful.
Not tamed or managed, just allowed to exist.
He walked for maybe ten minutes before he realized he wasn’t alone.
There was a man standing in a small clearing ahead, his back to Ethan, looking up at the canopy. He wore a white shirt, just a simple button-down, no jacket despite the November cold, and jeans. And there was something about the way he stood, the stillness of him, that made Ethan pause.
The man turned, and Ethan recognized him with a jolt that went straight through his chest.
It was the man from the fire. The figure in white he thought he’d glimpsed at the tree line after securing Caleb Byrne in the ambulance. The one he’d convinced himself he’d imagined, a trick of smoke.
But he was real. Standing right there, maybe twenty feet away, with calm blue eyes and a slight smile that seemed to know something Ethan didn’t.
“Good morning,” the man said, his voice gentle and nonchalant. “Beautiful morning for a walk.”
Ethan’s hand went instinctively to his hip, where his radio would be if he were on duty. But he wasn’t on duty, and he wasn’t armed, and this was his property and he had every right to ask who the hell this stranger was and what he was doing in his woods.
“Who are you?” Ethan asked, his voice coming out harder than he’d intended.
“Michael,” the man said easily, like they were old friends meeting for coffee. “Michael Smith.” He tilted his head slightly. “And you’re Ethan Cole. The paramedic who saved the Harper family two nights ago.”
Ethan’s jaw tightened. “I didn’t save them. Someone else did that.”
“You saved them too,” Michael said gently. “Different kind of saving, but no less important.”
There was something about his voice, about the way he spoke, that made Ethan want to sit down and tell him everything.
Every mistake, every failure, every nightmare that woke him at 3 AM.
It was the same feeling he’d gotten from the chaplain in Kandahar, right after the IED that killed two of his soldiers.
The sense that this person would listen, would understand, would not judge.
It made Ethan deeply uncomfortable.
“What are you doing on my property?” he asked, crossing his arms.
“Am I? I was just walking from town,” Michael said simply. “These woods are beautiful. Peaceful. The kind of place where you can hear yourself think.” He paused, looking back up at the trees. “Sarah loves these woods.”
Ethan’s blood ran cold. “What did you say?”
“Sarah,” Michael repeated, and there was something infinitely gentle in the way he said her name.
“She loves these woods. Used to talk about clearing trails through them, about teaching children to identify trees. Oak, maple, the old pine that’s been here since before the war.
” He looked back at Ethan. “She had good plans. Good dreams.”
“How do you—” Ethan couldn’t finish. His chest felt tight, his hands shaking.
“Did you know her? Did you—” He tried to remember if Sarah had ever mentioned a Michael Smith, ever talked about taking morning walks with someone.
But his memory came up blank. It should have made him angry, this stranger claiming to know his Sarah, but instead he felt strangely calm.
The timing of it was so … perfect. So … serendipitous.
“She’s happy where she is now,” Michael said. “She wants you to know that. She wants you to know it’s okay.”
“What’s okay?” Ethan asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
Michael’s smile was sad and perceptive and somehow ageless. “To live. To let yourself feel again. To forgive yourself for the things you couldn’t control.”
The words hit Ethan like a punch to the gut. He took a step back, his boot catching on a root, and had to steady himself against a tree. “How do you … you didn’t—” He shook his head, trying to clear it. “How do you know about Sarah?”
He turned fully to face Michael, to demand answers, to ask the hundred questions that were suddenly crowding his throat.
But the clearing was empty.
Ethan spun around, his eyes scanning the trees. No one. No sound of footsteps, no rustling leaves, nothing. Just the morning sun and the frost-white leaves and the silence of the woods.
She’s happy where she is now.
The words echoed in Ethan’s mind, and only then did he realize that Michael had used the present tense. Not “Sarah loved these woods” but “Sarah loves these woods.” Not “she was happy” but “she is happy.”
Present tense.
Like she was still here. Still existing somewhere.
Ethan’s knees gave out and he sat down hard on a fallen log, his head in his hands. He should be freaking out. Should be running back to the house to call someone, to report a trespasser, to do something rational and explicable.
But all he felt was calm.
A deep, bone-settling calm that he hadn’t felt since before Sarah died. Like something tight in his chest had finally loosened, like a breath he’d been holding for three years had finally been released.
She wants you to know it’s okay.
Okay to what? To wake up and not think of her first thing? To feel his heart race when another woman hugged him? To imagine a future that didn’t include her?
Ethan didn’t know. Couldn’t make sense of what had just happened, what it meant, whether Michael Smith was real or a hallucination or something else entirely.
But sitting there, in the woods Sarah had loved, in the place where she’d planned to build trails and teach children and make memories that never happened, Ethan felt something shift inside him.
Not forgetting. He would never forget her. But maybe, just maybe, it was time to stop living in the museum of their unfinished future.
He sat there for a long time, until the sun climbed higher and the frost began to melt from the leaves. Then he stood, brushed off his jeans, and started back toward the house.
Toward the kitchen where Lydia was probably still cleaning up breakfast, where Eli and Rosie were probably playing some game, where life was happening whether Ethan was ready for it or not.
She’s happy where she is now.
He wanted to believe that. Wanted to believe that wherever Sarah was, whatever came after, she wasn’t alone and wasn’t in pain and wasn’t waiting for him to join her before she could rest.
And maybe she was okay with him figuring out how to live again.
The house came into view through the trees, and Ethan could see Rosie through the kitchen window, standing on a chair to reach something, and Lydia moving to steady her with a mother’s automatic grace. His house. His woods. His space that he’d kept empty and quiet for three years.
Now filled with life and noise and the possibility of something he’d thought was lost forever.
Ethan took a deep breath and walked back toward it.
He didn’t know what came next. Didn’t know what to do about the way his heart had raced when Lydia hugged him, or the guilt that came with not putting Sarah first this morning.
But Ethan thought maybe he wanted to find out.
Maybe it was okay to stop living in the past.
Maybe it was okay to start living again.
She’s happy where she is now.
Ethan climbed the porch steps and opened the door, stepping back into the warmth and noise and beautiful chaos of his house that was finally, after three years of silence, starting to feel like the home it had been intended to be.
And if his eyes were a little wet, if his hands shook slightly when he poured himself another cup of coffee, if Lydia looked at him with concern and he had to smile and shake his head to tell her he was okay …
Well.
Maybe he was.