Chapter 43

• The car ride was quiet. Howard kept his eyes fixed on the road, hands gripping the wheel, lost in his own thoughts. Charlotte sat beside him, equally silent, her gaze drifting out the window into the blur of midnight lights.
• A faint glimmer drew her eyes down to her hand, where the diamond on her new ring caught and scattered the passing headlights. For a moment, she couldn’t look away. Every word Mr. Wendell had spoken echoed in her mind, turning over and over. The confusion since she returned to this time was finally gone; now she understood why she had been sent back—perhaps to unlock those choices, to seize the paths she had ignored before.
• But another thought crept in, darker and heavier: death. If, in the end, death was the one certainty—unalterable, no matter what she did—then what was the point of change? Was this quest for revenge and transformation truly necessary? Or was she merely grasping at illusions of control?