Chapter 2: Regrets and Second Chances

2

I returned to the crowd.

Derek Foster’s face was tense, looking distinctly unhappy.

He was tall and handsome, with a bright future, and half the girls in Maple Heights had doodled his name in their notebooks at least once.

Everyone thought I wasn’t good enough for him.

Just because after his parents died, my folks pitied him for being so young and took him in almost like a foster son.

That’s how this engagement came about.

Since I was little, I loved following him around, calling, "Derek, Derek," over and over.

I remembered trailing behind him on our gravel driveway, clutching my sneakers in one hand, the knees of my jeans always streaked with dirt. Even now, the memory stung with the bittersweet ache of childhood hopes. I remembered the scrape of gravel under my sneakers and the way Derek never looked back.

[Poor main character, spent her whole life being strung along by this guy.]

[I heard the guy kept her on the hook while flirting with the side girl, and even left the side girl’s kid for her to raise.]

[Honestly, people, why do you watch these women-abusing plots? I’m out.]

...

What are they even talking about?

Am I the main character? Is Derek the guy?

Suddenly, my head throbbed with pain.

A strange yet familiar memory forced its way into my mind. I staggered a step, gripping the edge of the table, the world tilting as images crashed through me—weddings, funerals, empty rooms. The edges of the room blurred, the chatter fading to a distant buzz. For a second, I felt like I was tumbling backward, as if someone had reached into my chest and pulled out another lifetime’s worth of regret.

3

So, I was reborn.

I remembered my past life.

In my previous life, after my parents passed away, I had originally wanted to follow my relatives to Chicago to try my luck.

But because of my engagement to Derek, I chose to stay.

That stay lasted a lifetime.

After Derek’s wedding leave ended, he returned to his job at the county office.

From then on, we rarely saw each other.

He told me to take good care of his friend’s widow, Aubrey Lane, and even took in Aubrey’s son as an adopted child.

After Aubrey dug up the gold, she went to the city to start a business.

Later, Derek climbed higher and higher, but when it came time to allocate the family slot to join him, he gave it to Aubrey.

He said, "Don’t overthink it. Aubrey’s more suited to working outside than you, and besides, you still have a son to care for."

I treated the adopted son as my own, and for a few years, he was close to me.

But after Aubrey came back from the city, stylish and pretty, always bringing him all kinds of rare things,

he gradually began to resent me and grew closer to them:

"You’re just a small-town girl, you’re not my mom. My mom is pretty and rich. She’ll take me to live in a big house in the city."

Later, the adopted son was taken to the city for school.

And when I was seriously ill and wanted to go to the city for treatment,

the adopted son who answered my call said:

"Aunt Natalie, you’re not good enough for Uncle Derek. If it weren’t for you, he and my mom would’ve been together ages ago."

Aubrey also complained to me:

"Natalie, Derek always said he only saw you as a little sister. Just because your family helped him once, does that mean you should hold him back his whole life?"

Hold him back?

Who really held back whom for a lifetime?

Derek climbed higher and higher, Aubrey got rich.

Only me, left to guard a small plot in Maple Heights, raising an adopted son who wasn’t even my own.

I wasted my youth, missed my opportunities, muddled through my whole life. All those years, I kept waiting for someone to choose me. No one ever did.

Only me.

While I was out under the sun, my skin cracked from the heat, harvesting corn and picking beans, my hands bloodied from saving up for tuition and buying coats for the adopted son, Derek was off with Aubrey, under the pretense of working hard, living as a loving couple.

All the flowers and applause belonged to them; all the toil and hardship I had to swallow alone.

Why?

When I married Derek, I was only in my early twenties.

I also had a bright future, full of ideals and ambition.

But I was tied down by marriage and responsibility, raising another woman’s child like a nanny.

In the end, despised and abandoned, I died alone in this small town, full of regret.

So, who really held back whom?

The old farmhouse always smelled like last season’s apples and the mildew that crept in every spring. I’d sit on the porch swing, listening to crickets and wishing for a life bigger than this town. The smell of musty carpet, the slap of rain against single-pane windows, the weight of dreams I never got to chase. I remembered the way the porch light flickered at night, moths thumping against the bulb as I sat up late, listening for a car that never returned. All those years spent holding onto a hope that wasn’t mine.