Chapter 1

20:30, September 21, 2023

I stood looking through the front window of the community bar. Just watching the pink-haired bartender as she cleaned. Just like the last time I was here, and yet 45 years ago she didn’t have a care in the world. “Will she remember me in this reality? Was she the same woman, or was this a different version of her? If she doesn’t remember, if she isn’t the same version of the bartender, I’ll sound crazy.”

“Get it together Harrison. If you sound crazy, she won’t know who you are. You can tell her you’re a writer working on a story plot and ask her opinion.” With that, I reached for the door handle just as I saw trouble headed this way. My first time through, I’d already been inside drinking away the sorrow of finding my wife in bed with another man. This time I hadn’t even made it into the bar. This was just one more thing I could change; one more decision I had to make. Did I let things progress or did I act and maybe change this situation as well?

One thing I knew for certain, I wouldn’t drink any glowing beverage in this bar tonight. I would have a Samuel Adams and straight from the bottle, Thank you, magic bartender. With a sigh, I decided. I would try a different tactic with the strung-out junkie who had tried to rob the bar my first time through here. In the other reality, I’d been at the bar when he drew his Glock and ordered the bartender to give him all the money in the register. I distracted him long enough to pull my Navy-issued Kbar and sever the nerves and tendons in his wrist, causing him to drop the weapon. But I’d been a medically retired special forces operative in that time. This time I wasn’t. I was a billionaire investor and author.

As the druggie reached the door, I grabbed him and pushed him into the alley beside the building. Once there, I struck him with a knockout blow against the back of his neck. Then, using zip-ties, I secured both his hands and feet. I reached into his coat pocket and removed the nine-millimeter pistol and pocketed it. I would return later and release him after I did what I’d come here to do. Thank the pink-haired woman for giving me a chance to change my life. To go down, for lack of a better term, the road less traveled.

Once inside, I seated myself at the bar. I thought I should start just like I had in the other reality when the young woman smiled and asked me what I was having. “Where’s Mac? I’ve never known him to not be here.”

She smiled and shook her head. “Is this necessary, Harrison Parker? You have been here before, even if you have made the changes you wanted to make back then. For example, the drug addict you’ve disabled before he threatened me this time.”

Well, that answered that question for me, didn’t it? This wasn’t a parallel universe double of the pretty little bartender. This was the one that had asked me what I would do differently if I could go back. What date would I go back to and start making the changes?

I could still remember what I’d told her. It had taken me a minute to sort through all the different decisions I’d made in my life. Besides being born to Robert and Rosland Parker. When had my life started down the dark path I’d found myself on this date? After sorting through all the different decisions I’d made in my life, I declared, “August 25, 1983,” without hesitation.”

She looked into my eyes as she asked. “What happened that day that made you think it was a good day to change?”

I remember thinking that it was the first day that I made the ultimate wrong decision. It was the first day I acted like a coward and ran away from trouble instead of standing up for what was right. It was the day I’d let evil win the first time. If I could, I would go back and make the opposite decision. I’d stop the evil that started that day. I’d save Amaryllis Snodgrass from the rape that caused her to kill herself.

Even if it cost me everything. Because knowing that I’d left her to her attackers had always been my deepest, darkest, secret failure. It was the first time I’d taken the easy road, not the right road.