Chapter 2

I stared at Ethan, but I saw the ghost of my past life. I remembered the blinding pain, the rush of blood, the doctor's hollow words, "I'm so sorry, Mrs. Miller." The empty ache in my womb that never went away. The weight of a tiny casket. I remembered it all with a clarity that was sharp and brutal.

After I "saved" Chloe, Mark had come to me with a story. He told me the girl's mother, a single mom named Lisa, was traumatized and unable to care for her child. He painted them as victims of the storm, homeless and helpless. He had appealed to my compassion, a quality he had always praised and secretly despised. "We have so much, Sarah. We can't just turn our backs on them."

So I had agreed. Lisa and Chloe moved into our guesthouse. Mark was so attentive to them, so "charitable." I thought he was just a good man. I was a fool. I had welcomed the architects of my misery into my home, let them live off my fortune while they slowly poisoned my life, watching my depression consume me with cold, calculating satisfaction.

Looking at the scene outside the window now, I didn't see a poor, stranded child. I saw a piece of bait. A pawn in a game so cruel it defied imagination. The little girl, Chloe, was clinging to the base of our garden's retaining wall as the waves crashed around her. My house was on a cliff, well above the surge, but the lower garden was already flooding. It was the perfect stage. Dangerous enough to look real, but positioned for me, and only me, to see and act.

"Mom! We have to do something!" Ethan's voice was shrill, insistent.

"No," I said. My voice was calm, devoid of any emotion. It felt foreign in my own mouth.

Ethan stared at me, his mouth falling open in disbelief. In my previous life, I would have already been kicking off my shoes, getting ready to run out into the storm. My refusal was a crack in his reality.

"What do you mean, no?" he demanded, his voice rising. "She's just a little kid! She'll die!"

"That is not our problem, Ethan," I said, turning away from the window and walking toward the kitchen. My heart was a block of ice in my chest. Every beat was a reminder of the life they had stolen from me. This time, I would not be the savior. I would not be the fool.

"But you always say we have to help people!" he cried, following me. His little face was crumpled in a mask of confusion and outrage. "You can't just let her die! That's mean!"

I stopped and looked down at him. His eyes, so much like Mark's, were filled with a strange intensity. It wasn't just the normal panic of a child. It was something else. An aggressive, demanding quality that seemed too old for his nine-year-old face. It was the urgency of someone who had been given a script and was terrified of forgetting his lines.

"Mom, please!" he begged, grabbing my hand. "We have to save her! We have to!"

The desperation in his voice was chilling. I felt a cold suspicion begin to form in my mind, a new layer of betrayal that I hadn't even considered. Was it possible? Was he in on it too?