Chapter 1

I glanced at him and started to shut the door. "Call child services."

Caleb Granger panicked. "You can't be serious."

I looked at how righteous he managed to make his face and laughed. "Why not? Is that really more outrageous than handing a newborn to an unmarried woman who's never raised anything in her life?"

Caleb's brow drew tight, and the second he saw I wasn't bending, he softened first. "Sabrina, he's a person. Look how small he is. Somebody threw him away. We're getting married soon anyway. What's so wrong with starting a little early?"

He said it with all the sincerity I'd already heard once, in a life he doesn't remember living.

Now it turned my stomach. Back then I'd believed every word.

That was the year my parents wanted me overseas for postgraduate training. For Caleb and for that baby, I tore up my ticket, took the child, and married him without so much as a ceremony.

And then the long, slow donation of myself began.

At the end of it, after I died, they inherited what my family had built, and he spent the rest of his life comfortable with his lover and the son the two of them had made together.

"He is a person, and he is pitiful, and that's exactly why he should go where the professionals are," I said. "They have trained staff. I've never taken care of a baby in my life. How would I even do it?"

Caleb went still.

It was probably the first time I'd ever contradicted him.

We'd grown up three doors apart. I'd spent my whole life giving in to him, going soft the moment he asked, forgetting there was a me in the arrangement at all.

"But..." Then something occurred to him and he relaxed. "My mom can help you."

I laughed at that, privately. Help. Diane did help, in my first life. For about four days.

Not long after, she had a stroke, or said she did, and took to her bed paralyzed. I raised a baby with one hand and waited on her with the other.

It wasn't until she died and I finally read through her records that I found out there had never been any paralysis.

She'd just wanted to lie there and be served.

I took a slow breath. "Caleb, I think I need to reconsider what we're doing.

"You know my parents have always wanted me to go."

Then I moved to shut the door.

Caleb jammed his foot against it, frantic, still talking.

That was when I heard footsteps coming fast down the hall.

A young man jogged up. "Caleb! Come on, they need you at the office."

Trevor glanced at me, then at the bundle in Caleb's arms, and something complicated crossed his face.

I saw it, and I laughed at it privately.

Here we go.

Caleb had brought reinforcements. He was waiting for me to go soft and say it myself. Leave him with me. Go on, deal with work.

Then the baby would be inside my parents' house and Caleb would be free.

This time I didn't say anything. I just looked at him with both hands behind my back, and there was nothing ambiguous about it.

Trevor kept telling him to hurry.

Caleb made up his mind all at once. He swung toward me, begging with his whole face, and pushed the bundle into my arms. "Sabrina, please! You've got the softest heart of anyone I know. Let me finish this and I'll come straight back and we'll take care of him together!"

The weight hit my chest without warning, warm, smelling of milk.

A second later he was gone down the hall.

The feel of it was familiar and unbearable at the same time, and my whole body shook.

The pieces came up all at once.

Carrying him to the ER at two in the morning when his fever spiked. Crying the first time he called me Mom.

And Caleb pulling the medication out of my hand while our son said, flatly, "Mom, quit dragging it out. Go peacefully. You held Dad and her back their whole lives. Don't take anything from my kid too."

I'd let opportunity after opportunity go so I could stay home with him.

It's not an exaggeration to say that boy grew up on my blood.

And what he grew into stood by and watched me die, resenting the cost.

I looked at the empty hallway. Just me and the baby, who had started up again, thin and wavering, the two of us alone in the doorway.

Behind me my parents were asking what was going on. I looked down at him, set my teeth, and made up my mind.