All Chapters of Sign It Yourself: Chapter 1 - Chapter 9

The next morning, hard knocking woke me up.It woke my parents too.Caleb was on the doorstep, exactly as I'd expected."Morning, Warren. Colleen.""Caleb, this early?" My mother had her reservations about him, but the Grangers had lived three doors down for twenty years, so she was warm anyway. "You haven't eaten, have you? Perfect timing. Sit down and have something."The friendlier they were, the less he could hold his face together.He had no interest in breakfast. His entire mind was on the baby. "No, no, thank you, I already ate. I came to see Sabrina... to check on the baby."He said it looking straight past both of them at me."The baby?" My mother was genuinely lost now. "Caleb, what baby? Whose baby?"Caleb blinked, and his voice went tight. "The little boy I brought over yesterday! I left him with Sabrina!"I sat at the table peeling an egg, taking my time, and didn't look up.Caleb came around the table and grabbed for my arm. "Sabrina! Where is he?"He was roug

Sabrina Ellison. And in the line for the adopted child, filled in just as neatly: Owen Granger.Blood shot straight to the top of my skull and my hands and feet went cold.Then I remembered.A few weeks earlier I'd been registering for a licensing exam that required in-person identity verification. I'd had a conflict that day, and Caleb volunteered to go handle it for me and took my ID.I hadn't thought twice about it. I'd actually been touched that he was so thoughtful.He'd planned the whole thing. He used my trust and filed adoption paperwork behind my back, and I never knew."Owen Granger..." Looking at that name brought thirty years of swallowed humiliation up my throat so fast I could barely stay on my feet.That name was a cage.A cage built to lock me back in with the boy who'd watched me die and the two people who'd made him.Caleb saw how white I'd gone and actually took my hand to comfort me.I threw it off. He didn't even get angry.Caleb's face smoothed out. "Sa

He looked at me and worked to keep his voice level. "Sabrina, he can't wait."His eyes were pleading. "I'll figure out the money. He's a person. He landed in our world alive and breathing. Doesn't that mean something?"I'll sell my mother's place back home as fast as I can. That'll cover it."But the only thing that matters right now is getting him treated. Could you... could you front it?"I swear to you, the second that house sells you get every dollar back. Every dollar."He sounded like he meant it.That handsome face went humble and harmless.That's the exact expression that used to get me to give, in my first life, until there was nothing left of me to take."Caleb, I understand how you feel."Something lit in his eyes. He thought I was bending.Watching that light come on was almost funny.I shook my head, still perfectly steady. "I meant I admire your generosity. But did you think it through? What if that house doesn't sell for a year? What if that money never comes?

Lydia's voice went shrill. "Colleen, how can you take Sabrina's word for it? I have never seen that baby before today. I was home all day yesterday. Nobody left a baby at my door!"Sabrina, why are you lying? You didn't want him, so you put him out in the cold, all night, in that weather! You're that heartless, and now you want to pin it on me?"My mother looked at her with undisguised contempt. "Lydia, I have watched you grow up. All those little calculations of yours, I let them go. Girls that age get up to things. It never occurred to me you'd be able to lie to my face at twenty-four and take that tone about it."As it happens, when Sabrina went out with that baby yesterday, I didn't like the feel of it. So I had our driver follow her. In case anything went wrong."He was worried about being spotted, so he stayed down the street and recorded from the car."He got more than I bargained for."My mother took out her phone and played it, and it was perfectly clear.There I was, s