Chapter 1

The noise of the engagement party buzzed around me, a sick echo from a life I' d already lived and lost.

I was Ava, back in 2002, the cheap champagne tickling my nose, the same awful dress clinging to my skin.

My head throbbed, not from alcohol, but from the rush of memories.

My first life.

Marrying Mike, the town' s charming screw-up.

Years spent pulling him up, turning our dead-end family farm into a success, an organic oasis in our dying Rust Belt town.

Then Chloe, my stepsister, her eyes always filled with a lazy envy, plunging a knife into my back.

Murdered by her, because she couldn't stand my happiness.

Now, I was back.

Chloe stood across the room, radiant, her arm linked with David' s.

David, the hardworking plant foreman, Chloe's husband in that first, disastrous life for her.

He' d been crippled in a plant accident, a hero who saved the company millions but lost his future.

Chloe, unable to be a caregiver, had an affair, got beaten by the manager's wife, divorced David, and then destroyed me.

And me?

My arm was linked with Mike' s. My first husband.

The man I had painstakingly molded into a partner.

The air crackled. Chloe' s eyes met mine, and a flicker of something cold and knowing passed between us.

She knew. She was back too.

Suddenly, Chloe let out a dramatic wail, pulling away from David.

"No! I can't! I can't marry David!"

All eyes turned to her. Sharon, my stepmother, rushed to her side.

"Chloe, darling, what's wrong?"

Chloe pointed a trembling finger, not at David, but at Mike. My Mike.

"I want to marry Mike!" she declared, her voice ringing with false tears. "He's the one for me! I've made a terrible mistake!"

Mike looked baffled, a goofy grin plastered on his face, clearly flattered by the sudden attention.

Sharon' s eyes, sharp and calculating, darted between Chloe and me.

She knew Chloe. Vain, lazy, always looking for the easy way.

Chloe must think Mike, and the future successful farm I built with him, was her shortcut to the good life she' d squandered before.

Sharon put on a show of maternal concern for Chloe, then turned to me, her voice dripping with false sweetness.

"Ava, dear, you understand, don't you? Chloe is so distressed."

She guided me aside.

"Perhaps this is for the best, Ava. David is a good man, a foreman. Stable. He's a much better catch than Mike, really. You'd be better off."

Her eyes gleamed. She thought she was giving Chloe the winning ticket and fobbing me off with the dud.

She didn't know David was the good man, the one whose life Chloe had ruined.

She didn't know I knew exactly what Chloe was trying to steal.

And she didn't know I was going to make her pay for it.