Chapter 1

Five years.

That' s how long I' d been Sarah Caldwell, wife of Ethan Caldwell.

Owner of Caldwell' s Home & Hardware.

Our life in suburban Ohio looked perfect from the outside.

It wasn' t.

Two years ago, I lost our first baby.

Ethan was driving, too fast on an icy road after a Christmas party.

He was angry about something small, something I can't even remember now.

The car spun, hit a tree.

I woke up in the hospital, empty.

He was sorry then, or said he was.

But something broke that day, not just in my body.

Then his father died last year.

Old Man Caldwell' s last words were about legacy.

About a grandson to carry the Caldwell name, to inherit the hardware empire.

Ethan changed after that.

The comfort he offered after the accident turned cold.

He started looking at me like I was a faulty machine.

One that couldn' t produce the one thing he needed.

An heir.

My job as a librarian, my quiet life, the books I loved, none of it mattered to him anymore.

Only the empty space in our nursery.

I still went to my grandmother' s grave sometimes.

She taught me to sew, left me her quilt.

It was intricate, handmade, a map of her love.

I' d clutch it at night, the only solid thing in my life.

Ethan didn' t understand the quilt.

He didn' t understand anything that wasn' t about business, about legacy.

The pressure mounted with every month I didn' t conceive.

His disappointment was a heavy blanket in our house.

He' d spend more time at the stores, less time with me.

His silences grew longer, his touch, when it came, felt like a business transaction.

A duty.

I was a means to an end.

And I was failing.