Chapter 1

I woke up with a gasp.

The cheap alarm clock showed 6:00 AM.

My heart hammered against my ribs.

It was the day. The day I found out about Kevin' s scholarship.

The memory hit me, cold and sharp.

My first life, a disaster.

Kevin, my son, his bright future stolen.

His scholarship, full tuition to the state community college, his only way out of this dead-end town.

Gone.

Given to Chad Smith, Brenda' s boy.

Brenda, my ex-husband Mike' s new woman.

Mike. Sergeant Mike Johnson. National Guard hero in this small Rust Belt town.

He used his pull, a word with a town council member on the scholarship committee.

I remembered confronting him at the Fourth of July parade.

The heat, the crowd, the smell of hot dogs.

Mike, so charming, Brenda clinging to his arm, looking like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.

They twisted it, made me look like the crazy, bitter ex-wife.

The town, they always loved Mike.

Kevin saw it all.

The shame, the injustice. It broke him.

He was already carrying so much, our poverty, his father walking out.

The scholarship was his last hope.

He fell into a dark place.

I begged Mike, "He's your son. He needs you."

Mike just shrugged. "He needs to man up. This is life."

Life.

Kevin couldn't take that life.

He died. Suicide.

My world ended.

Then the whispers started. "Unfit mother."

I lost my job at the diner.

Eviction notice on the door.

Rock bottom.

But now... now I was awake.

It was that same morning.

Weeks before Kevin... before everything went wrong.

I had a second chance.

My hands were shaking.

Not again. I wouldn't let it happen again.