Chapter 1

The world came back in a flash of phantom heat and the deafening roar of an explosion, a memory so real it made my skin prickle. In my first life, that was how it ended for me, blown to pieces by a bomb my own husband, Andrew, had set.

I blinked, the ghost of the explosion fading, replaced by the gritty reality of a derelict industrial lot on the edge of our dying Rust Belt town. The air smelled of rust and damp earth.

"Molly? Molly, don't move. Help me."

The voice, thin and trembling, belonged to my mother-in-law. She was my only family, the only reason I stayed married to her son. She stood frozen a few yards away, her face a mask of pale terror. Her foot was planted firmly on a rusty, pressure-activated pipe bomb.

My heart seized. It was happening again. Not the same bomb, not the same day, but the same terrible choice.

"Mom, stay calm," I said, my voice steadier than I felt. "Just don't lift your foot."

The local volunteer Fire Chief, a grizzled man named Hank who' d known my parents, was already there, his face grim. "We need Andrew," he said, his voice low and urgent. "He's the only EOD guy in a fifty-mile radius."

A bitter taste filled my mouth. Andrew. Of course. In my last life, I begged him to come. I called him over and over while he was out with his high school sweetheart, Sabrina. He' d laughed, accused me of trying to ruin his date, and hung up. He left me to die.

"He won't come," I said, the words flat and dead.

Hank looked at me, confused. "What are you talking about, Molly? This is his mother."

"He won't come for her, either," I stated, the knowledge a cold, hard stone in my gut. I had married Andrew out of a debt of gratitude. My parents had saved his mother from a flash flood years ago, dying in the process. It was a debt I thought I had to repay, a promise to look after the woman my parents gave their lives for. Andrew saw it as an obligation, a chain that kept him from the life he wanted with Sabrina.

"Let him go," I said to myself, a quiet vow. This time, I wouldn't beg. This time, the whole town would see him for what he was.

A couple of young EMT trainees, kids I knew from the neighborhood, looked horrified. "We can go get him," one of them, a boy named Leo, offered earnestly. "He's probably at the mall with... her."

Everyone in town knew about Andrew and Sabrina. They knew he spent his factory paycheck on her, buying her designer bags while his own mother scavenged for scrap metal to afford groceries. The humiliation was a constant companion.

"Go ahead," I said, my voice devoid of emotion. "Go find him."

I already knew what they would discover. I watched them speed off in their beat-up pickup truck, their youthful optimism a stark contrast to the cold certainty in my heart. They would come back angry and disillusioned, and that would be the first thread in the unraveling of Andrew Scott.