Chapter 1

The world snapped back into focus with a sickening lurch.

One moment I was pulling weeds from the tomato patch, the sun hot on my neck, the next I was standing in the exact same spot, but a cold dread washed over me. The air felt different, heavy with a memory that wasn't mine a second ago.

And then I saw him.

A man was limping up the long gravel driveway toward the farmhouse. He looked thin and worn out, his clothes were torn, and one of his arms was in a makeshift sling.

It was Mark Johnson. My husband. The man who had disappeared seven years ago.

The man who, in another life I now remembered with perfect, horrifying clarity, had destroyed us all.

My heart didn't leap with joy or relief. It turned to a cold, hard stone in my chest. Because I remembered. I remembered everything.

I remembered the last life. He had come back just like this, a pathetic, broken man spinning a tale of hardship and failure in Silicon Valley. We took him in. We believed him. My in-laws, his own parents, drained their retirement savings to help him. I sold the small jewelry my mother had left me.

We did it all out of love, out of pity, out of the foolish belief that he was still the man I had married.

He took every penny. He used it to pay off the debts he and his secret city wife had racked up from gambling. And when the money ran out, he tried to sell the farm out from under us. When his parents refused, he grew violent. He burned down the barn with all our livestock inside. In the end, he left us with nothing but ashes and debt, laughing as he drove away, leaving us to face the loan sharks he' d brought to our door.

We didn't survive it that time. None of us did.

Now, he was here again. The same limp. The same tattered clothes. The same practiced look of exhaustion and pain on his face. It was a performance, a carefully crafted lie designed to break our hearts and open our wallets.

He saw me and his face crumpled into a mask of relieved sorrow.

"Sarah," he rasped, his voice thick with fake emotion. "I finally made it home."

He stumbled the last few feet and reached for me with his good arm, expecting an embrace, expecting tears.

I remembered the fire. I remembered my mother-in-law's cries. I remembered the cold feeling of starving in the winter that followed. I would not let that happen again. Not this time.

This life would be different. I would make sure of it.

I took a small step back, my face a blank canvas. The movement was slight, but it stopped him cold. He looked at me, a flicker of confusion in his eyes.

"Mark," I said, my voice steady and calm, betraying none of the storm raging inside me. "You're back."