Chapter 2

The seven years without him had been hard. Incredibly hard.

After Mark left for Silicon Valley with promises of a tech fortune, the money he sent trickled and then stopped completely. His calls became less frequent, then they ceased. We were left alone on this farm: me, his aging parents, and our newborn son, Ethan.

The first winter was the worst. The furnace broke, and we couldn't afford a proper repair. We huddled together in the living room, blankets piled high, our breath fogging in the air. I took on extra work, mending clothes for people in town and selling jams and preserves at the local market. Mr. Johnson, despite his bad back, went back to doing handyman jobs for our neighbors. Mrs. Johnson tended the garden with a fierce determination, canning every last vegetable to get us through.

We sacrificed. I sold my car and learned to fix the old farm truck myself. We ate what we grew and raised. Every dollar was counted, every expense debated. There were no new clothes, no movies, no small luxuries. Ethan' s early years were filled with patched-up overalls and toys I carved for him from wood scraps.

Slowly, painfully, we clawed our way back. We paid off the farm' s debts. We fixed the furnace. We even managed to save a little, a tiny nest egg hidden away in a coffee can. The farm, which had been struggling, was now stable. It was ours, bought and paid for with our own sweat and tears. It was a life built on hardship, but it was a good life, a quiet one. We had each other.

That' s what I remembered from this life.

But now, the memories of the last life bled into the present, painting our hard-won peace with the colors of a nightmare.

In that other life, his return was the beginning of the end. We had welcomed him with open arms, our hearts breaking for the story he told. He claimed his startup had failed, that he'd been cheated by partners, that he' d been injured in a construction accident and spent months recovering, too ashamed to call home.

It was all a lie.

The truth, which we learned too late, was that he never went to Silicon Valley to build a business. He went to the city and married another woman, Chloe. He lived a life of parties and expensive dinners while we were here freezing and starving. He only came back when Chloe's online gambling addiction spiraled out of control, leaving them with a mountain of debt to ruthless loan sharks.

His plan was simple and cruel: exploit his "poor, country family," sell our assets, pay his city debts, and disappear again.

The final memory from that life was the most vivid. It was the day the loan sharks came to collect. Mark was long gone. They didn't care that we had no money. They didn't care that we were victims too. They took what they wanted. Mr. Johnson tried to stop them, and they beat him so badly he never walked again. The stress caused Mrs. Johnson to have a fatal heart attack. I was left alone with a young Ethan, homeless and hunted. We didn't last the winter.

Now, seeing Mark standing in my yard, the weight of both lifetimes pressed down on me. The past was no longer just a memory, it was a warning. A promise of what would happen if I let my guard down, if I allowed myself to feel a single ounce of pity for the man who had orchestrated our ruin not once, but twice.

The ghost of that desperate, freezing woman from my past life stood beside me, her voice a whisper in my soul.

He will do it again.

I would not let him.