Chapter 1

The Shaw and Lane families arranged a marriage, and then my sister, Emily Shaw, left a suicide note and vanished.

In the note she wrote that she knew I had been quietly in love with Charles Lane for ten years, and she was stepping aside so the two of us could be together.

Charles hated me for driving her away. He never showed up on our wedding day, made me say my vows to an empty chair, and locked me in the basement that night to humiliate me.

To him I was a murderer, and he took that hatred out on me with a barbed whip and a cage barely three feet across.

Three years into the marriage, my feelings finally got through to him. He believed me, and we came together like any husband and wife, desperate for each other in bed.

Our anniversary was coming up, and to make up for what we had lost, Charles agreed to hold the wedding all over again.

Then, on the day of my dress fitting, Emily came back from the dead.

*****

I pulled the fitting room curtain back, desperate to hear what Charles thought of the dress. I had designed it and sewn it myself for our wedding.

He wasn't out there. The saleswoman waved me along, and I walked out with my chest full of it, thinking he had gone to set up a surprise.

Instead, I saw Charles, the most self-contained man I knew, out on the street with a woman held so tight against him that he seemed to be pressing her into his own bones.

And the woman was Emily Shaw, my sister, who had been dead for years.

Charles held her face in both hands like something valuable he had gotten back, and then he kissed her under the tree with the whole street watching.

I couldn't take it in. My hands were shaking as I got my phone out of my bag and hit his number.

The rain started right then. Charles picked up while he shielded her and walked. "Anna, something came up at work, and I have to go. Head home once you're done with the dress."

The engine started with the call still open, and when I spoke, there was nothing back, because he had thrown the phone onto the back seat.

I heard him break down as he demanded answers from Emily. "Emily, where have you been all these years? Do you know I thought you were dead? If hating Anna hadn't held me here, I would have gone after you."

Emily didn't answer him. She only cried. "Charles, I missed you so much."

Charles pushed his voice down. "Emily, I've missed you until it made me crazy."

It stopped me where I stood. Charles loved Emily enough to follow her out of the world, and he was still carrying her. Did he remember at all that he was my husband?

There was a fine, close pain going through my chest. He said Emily's name the way people say a name they love, and he had never once said mine like that.

The saleswoman had to tell me before I noticed that my phone had gone out of my hand and hit the floor while I was somewhere else. It was broken.

The rain came down harder, and the studio belonged to a friend and sat out past the edge of town, so there was no cab to be had.

I dragged myself home, soaked to the bone, and before long, I was burning up with a fever.

Half under, I dreamed about the Charles I used to know, with his face twisted, looking at me.

He took hold of my hair all at once and forced my head up to meet his eyes. "You're the one who should be dead. What gave you the right to push her into it?"

The barbed whip came down over and over and opened my skin, and whenever the cuts started to close, he poured salt water into them.

The pain went through every part of me, and I crawled on the floor and begged him.

He shouted down at me. "This isn't a thousandth of what you did to her. Anna, you're going to pay every bit of it!"

I came awake with my heart going. Charles stood by the bed with anger held back behind his eyes, and remembering what he used to be put a shake through me.

"Why is your face that red? I told you not to sleep buried under the covers. Do you not understand plain words?"

He hadn't noticed I was sick. The truth was that I slept under the blanket so he wouldn't see me weak, because in the years he didn't love me, I cried under there where he couldn't see.

His tone put an ache in me. I tugged at his cuff and tried to soften him. "Charles, if you're worried about me, could you say it kindly?"

He pulled his arm out of my hand, and the anger came up higher.

I knew he had a thing about germs and wouldn't let me touch him unless I had disinfected first, and I still couldn't stop myself from trying.

"I called you plenty of times. Why didn't you pick up?"

I held the broken phone up for him, and everything from that day came back to me, and I was about to ask him about it when he spoke first.

"Emily is back. She wants the chicken soup your grandma used to make, and she only taught you. Get up and make it."