Chapter 3

I woke with a horn screaming inside my skull.

My hands searched for pavement, but my palms met the smooth edge of a wooden table. My shoes rested on cool kitchen tile. There were no sirens, no headlights, no blue folder scattered in the street. Only the sharp smell of lemon cleaner and the hum of a refrigerator.

"It's only temporary," Daniel said.

I lifted my head.

He sat across from me, close enough to touch. But his hair was thick at the temples, his wedding band was unscratched, and the lines beside his mouth had vanished. He looked twenty years younger.

"Katie?" Daniel leaned forward. "Are you feeling sick again?"

My chair scraped backward. The kitchen around him was wrong in ways I knew by heart: the old table, the curtains I had replaced years ago, the design-firm magnet on the refrigerator.

Above it hung a paper calendar.

June 2006.

My gaze dropped to the table. A two-page authorization agreement waited beside a silver pen. At the bottom was an empty signature line.

At fifty, I had found my name written beneath an agreement I had never seen. Now the space was blank, and Daniel was waiting for me to fill it.

This was where it had begun.

"What is this?" I asked.

Daniel tapped the agreement.

"The authorization we discussed. Once you sign, I can move your inheritance into the business account without dragging you to the bank every time we need to pay a vendor."

He slid the pen toward me. The signature line was blank. My lungs finally released the breath trapped inside them.

"I'm not signing it."

Daniel's smile remained, but his eyes changed.

"You haven't even read it."

"I'm not quitting my design firm either."

"We can't make payroll without your help."

"You're celebrating a major contract tonight."

"A contract doesn't put money in the account today." His voice stayed patient.

"This is only a temporary cash problem."

Daniel touched my hand.

"I hate asking you for this," he said.

"But we're a family. Sometimes one person has to put the family first."

The words pressed against every weakness he knew: my fear of being selfish, disloyal, difficult. I pulled my hand free.

"Your company is your responsibility. My job and my inheritance are mine."

His expression tightened.

"So you're abandoning me when I need you most?"

I looked toward the hall. My mother's jewelry box sat on the console table. Daniel had already suggested selling her emerald ring if the inheritance was not enough. The same ring I had seen on Lauren's hand.

"No," I said.

"I'm refusing to disappear for you."

I picked up the authorization and tore it down the middle. The sound was small. The relief was enormous.

I tore it again and dropped the pieces on the table. Daniel stared at them.

"You're going to regret making decisions while you're this emotional."

The familiar chill came, but this time I recognized what he was doing. He was not describing me. He was teaching me to doubt myself. I stood before my knees could weaken and walked into the downstairs bathroom. A white plastic stick lay beside the sink.

Two pink lines crossed its window. For a moment, both my lives seemed to stop. I could leave Daniel. But I could no longer pretend leaving him was the only choice that mattered.

I placed one hand over my flat stomach.

"Emma," I whispered.