Chapter 1

My husband, Benedict Fairmont, was dying.

He clutched my hand, tears streaming down his face. "In another life, Olivia, I'll make it up to you for everything I've put you through."

My eyes burned. After forty years of marriage, he'd finally said it.

But his next words hit me like a freight train.

"The truth is, that day I went to the water to end it with her," he said. "We'd planned to go together. Then your sister showed up out of nowhere, fought like hell to drag me back to shore, and ruined everything."

He said it so casually, like he was talking about someone else's life.

My sister Cecilia gave her life saving him. I married him out of gratitude, devoted forty years to him.

And it was all one sick joke.

When I opened my eyes again, I was forty years in the past.

This time, I shoved my sister aside myself. "Celia, let him go. It's his choice."

*****

The sharp stink of antiseptic burned my nose.

Benedict's bony hand held mine, the skin paper-thin and dry, stretched tight over sharp knuckles.

Tears traced the deep lines in his face before disappearing into his gray hair.

"Olivia," he rasped, voice barely above a whisper, "I've let you down so bad in this life. In another life, I swear I'll make it right."

My heart seized. My eyes stung instantly.

Forty years.

Forty long years of polite distance, of living like polite roommates instead of husband and wife.

I'd honestly thought he'd take that careful courtesy to his grave.

He'd finally said the words I'd waited decades to hear.

I forced a smile that probably looked more like a grimace and tried to speak, but my throat closed up tight.

His cloudy eyes stared up at the ceiling, like he was looking straight through me at someone else.

"The thing is," he went on, calm as if he were talking about the weather, "that day at the water, I was trying to end it all with her. We had a pact. We were going together."

My blood turned to ice.

The steady beep of the heart monitor suddenly sounded deafening, each one hammering into my skull.

"What did you just say?" My voice came out rough, scraped raw.

He didn't even glance at me.

"Beatrice wasn't well. Her family hated the idea of us. So we decided to check out together," he said.

Beatrice Langford. That name should have stuck in my head from the start.

"It was your sister," he said, completely flat, "who showed up and fought tooth and nail to pull me out. She messed the whole thing up."

Messed it up?

My sister's desperate, heroic act was just an inconvenience to his grand romantic suicide with his true love.

I started shaking, a cold wave rushing from my toes to the top of my head.

"And my sister?" I could barely get the words out, each one tasting like blood. "She died saving your sorry ass!"

"I know," he said.

He finally turned his head and looked at me. The expression in his eyes was foreign, cold, almost cruel.

"That's why I married you. And hey, I've treated you decent, haven't I?" he said, his tone almost careless.

Decent.

That was his summary of our forty-year marriage.

That was his verdict on my sister's life.

My head roared. Memories exploded behind my eyes.

Every year on the anniversary of her death, he'd go alone to that stretch of beach.

I'd thought he was grieving, paying respects, carrying guilt.

It turned out he was mourning the woman he never got to die with.

We never had kids.

I'd begged him, tears streaming down my face. He'd just brushed me off, cool and distant, saying his health wasn't great and he didn't want any ties.

I'd thought the trauma of losing my sister had closed him off. Truth was, he didn't want any blood connection to the family of the woman who'd "ruined" his perfect exit.

I'd spent forty years waiting on him hand and foot out of gratitude.

His stomach acted up, so I learned every damn soothing recipe under the sun.

He slept light, so I trained myself not to so much as shift in bed without holding my breath.

I shrank myself into a ghost, tiptoeing around his pain, hoping one day he'd heal from losing the "love of his life."

Except the love of his life had never been my sister.

I'd been playing the devoted wife in a one-woman tragedy for four decades. A forty-year cosmic joke.

"In another life…" His voice faded to almost nothing, but a faint, peaceful smile tugged at his lips.