Chapter 1

On our tenth wedding anniversary, a girl showed up claiming to be my future daughter.

"The reason Dad isn't home for your anniversary isn't a business trip. He's off celebrating their illegitimate son's tenth birthday with his first love!"

"He's a lowlife. You have to divorce him. If you don't, you'll die giving birth to me, and she'll hound me to death for the sake of that first love of his!"

I couldn't believe it. Rattled, I reached for my phone to call the police.

But she grabbed my hand and dragged me off to catch them in the act.

My husband stood there shielding his first love and their son, saying it like it was the most natural thing in the world.

"Since you already know, I won't hide it from you anymore."

"I spent the past nine anniversaries with you. From now on, it's her turn, and the boy's."

I fell apart. I made a scene at that birthday party, and then, in tears, I asked for a divorce.

The divorce wasn't pretty.

So my daughter and I could survive, I walked away with almost nothing.

But on the day I got my divorce papers and stepped out of the courthouse,

I saw Keith Morton, freshly remarried, arm around his first love, writing a check for his "daughter."

"Your acting was good. If it weren't for you, she'd never have walked away with nothing on her own."

"Keep it up a while longer. It'll be so much more fun when she finally learns the truth."

I wasn't angry. I only found it funny.

I was a woman in my thirties. How could I possibly believe in time travel?

But between going down with a rotting has-been under bankruptcy and debt, or standing alone and untouched, I knew exactly what to choose...

One:

The person calling herself my daughter "Sarah" dragged me to the front of a villa I didn't recognize.

She didn't take me inside.

Instead, through the glass, she pointed at Keith Morton, the husband who'd claimed he was away on business, and started explaining.

"The woman standing next to him is Athena Hancock, his first love. When he married you, he never actually broke up with her."

"To your face he's the perfect gentleman, but he's spent the whole time keeping you at home while he plays around outside."

"If you don't divorce, on the day you go into labor, Athena will lock you in the house and let you bleed to death. Once you're gone, she marries Keith Morton, nice and clean."

"She acts sweet to me, but the moment I turned eighteen she forced me to marry a doddering old man. I couldn't stand the humiliation, so I ran from home, and that's when I hit the car crash she'd set up!"

"And Keith Morton knew all along, and did nothing. Thank god, thank god I traveled back through time to today..."

"Now do you believe I'm Sarah?"

I nodded. I believed her.

An hour earlier.

I was up at the hilltop villa waiting for Keith Morton to come home so we could celebrate our tenth anniversary, and tell him the good news that I was pregnant. But instead of my husband, all I got was a text saying something had come up at the company and he had to leave on a trip.

Before I could even reply, a woman punched in the door code and appeared in front of me.

She threw her arms around me, crying, calling me Mom.

Through her tears she told me she was the daughter in my belly, that she'd come to save me.

Of course I didn't believe her, but there really was something of me in her face, so I held off on calling the police and told her to prove it. And the way she proved it was to make me see with my own eyes Keith Morton and Athena Hancock throwing a birthday party for their child...

The world spun. Without a second thought I tore my hand free of Sarah's and rushed into the villa.

"Keith Morton!"

"How could you do this to me!"