Chapter 1

Ten years ago, my best friend Loretta illegally piloted a yacht and crashed it into a reef.

After the boat capsized, to save her own daughter, she stripped off with her own hands the only intact life vest on my five-year-old daughter, Scarlett.

Scarlett sank right in front of her, and I lost my ability to have children from my severe injuries.

Ten years later, I came home early to celebrate my mother's birthday, only to find Loretta's daughter living in Scarlett's room, wearing Scarlett's keepsake locket, and calling my mother "Grandma."

My husband was cutting her fifteenth birthday cake.

The girl took the cake and, as naturally as anything, called out to him, "Dad."

The door lock clicked.

Loretta, the woman who killed my daughter, came in carrying groceries and smiled at my mother.

"Mom, I'm home."

...

After Tammy called out "Dad," the living room went silent.

Percy's hand froze in midair with the cake knife. My mother recovered first and pulled Tammy closer to her side. "The child just says it out of habit. Don't read into it."

I looked at Percy. He didn't correct her.

After Scarlett died, Percy and I moved to Harbor City. Partly to treat my injuries, and partly because I simply couldn't bear to live in that house anymore.

My mother refused to leave, saying Scarlett had grown up here from the start and she couldn't bring herself to go.

Over the years Percy often said he'd come back to check on her for me, and I always felt I owed him for it.

Only now did I understand that he wasn't coming back just to see my mother.

"When did she start calling you Dad?"

Percy set down the knife and frowned. "Vera, today is Mom's birthday. Whatever this is, we'll talk about it at home."

"I asked you how long."

Tammy stood off to the side, her eyes suddenly going red.

My mother glared at me impatiently. "Why are you making that face at a child? She's had no one to look after her since she was five. I brought her back to stay a few days, and she got used to it. Percy came back often, and she was little and didn't know any better, so she called him that a few times and never changed it."

"A few days?" I turned to look at Scarlett's room.

The door was open, and the walls had long since been repainted.

The desk was piled with senior-year exam papers, a guitar stood beside the wardrobe, and the back of the door was marked with height lines starting from age seven.

The little sun at the very bottom was in my mother's handwriting.

Eight years.

She had grown up in Scarlett's room for eight years.

I remembered how, in the two years after Scarlett died, the moment I so much as mentioned packing away her things, my mother would clutch the photo albums and cry, saying no one was allowed to touch them. So it turned out those things weren't untouchable at all—it was just that later, someone needed the room.

Tammy reached up to take off the locket at her neck. "Aunt Vera, I'm sorry. I didn't know it belonged to big sister Scarlett—"

My mother pressed her hand down. "Why are you taking it off? Today is your birthday. Grandma gave it to you."

I looked straight at her. "That belongs to Scarlett."

"I know!" My mother flared up too. "Her things have been locked in that cabinet for ten years. Is she going to come back and wear it?"

The moment the words were out, she froze herself.

I didn't cry. I only felt a tightness in my chest. Percy came over to steady me, but I dodged his hand. "Have you gone to a single parent-teacher conference for her?"

He didn't answer.

"When she got sick, were you the one who took her to the hospital? Did you pay her tuition? Who's listed as the emergency contact at the school?"

Percy's face grew worse and worse. Finally he said, "It was me."

"And the line for father?"

Tammy's head dropped sharply.

There was no need to ask.

Just then the door lock clicked.

Loretta stood in the entryway with two bags of groceries, and her smile froze the instant she saw me.

But my mother had already gone over to take the bags from her hands. "Didn't I tell you not to buy anything? There's plenty to eat at home."

Loretta changed her shoes and, for a long moment, didn't dare look at me. At last she called out, low, "Mom."

My mother answered.

"When did she become your daughter?"

Loretta's eyes reddened first. "Three years ago. When your mother was in the hospital, I stayed with her the whole time. It was only afterward that she let me start calling her that."

Standing there, I suddenly understood: the woman who killed Scarlett had become my mother's daughter, and her daughter had become my husband's daughter.

And I was the last one to know.