Chapter 1

Back in the eighties, the day Barret Gilbert got into college, he tore up the engagement contract our two families had drawn up, right in front of the whole village.

And just a few hours earlier, my parents had gone into town to buy meat to celebrate for him, and their truck rolled into a ravine. Bodies still warm in the ground.

Yet there he stood, holding the hand of the city girl from the youth-placement office, and to make sure she didn't get the wrong idea, he said with a cold, blank face:

"I always thought of you as a little sister. It was only because my family was poor when I was young that I ate a bit of your family's rice."

"But you kept using that debt to force me to marry you. Now that I'm a college student, I'll pay all that money back."

In my past life, I carried his child a thousand miles to the city to find him, and he shoved me down a flight of steps to please his new woman.

I watched the blood spread out beneath me and died in that back alley with my unborn child, two lives gone at once.

In the haze, I thought I saw my mother speaking to me. "Baby girl, a man like that isn't worth it."

When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the moment he broke the engagement. I didn't wail and thrash the way I had before. I calmly slapped years of receipts, every dollar of my family's money he'd spent, across his face.

"Pay it all back and get out. Don't foul the road my parents have to walk into their next life."

...

"Gayle Fox, do you really have to make such an ugly scene right now?"

Barret frowned, staring at the receipts scattered across the ground, exhaustion in his voice.

"I told you, I'll pay the money back. Using your parents' deaths to pressure me. Does that make you feel good?"

Without thinking, he tucked Cora Pruitt behind him, as if terrified I might so much as brush the hem of her clothes.

That one protective movement made my eyes ache with a sharp, physical pain.

In my past life, when the village flooded, he shielded Cora exactly like this and left me to fight for my life in the water.

Saving him left a scar on my leg, over a dozen centimeters long, and afterward he told me it was disgusting when I wore a skirt.

Now here he stood in the new cloth shoes I'd stayed up three nights to make, stepping back in revulsion from the blood seeping out beneath my parents' coffins.

"That's right, Marlin. Barret getting into college is a happy thing. If you keep pushing like this, you'll make everyone laugh at us."

Cora spoke gently, softly, but something smug flickered at the bottom of her eyes.

She wore the trendiest city blouse, crisp synthetic cotton, and a pair of gleaming little leather shoes.

And me, in coarse cloth washed pale, my hands rough with calluses from years in the fields.

In my past life, Barret took the last of my family's food ration into town for exactly one reason: to buy Cora that blouse.

He'd said back then, "Cora's a city girl. She can't be made to suffer out in the countryside."

But he forgot that to scrape together his tuition, I'd been eating thin foraged-greens gruel for half a month straight.

"Laugh at us?" I let out a cold laugh and pointed at the receipts on the ground.

"You owe a debt, you pay it back. That's the way of the world. Barret, you ate off my family, you wore what my family gave you, and now you want to walk away like none of it happened?"

"Three thousand two hundred dollars. One cent short today, and you can forget about college!"

The color drained from Barret's face.

In these times, three thousand two hundred dollars was a fortune, no question about it.

"Gayle, you're insane! Where would I get that kind of money?"

"That's your problem." I looked at him without any expression at all.

"Didn't you say I was using that debt to force your hand? Pay it back, and we're even."

Barret stared straight at me, as if searching my face for some sign I was only sulking.

"Are you telling yourself this is how you'll get my attention?"

He softened his tone, and there was a lofty, condescending charity in it.

"Gayle, stop this. Be good and take the receipts back. When I graduate and get assigned a job, I'll bring you to the city and give you a good life."

How funny. He'd said the same thing in my past life.

And how did that turn out? He brought me to the city only to make me Cora's free housemaid.

When Cora was pregnant, he forced me to give blood. When Cora's labor went wrong and the doctors asked whether to save the mother or the child, he wouldn't even choose. He only chose Cora.

Looking at that face he thought was so full of feeling, I felt nothing but sick.

"Barret, drop that disgusting act of yours."

I bent down, picked up a bloodstained rock, and hurled it hard at his feet.

"My parents' bodies aren't even cold. If you don't sign the IOU today, I'll go to the county and report you for fraud!"

"You wouldn't dare!" Barret finally lost his composure.

"Watch me." My gaze cut like a knife.

Seeing this, Cora gave Barret's sleeve a light tug.

"Barret, since Marlin needs money so badly, let my father front it for now."

She turned to me, charity in her voice.

"But Marlin, a person can't be too greedy. This money buys out your engagement. From now on, please stop pestering Barret."

I ignored her sweet-faced little speech and slapped the paper and pen straight against Barret's chest.

"Sign it. Fingerprint it."