Chapter 2

Three years ago, the first time Jill's illness sent me stumbling into broken glass, he threw himself in front of me exactly like this.

That was the moment I let myself believe I had a chance.

Now the same man, the same motion, left my foolish devotion nowhere to hide.

I dried Seraphina's hands and passed her to the caregiver.

In the living room, Seraphina sat cupping a mug of hot water, telling how she'd fallen into a lifeboat and been carried off by a foreign ship.

When she woke her memory was a wreck, all her documents gone, and only half a year ago did she remember her own name.

Rex stared at her, knuckles white.

I didn't interrupt. I went up to my room and changed out of the white dress she liked.

Twenty-seven dresses hung in the closet. I took none of them.

Only a small suitcase.

On my way down, Rex finally noticed me.

"Where are you going?"

I set the contract on the coffee table.

"The three years were up yesterday."

Seraphina looked up at me, her expression hard to read.

Rex's brows pressed down.

"Mom's rejecting Seraphina right now. Stay one more week and help her through the transition."

So he was keeping me back to let the real Seraphina slide smoothly into my place.

And it still hurt.

My palms went numb, and yet my face stayed frighteningly calm.

"Mr. Delgado, the contract is over."

"It can be renewed."

"I won't renew."

He hadn't expected me to refuse. He planted himself in front of the door, his voice dropping low.

"Gwendolen, don't pick a fight over this now. Mom's illness isn't a game."

I looked at him.

In three years I'd sat with Seraphina through seventeen acute episodes.

She'd bitten me, and in her clear moments she'd sewn buttons back onto my clothes.

I knew she feared the dark, knew her medication left her mouth dry, knew she kept the thing that mattered most to her in the old music box on her nightstand.

Rex, though, thought I was using a sick woman to force him to bend.

"I'll send the handover records to the doctor."

I stepped around him.

My hand had just touched the doorknob when Seraphina let out a shrill scream upstairs.

Rex spun and rushed up, and I stopped too.

Seraphina stood at the top of the stairs, her face white.

"She thinks I'm someone from the fire."

Jill was huddled in the corner, crying over and over not to let it burn.

When I came close, she instantly threw her arms around my waist and clung.

"Gwendolen, save Seraphina."

Everyone froze.

For the first time in an episode, Jill had called me by my right name.

She had recognized Seraphina.

Rex stood rigid where he was.

I patted Jill's back and only came out once she'd fallen asleep.

Seraphina was leaning against the wall.

"She's always known you weren't me, hasn't she?"

"She has her lucid moments."

"Then does Rex know?"

I didn't answer.

He didn't know.

Because in her clear moments Jill had written three letters, all delivered by her doctor to Rex's office, begging him to stop the stand-in therapy.

Rex never opened a single one.

Those letters ranked behind Seraphina, right alongside the meals I cooked, the lights I left on late into the night, the calls I made when I was burning with fever.

Still, I stayed.

Not for Rex.

Jill had only just grasped reality; switching people suddenly would make her worse.

I promised the doctor three final desensitization sessions.

Before the third, the power went out at the care center.

The backup supply was slow to kick in.

When Rex got the call from the caregiver, I was helping Jill sort through old photos.

There was no caregiver's voice on the line, just a man, his tone grim.

"If you want your mother to live, bring Gwendolen to the old South Building."

"Only her. Seraphina isn't worth anything."

Rex's face changed in an instant.