Chapter 2

"What did you say?"

Vaughn's brow furrowed. He seemed genuinely uncertain he'd heard right.

Hazel reached for Elowen's hand. "Sweetheart, are you upset about the room? Come sit down, let's talk—"

Elowen pulled her hand back, her voice even. "No. Abigail is your biological daughter. Now that she's home, this house is rightfully hers. It wouldn't be right for me to stay."

A beat of silence settled over the room.

Abigail stared at her.

In the last life, Elowen had been on the verge of tears when they asked her to give up her room — desperately asking Hazel not to cast her aside. The next morning, she'd gotten up before everyone and made a full breakfast for the whole family, hands trembling, smile held in place. That version of Elowen would have done anything to stay.

So why is she talking about leaving?

Unease moved through Abigail quickly. She pressed it down just as fast. Elowen was still the same soft, easy mark she'd always been. All it would take was a little performance.

Her eyes filled on cue. Her voice fractured just the right amount.

"Elowen, please don't go. I don't have to take your room — I've gotten by with less; I can sleep anywhere. If you leave because of me, I'll never forgive myself—"

The tears came. She tucked herself into Hazel's side, trembling slightly.

Hazel's arms wrapped around her immediately.

"Don't cry, Abigail. Mom won't let you suffer anymore." She looked up at Elowen, and the warmth was gone from her voice.

"Elowen. Look at what you're doing. Abigail just came home. She only wants to get along with you — and you're already talking about walking out?"

"Stop making a scene," Vaughn added. "Abigail is your sister. You need to learn to live together."

Elowen stood and listened.

In her last life, she'd been blamed in exactly this way.

The moment Abigail cried, Elowen became the problem. She used to think she just wasn't trying hard enough — so she tried harder, bent further, gave more, until she no longer recognized who she was. And none of it had ever been enough.

She looked at Vaughn and Hazel's faces and saw them clearly, maybe for the first time.

The way they were already leaning toward Abigail. How effortlessly they'd rearranged the room around her. How little space was left for Elowen in any version of this story.

How had she spent three years not seeing this?

"Abigail came back to find her biological parents," Elowen said. Her voice stayed level.

"Why is it fine when she does it, but when I want to do the same thing, I'm throwing a tantrum?"

Hazel's mouth opened. Nothing came out.

Vaughn's expression tightened. He exhaled slowly, the way people do when they're rearranging what they were going to say.

"Do you have any idea what your birth family is actually like? Your mother is disabled. She's been bedridden for years. Your father has a history of drug use — we don't know if he's clean. And your brother was convicted of assault last year. He's barely been out a month."

"You've had every comfort imaginable here," Hazel said, slipping back into the gentler register she used when she wanted to seem caring.

"We're not saying you can't look for them. We're saying — can you actually handle that kind of life?"

Abigail arranged her face into something soft and worried.

"Elowen, don't be reckless. Mom and Dad raised you. If you just walk out, it'll break their hearts. And that family — do you really think you could adjust?"

Elowen looked at each of them in turn.

Vaughn and Hazel weren't worried about her. They were worried about how it would look — the Perez name, their standing in certain rooms, the story that would circulate if a daughter they'd raised for eighteen years simply walked out the door. The concern on their faces was a costume.

And Abigail's eyes, still faintly red from crying, held something she wasn't quite skilled enough to hide.

Satisfaction.

"Whatever their situation is," Elowen said quietly, "they're still my parents. I'm not going to turn my back on them because they're poor."

"Elowen —"

"Let me ask you something."

Elowen looked directly at Abigail.

"If you had found out your parents had nothing — no money, no house, no name — would you still have come back?"

Abigail's face shifted.

"Of course I would have. I'm not that kind of person. No matter what, they're still—" She stumbled, started again, stumbled again. The words tangled.

Vaughn and Hazel stepped in to steady her, and then turned back to Elowen with reproach.

Elowen let one corner of her mouth lift.

"I just asked a simple question. I didn't expect her to get so rattled. Sounds like a guilty conscience."

Abigail's face went red. She had nothing to say. She just stared.

After a long pause, Vaughn spoke.

"Think carefully. Once you walk out, don't come back expecting things to be the same."

"I won't regret it."

Could anything out there really be worse than dying on a filthy alley floor? The Perez family had given her eighteen years of comfort. She'd paid for it with three years of humiliation and, in the end, her life. As far as she was concerned, the debt was more than cleared.

Vaughn made a phone call. When he came back, he was holding a bank card.

"Five hundred thousand. A final gesture from your mother and me." He held it out.

"Once you walk out that door, you have no more ties to this family."

Elowen took the card. She understood exactly what it was — not a gift, not an apology. A severance agreement. A way to make eighteen years disappear cleanly, with no loose ends.

That suited her perfectly.

She bowed — low and deliberate — to both of them.

"Thank you for taking care of me all these years, Mr. Perez. Mrs. Perez."

She meant it. However it had ended, eighteen years of a roof and a table and a name were real. This bow closed the account between her and the Perez family. They owed each other nothing now.

Vaughn and Hazel both went still. Hazel's mouth moved slightly. She didn't say anything.

Elowen turned and went upstairs.

Her room didn't take long to pack. A few changes of clothes, some books, a handful of things that were actually hers. One suitcase, not even full. She stood beside it for a moment and looked around — the south-facing windows, the desk she'd sat at since she was seven, the small cactus on the nightstand that had died sometime in middle school and never been thrown away.

Eighteen years. That's all it came to.

The door swung open.

"Elowen." Abigail stepped in, eyes red again, tears already moving.

She crossed the room quickly and grabbed Elowen's sleeve.

"Are you angry with me? I know this is because of me. If I hadn't come back, you wouldn't have to go. I never wanted to take anything from you. I just wanted to be with my own parents—"

Her voice broke. Her shoulders shook. Every detail was exactly right.

Elowen watched her and felt nothing in particular.

Abigail had cried like this in the last life too. Every tear calculated. Every tremor placed. And every time, Elowen had ended up being the wrong one.

She gently pulled her sleeve free.

"Stop crying. You should be happy." Her voice was flat, unhurried.

"Once I'm gone, this house is yours. No one to compete with. No one in your way."

"That's not what I—"

"But it's what I mean."

Elowen picked up her suitcase and walked past her without looking back.

Behind her, she heard Abigail go still.

Then, quietly, the soft performance faded. Elowen didn't need to turn around to know what was left on Abigail's face. She had seen it before — that cold, calculating stillness that only appeared when something hadn't gone according to plan.

This wasn't how it was supposed to go.

In the last life, Elowen had held on. Had fought to stay. Had given Abigail three years of slow, careful destruction to work with.

But this Elowen had walked away without being pushed.

Abigail stood in the empty doorway and stared at the space where she'd been.

"It didn't matter," she told herself.

She already knew what was waiting out there — a broken-down farm, a bedridden mother, a father who couldn't be trusted, a brother who'd barely gotten out of prison. Elowen had spent her whole life being taken care of. That world would finish what Abigail hadn't needed to start.

She smoothed her expression and went downstairs.