Chapter 1 · The Second Page

“Sign it, Evelyn.”

Adrian Vale smiled as if he had just offered me his hand instead of a document that once signed my death warrant.

The private dining room of the Astoria Club went quiet. A fork stopped against porcelain. Someone’s champagne flute hovered near red lipstick. Twenty-four guests watched from beneath the gold ceiling, waiting for the poor girl from Brooklyn to prove she was grateful enough to marry into the Vale family.

The prenup sat between us on a silver tray.

Beside it lay the same antique fountain pen from my last life. White-gold body. Black pearl cap. Fine nib.

My fingers remembered the weight of it.

Last time, I cried before I signed.

Adrian had wiped my tears with his thumb. He had leaned close and whispered, “No one gets to hurt you after tonight. You’re mine to protect.”

I had believed him because once, years before, he had driven across the city at midnight when my father cut his hand on a broken frame. Adrian had stood in the emergency room with coffee in one hand and gauze in the other, telling my father, “She worries better when she has something to fix.”

That was the Adrian I had loved.

The man who remembered how I took my tea. The man who stepped between me and a donor’s wife when she called me “charity in a dress.” The man who made control feel like safety until the door locked from the outside.

Three days after I signed, my bank accounts froze.

A week later, a debt collector read out the name of a medical trust I had never heard of.

By the end of the month, Margaret Vale walked out of hospice in pearls, Adrian’s sister Livia appeared at brunch with a face no surgeon could have rebuilt, and I was coughing blood into a paper cup while Adrian told a nurse, “She has always been fragile.”

I died before Christmas.

Now Adrian was smiling again.

“Darling?” he said. “Everyone is waiting.”

His mother sat at the head of the table in a wheelchair, thin hands folded over a cashmere blanket. Margaret Vale looked breakable from a distance. Up close, her eyes made people lower their voices.

Livia stood behind her, half her face hidden beneath a silk veil. She had worn the same veil in my last life, right until the morning after I signed.

Across the room, Nora Whitcomb stared at the pen.

My best friend of fifteen years had stopped pretending she was happy for me.

I reached for the contract.

Adrian’s shoulders eased.

Margaret’s fingers loosened on the blanket.

I turned the first page.

The lawyer beside Adrian cleared his throat. “Miss Hart, the signature page is at the end.”

“I know.”

I turned another page.

Adrian’s smile held, but the skin beside his left eye jumped once.

The second page faced me in clean black type.

At the bottom, my full name was already printed.

EVELYN ROSE HART.

Below it was a date.

DECEMBER 19.

My breath stopped.

That date had not happened yet.

The last thing I remembered from my first life was a hospital roof in winter wind. My hands were covered in cracked skin. My phone had one unread message from Adrian.

Stop embarrassing my family.

The date on the phone had been December 19.

“Evelyn,” Adrian said softly.

I did not look up.

Under my name was another line.

HELEN MARROW.

PRESUMED DEAD, 2003.

I knew debt. I knew illness. I knew Margaret’s recovery and Livia’s restored face. I knew Adrian would choose his family over my life.

I did not know Helen Marrow.

“Why is there a dead woman on my prenup?” I asked.

The lawyer reached for the page. “Miss Hart, that is a clerical attachment.”

I pulled it back.

“A dead woman is a clerical attachment?”

Adrian laughed half a second too late. “Evelyn restores old paintings. She sees ghosts in every stain.”

“Then explain the date beside my name.”

“What date?”

I turned the page toward him.

For the first time all night, Adrian did not move.

Nora leaned forward. “What does it say?”

“Nora,” Adrian said.

One word. Too sharp.

Nora blinked at him. Then at me. A small, ugly satisfaction crossed her face.

Margaret lifted her glass with both hands. “Evelyn, dear. These old family forms are full of strange language. You mustn’t humiliate Adrian over paperwork.”

“Paperwork killed me once,” I said before I could stop myself.

Adrian’s hand closed around mine under the table.

Hard.

“Sweetheart,” he murmured, low enough for only me to hear, “you are making yourself look unwell.”

Last life, those words had made me apologize.

Tonight, I smiled.

“Then let Nora read it.”

His grip tightened.

Nora’s eyes lit.

“She studied nonprofit law for her father’s foundation,” I said. “She can tell me whether dead women and future dates are standard.”

Nora rose before anyone invited her.

“Nora,” Adrian said again.

This time she ignored him.

She came around the table in her champagne-colored dress, the one she had sworn was “too plain” for an engagement dinner. Under the chandelier, it looked almost bridal.

I placed the contract on the tray and slid it toward her.

The silver pen rolled, tapped the rim, and stopped against Nora’s hand.

Something passed over Margaret’s face.

Not fear.

Recognition.

Nora picked up the page.

“Well?” I asked.

She swallowed. “It says your name.”

“And?”

Her gaze flicked to Adrian.

I leaned closer. “Read the next line.”

Nora’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.

Livia moved from behind Margaret’s chair. “This is ridiculous. Give it here.”

“No,” I said.

Every face turned to me.

I touched the black pearl cap of the pen.

“Nora,” I said, “if this is just paperwork, sign as witness.”

Adrian stood so fast his chair struck the wall.

Margaret’s glass trembled in her hand.

Nora looked at Adrian, then at me, then back at the pen. Fifteen years of being second choice burned in her eyes.

“What are you afraid of, Evelyn?” she asked.

I pushed the pen toward her.

“That you might finally get what you wanted.”