Chapter 1: The Return

In order to save my daughter, I tumbled from a cliff just outside the city. My injuries were nearly fatal, and when I woke up, I couldn’t remember my own name.

Everyone in Chicago believed I was gone for good.

Michael believed it too. The local news ran a tiny obituary, and our neighbors whispered condolences in the cereal aisle at Jewel-Osco, shaking their heads as they glanced at our darkened house.

A year after I was declared dead, he remarried.

His new wife, Rachel, looked and acted so much like me it was almost spooky. She wore her hair the way I used to, laughed quietly at the right moments, even favored the same pale blue cardigans. At PTA meetings, old friends would blink and look again, like they were seeing a ghost.

She and Michael treated each other with a polite distance, but even my kids relied on her. At Lincoln Elementary pick-up, Rachel was the one teachers called when Emily scraped her knee or Ethan forgot his Cubs lunchbox.

The day I came home, Michael stood in front of his tearful new wife, shielding her, and looked at me with the kind of cold you save for seeing a ghost at your kitchen table.

"Rachel married me with proper vows, Sarah. There’s no reason to give your place back to you."

Relief and pain tangled inside me. My shoulders sagged, my pulse slowing just enough to keep me upright.

After years of missing memories, I’d started over. New husband, new home in Austin. Still, seeing them here—my old family, my children—made the ache of old roots flare up all over again.