Reborn to Leave Her Behind novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: What She Remembers

"Yes," I said.

She closed her eyes.

"It was fast, and I couldn't breathe, and I couldn't feel my hands. Then I was on the floor, and the carpet was cold against my face." I kept my voice level. "I could hear you. You were standing in the door. You didn't call anyone."

"No," she said. "I didn't."

"I thought about my mother."

Erin made a sound in her throat and pressed her gloved hand against her mouth.

I let it hang between us in the snow.

I had planned to be kinder, and I found that I was not.

"Now answer mine," I said. "Why?"

She took her hand away from her face.

"You want the whole thing?"

"I said I'd hear it. Tell me from there."

"Okay." She straightened. "Okay. Here's the whole thing."

She did not look at the ground.

She looked straight at me, and I saw how much it cost her.

"In the first life, you told my mother about Briarwood. You remember. You ran next door in your socks."

"I remember."

"She screamed at me for three days. She took my phone. She called Fairmont and made them hold my place. She said I'd end up pouring coffee, and you stood in our kitchen and nodded." Her voice was very even. "I was eighteen, and I gave in. I told myself I was a person who chose her own life. I chose what everybody else had already chosen."

"You became a surgeon."

"I became my mother's surgeon." She almost smiled. "I hated every day of it. I was good at it. I got up at four and went to bed at ten and told myself the pain was proof I'd done the right thing."

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