Reborn to Leave Her Behind novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Day I Looked Away
Alec wakes on college application day after dying at his own reunion, watches Erin submit only to Briarwood, and refuses to tell her mother. Pauline forbids Erin from seeing him.
At our ten-year reunion, Rhett Stroud walked into the school gym with a woman on his arm, and my wife started crying in front of the whole class.
I watched Erin's face from across the room.
She did not look at me.
She looked at Rhett, and the tears ran down to her chin, and she let them fall.
I had known her since we were four and married her at twenty-five.
I had never once seen her cry like that for me.
I drove us home in silence.
At midnight she brought a glass of warm milk to the bedroom, the way my mother used to.
I drank half of it before I tasted the bitterness.
"Erin?"
She stood in the doorway with her arms crossed.
"That was supposed to be me on his arm," she said. "You took that life away from me. Finish your milk, Alec."
The glass slid out of my hand.
I reached for my phone, and my fingers would not close on it.
The floor was cold, and then it was nothing.
My cheek was pressed against a desk.
A glass of milk sat by my ear, still warm.
"Alec!" my mother called up the stairs. "Did you press submit yet? The deadline is tonight!"
My laptop was open to the Fairmont University portal.
My phone buzzed with a text from Gabe Hosmer: "SUBMITTED. Fairmont or bust, roomie."
I was eighteen.
I knew this day.
It was the day the applications went in, and in my first life I had spent it ruining Erin's.
I pushed the glass to the far edge of the desk.
My window slid up.
Erin climbed in over the sill with her laptop under her arm, the same way she had since we were twelve.
"Mom reads my screen every night," she said. "Can I use your Wi-Fi? Two minutes."
"Sure."
She dropped onto my bed with her red hair falling across her face and her feet on my pillow.
Then she reached over, picked up my milk, and took a sip, the way she had since we were nine.
My stomach turned over.
I took the glass out of her hand and set it on the shelf behind me.
"Rude," she said.
"Sorry. I'm saving it."
She typed fast.
Over her shoulder I saw the page.
Briarwood Technical College, Welding and Auto Systems.
There was no second tab.
In my first life I had seen this exact screen and run next door in my socks.
"Fairmont gave you a full scholarship," I said. "It's in your bag. You showed me."
"I know." She hit a key. "Rhett bombed his SAT. Briarwood takes anyone, so he's going. I'm going where he goes."
"Erin."
"Don't." She looked up at me. "Promise you won't tell my mom."
"I won't."
She did not look away.
She kept her eyes on my face a moment longer than the question needed.
"You always tell her," she said.
"Not this time."
She stared at me.
Then she turned back to the screen and pressed submit.
The page said her application had been received.
The next thing I felt was calm.
She was eighteen and it was her future, and I had no right to hold it.
So I looked away.
Erin shut the laptop and grinned at me, the gap in her teeth showing.
"I'll text you every day," she said.
Downstairs, the front door opened, and my mother's voice came up, bright and nervous.
"Pauline, he's right upstairs."
Mrs. Hartigan filled my doorway in her work cardigan with her car keys in her fist.
"Erin, you're not on your laptop at home," she said. "Why are you in here?"
"Studying," Erin said.
Her mother turned to me.
"Alec, is she applying anywhere but Fairmont?"
It was the same question she had asked in my first life, in the same doorway.
Back then I had answered it in one breath.
"Ask her," I said.
Mrs. Hartigan's face went still.
"Alec Reeves, in ten years you have never once kept something from me."
"I know."
"She wants to throw away a full ride. You're the only one she listens to. Tell me what she did."
"It's her life, Mrs. Hartigan. I'm not going to tell you."
Erin's mouth had come open.
Her mother looked at her, then at the closed laptop, then at me.
"Then you are not welcome in my house," she said, "and you will not see my daughter. Erin. Home. Now."
Erin followed her to the stairs.
At the door she turned around and looked at me, and she did not look angry.
She looked frightened, and I could not tell why.
Then she was gone, and the front door slammed so hard my window rattled.
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