My daughter called herself compassionate until compassion required something from her. The day she tried to volunteer one of my kidneys to a dying neighbor, I finally understood the rule she had lived by all her life: everyone deserved sacrifice, forgiveness, and second chances, as long as I was the one paying for them.
Chapter 1
“Mom, Mr. Zane has done so much for us,” Sia said from the back seat of the taxi. “He helped me get into St. Catherine’s Academy. He bought my school supplies. He made me breakfast when you were too busy. You’re not really going to turn your back on him now, are you?”
I stared through the window at the morning traffic crawling through suburban Boston and tried to steady my breathing. Only minutes earlier, I had awakened with memories that should have been impossible. I remembered living this day before, remembered everything that followed it, and remembered dying because the daughter beside me had decided forgiving the unforgivable made her a better person.
The driver glanced at us in the mirror. Sia noticed immediately and leaned forward, because strangers were always her favorite jury. “Sir, don’t you think we should help people who’ve been kind to us?”
“Well,” he said cautiously, “if somebody really helped your family, I suppose returning the favor is decent.”
Sia smiled in triumph. “Exactly.”
In my first life, that was how she trapped me. She never told me the favor was donating a kidney to our neighbor, Walter Zane, a man with end-stage renal disease. She merely asked whether I would “help,” recorded my vague agreement, and took me to a disreputable private clinic where I was sedated before I understood what paperwork I had signed.
I woke with one kidney.
When I protested, Sia cried beautifully. “But, Mom, you said yes. How could I know you didn’t mean it?”
My husband Grant and his mother, Loretta, blamed me too. According to them, I had embarrassed Sia by making her look dishonest. Somehow the fact that an organ had been removed from my body became less important than protecting my daughter’s reputation as the kindest girl in town.
That had only been the beginning.
Years of my marriage had taught Sia that my discomfort was negotiable. Grant worked hard, so I should do every household chore. Loretta was elderly, so I should forgive her insults. Grant had female colleagues, so dinner dates and hotel conferences were innocent. If I objected, Sia would tilt her head and say, “Mom, why do you always assume the worst in people?”
Then Grant brought his mistress home.
Summer Reed was his administrative assistant, ten years younger than I was and pregnant. Grant announced that the child was a boy. Loretta practically danced with joy because after seventeen years of treating Sia like a disappointment, she was finally getting the grandson she believed the family deserved.
I told Summer to leave.
Sia stepped between us.
“Dad didn’t choose to fall in love,” she said. “Is true love really a crime?”
I could still remember staring at my daughter, waiting for the joke.
There wasn’t one.
Three days later, half the neighborhood believed I was unstable because Sia had told everyone her father was only trying to “follow his heart” while I was attacking innocent people out of jealousy.
Later, I protected Sia from a local man who had been harassing her. When he cornered her, I struck him with a brick and drove him away. Instead of supporting me, Sia publicly defended him.
“He likes me,” she said. “That doesn’t make him evil. Everybody makes mistakes.”
The man remembered the humiliation.
Months later he attacked me.
I came home bruised, bleeding, and terrified, but Sia stopped me from calling the police. She said he had been drinking. She said prison could destroy his future. She said everyone deserved another opportunity to become better.
Then my own daughter tied my wrists while I slept and arranged for me to be taken back to him so we could “make peace.”
I escaped.
Running blindly into the night, I reached the highway.
A tractor-trailer struck me.
My final memory was asphalt beneath my cheek and headlights moving through the darkness.
After my death, Sia forgave the driver publicly. She even used part of my insurance money to compensate him for the “emotional trauma” of hitting me. Everybody praised her extraordinary heart.
Then I opened my eyes in this taxi, alive again, years earlier, listening to her ask for my kidney.
Not this time.
I turned toward her.
“Since Mr. Zane has been so wonderful to you, why don’t you help him?”
Sia blinked.
“What?”
“You said he got you into school, bought your supplies, and fed you. Those are debts you owe, sweetheart. Not me.”
Her expression changed instantly.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because—because I’m young.”
“So?”
“I have my whole life ahead of me.”
I smiled.
“Interesting.”
She flushed. “If you don’t want to help, just say so. Don’t make this about me.”
“But it is about you. He’s your savior.”
The driver chuckled.
“The lady has a point.”
Sia whipped around toward him. “You don’t understand.”
Five minutes earlier, his opinion had been sacred. Now it was inconvenient.
I leaned forward.
“Driver, change of destination. Massachusetts General.”
Sia stiffened.
“Mom.”
“You want to help Mr. Zane. Let’s help him.”
At the hospital, I marched directly into Walter’s room, where two nurses were checking his chart.
Walter looked thin and gray, but his eyes brightened when he saw Sia.
I smiled at the staff.
“My daughter has wonderful news. She wants to be tested as a kidney donor.”
The room erupted in praise.
Walter began crying.
“Sia, I knew you were an angel.”
One nurse touched her shoulder. “That’s a generous offer, but organ donation is serious. You would need extensive testing and counseling.”
“Of course,” I said. “She understands. She’s been telling me all morning that helping Mr. Zane is only a small favor.”
Sia’s face went white.
“No.”
Everyone looked at her.
“I’m not donating anything.”
Walter’s smile vanished.
“Sia?”
“I said no!”
She backed toward the door.
I repeated her own favorite words softly.
“But everybody deserves help.”
Her panic turned to anger.
“You give him your kidney!”
“Why mine?”
“Because you’re my mother!”
That answer silenced the room.
Then Walter reached toward her.
“Sweetheart, after everything I’ve done for you—”
Sia recoiled as if he were contagious.
“You did those things because you felt guilty!”
His face froze.
Sia’s temper took over.
“Everybody knows why you live alone. You beat your wife until she died, and your daughter couldn’t live with what you did to your family. You only treat me nicely because I remind you of her!”
A nurse lowered her clipboard.
Walter looked shattered.
I stared at my daughter.
In my previous life, I had believed she defended Walter because she did not know his past.
Now I understood.
She had known everything.
She had simply expected me to overlook it because forgiving monsters made her look merciful.
Sia realized what she had revealed, but it was too late.
She ran.
And as I watched the self-proclaimed saint flee the hospital rather than surrender one piece of herself, I knew something far worse than hypocrisy had been hiding inside my daughter all along.
