The second time I heard a seamstress warn me about the loose carpet on the bridal salon stairs, I knew I had already died once. I was standing in front of three mirrors in a white silk gown, exactly where I had stood three years earlier, and my left ankle—an ankle that should have carried surgical scars—was whole. Then my phone lit up with a message from my fiancé, and I knew the rest of the day before it happened.

Chapter 2

Andrew was waiting outside Rachel’s building the next morning in yesterday’s shirt and a wool coat he had forgotten to button. His eyes went first to my walking boot, then to my face. “You got hurt,” he said. “Why didn’t you call me?”

That question told me I had made the right decision. He wasn’t asking whether I was frightened, whether I had slept, or whether I needed anything. He was offended that I had removed him from the role of fiancé before he had agreed to surrender it. When he insisted he would have come, I asked, “Even if Claire needed you?” and watched surprise flash across his face because in this life he had never told me where he had been.

“She had a panic attack,” he said slowly. “How did you know?”

I didn’t answer. I told him I had moved out, the refunds would be divided fairly, and I would send a list of the belongings I wanted. Andrew stared at me as if the woman who had organized his life for years had been replaced overnight. Then he offered what he believed was a sacrifice: “I’ll cut back on Claire.”

“Cut back?”

“Grace, I’m trying to meet you halfway.”

Even with the wedding gone, he was bargaining over how much of another woman’s dependence he should be permitted to keep. I looked at the man I had once loved enough to limp toward an altar and realized I no longer wanted a better offer. “Find somebody stronger than me,” I said. “Somebody who needs even less.”

The empty week before my canceled wedding should have felt humiliating. Instead, it looked like blank space on a calendar I had spent years filling for everyone else. My boss, Marisol Vega, called with a catastrophe: Halcyon Hotels had moved a major national summit forward, the lead planner was in the hospital, and two hundred executives and reporters were already traveling to Manhattan. In my first life, I had turned down that exact opportunity because Andrew and I were leaving for Italy.

This time I said yes.

The project was glorious chaos—venue problems, sponsor disputes, accessibility concerns, missing vendors, duplicated registrations. It reminded me who I had been before being useful to Andrew became my second occupation. During a planning call I argued with Nathan Hayes, Halcyon’s outside counsel, over moving the press room beside a service corridor. He challenged my proposal, I challenged his contract interpretation, and twenty minutes later we found a solution neither of us had entered the meeting with.

I liked him before I noticed he was handsome because he listened to the thing I actually said. He never translated disagreement into “You’re emotional,” and he never explained why somebody else’s problems mattered more than mine. When I arrived in New York wearing my boot, he pointed out the elevators without commenting on the injury. Later, when we encountered a short stairway with a loose temporary railing, he said simply, “There’s a level route through the kitchen if you’d rather take it.”

He didn’t tell me I was tough enough for the stairs. He didn’t grab me as if I were helpless. He gave me a choice and accepted my answer.

The summit succeeded, and Halcyon offered my firm its national account with me as executive lead. Marisol hugged me so hard I nearly lost my balance. Then I looked across the hotel lobby and saw Andrew standing under a chandelier, watching Nathan congratulate me.

“You wouldn’t answer,” Andrew said when he reached me, “so I came.”

“That isn’t romantic.”

“I didn’t say it was.” His voice cracked. “We were supposed to get married tomorrow.”

The words hurt more than I expected. In my first life, tomorrow had been the day I swallowed painkillers, hid a medical boot beneath silk, and smiled while everyone admired my determination. Andrew had stood comfortably at the end of the aisle while I proved my love by reaching him injured. Now I understood that I had mistaken his willingness to receive my sacrifice for devotion.

“I talked to Claire,” he said. “I’m setting boundaries.”

“What boundaries?”

He hesitated.

That was answer enough.

“I love you,” he whispered.

“I believe you.” The admission startled him, but it was true. Love had never been the lie. “You love me in a way that depends on me surviving without you. I don’t want to live like that anymore.”

The next day, while the ballroom in Chicago was being used for someone else’s charity luncheon, I sat in Manhattan accepting congratulations on my promotion. Andrew texted me from our old wedding venue, saying he didn’t know why he had gone there. I looked at his message, felt grief rise like an old bruise, and put the phone away.

The life I had lost was finally starting to look smaller than the one opening in front of me.