His handwriting.

Kayla's handwriting.

And the notary's office seal.

Bruce's pupils constricted.

The color drained from Kayla's face.

Her mouth opened, then closed, like someone had a hand clamped around her throat.

"Bruce," I said, "she married you for your kidney, not your money."

Luke tried to bolt while I was talking. I drove my knee into him and pinned him back into the chair.

I set the knife again, this time flat against the carotid artery in his throat.

"Go on. Move."

Luke went rigid.

Then he started to cry. A grown man, sobbing like his mother had just died.

Kayla finally broke. She lunged and grabbed my arm. "Belinda, let him go. This has nothing to do with him. It was all my idea."

I stared at her. "So you're the one who tricked my brother."

"Yes. Yes, I tricked him."

The tears spilled over. "He didn't know anything. Let him go. Take it out on me."

"Take it out on you?" I gave a short laugh. "You think you're worth it?"

Bruce stepped closer and wrapped his hand around the wrist that held the knife.

He didn't pull. He just cradled it, gently, the way he used to guide my hand when he taught me to write as a kid.

"Belinda. Listen to your brother. Put the knife down."

His voice was still that gentle.

I thought of the last life, of the last thing he said on the operating table. Not that it hurt. Just my name.

Belinda. Don't blame her.

I moved the knife off Luke's throat, but I didn't lower it.

I turned to face my brother. "You know she tricked you, and you're still protecting her?"

He was quiet for a few seconds. Then he said, "That's my business."

"Your business?"

I laughed. "Your business is getting a kidney conned out of you, then dying by her hand?"

Kayla's head jerked up, her face streaked with tears, panic in her eyes. She hadn't known I knew this much.

"How could you—" she whispered.

"How could I know?"

I walked over and tapped her cheek with the flat of the blade. "Kayla, the things you did, God knows them. And so do I."

Luke saw his chance and sprang out of the chair for the door.

I didn't chase him. I just flicked the knife after him.

It buried itself in the doorframe beside his leg, humming as it shook.

Luke crumpled to the floor, a dark stain spreading across his crotch.

Kayla shrieked and threw herself over him, cradling his head, shielding him with her body.

She looked back at me, the tears in her eyes turning to hate. "Belinda, you're insane."

"I'm insane?"

I crouched down, level with her eyes. "You tricked my brother into signing over a kidney to save this man. You dosed him with immunosuppressants so he'd die on the table. You tell me which one of us is insane."

Bruce stood a few steps away, not moving.

He was taking it in. Taking in the fact that the woman he loved had wanted him dead.

Kayla clung to Luke, shaking all over.

She looked at my brother, her lips trembling, working a few times before she managed to speak. What finally came out was, "Bruce, I'm sorry."

What good is sorry.

Last life, you said sorry, and my brother said it was fine.

This life it's your turn to say it, and I won't take it.

"Kayla." I stood and looked down at her. "I'll give you two choices. One: take your kept man and get out of this city, and never show your face in front of my brother again. Two: I hand this agreement to the police and have you charged with fraud and aggravated assault. Pick."

She held Luke as the tears fell, one after another, onto his face.

Luke was too terrified to speak now, his face ghost-white, the stain still wet.

"I'll take the first one," she said.

"Good."

I pulled out a document and threw it on the floor. "Sign this, and you two can get out."

Kayla picked it up and read it. A written pledge, laying out everything that had happened—their two signatures at the bottom would stand as evidence.

The attached clause: she owed my brother a sum of money, the exact amount she'd swindled out of our family, to be repaid in full within three years.

She looked at the figure, her lips trembling. "I don't have that kind of money..."

"That's your problem," I said. "Sell the house, sell the car, go find that rich father of yours. How you come up with it is your business. I'm just here to collect."

She bit down on her lip until it bled.

In the end she signed anyway, and Luke signed too, his hand shaking like a leaf.

"Now." I pointed at the door. "Out."

Kayla helped Luke to his feet. His legs were still trembling under him.

They reached the door, and Kayla suddenly turned back to look at my brother.

"Bruce, I'm sorry." She said it again.

He didn't answer. He watched her back, and something behind his eyes broke, but he didn't call her back.

The door closed.

Only the two of us were left in the room, and the papers scattered across the floor.

The reception was still going downstairs, glasses clinking, guests trading toasts, none of them aware of what had just happened upstairs.

My brother walked to the window and stood with his back to me.

His shoulders were shaking, but no sound came out.

I crossed to him and wrapped my arms around him from behind, pressing my face into his back.

He'd gotten thin. He'd been this thin in my last life too, thin enough that the hospital gown hung off him.

"Bruce," I said. "Don't be sad."

He turned around. His eyes were red, but he hadn't cried.

He reached out and smoothed a hand over my hair. His palm was warm.

"Belle's all grown up," he said.

My nose stung, and I nearly lost it.

In my last life I'd held him and cried like this too, the night before he stopped breathing, beside the bed in the ICU.

He'd been hooked up to tubes, the backs of his hands all bruised, his fever so high his mind was slipping, and still he'd smiled at me and said, Don't cry, Belle, your brother's fine.

How could he have been fine. His kidney was inside someone else's body. His life was clenched in someone else's hand.

"Bruce, let's go home," I said.

"Okay." He nodded. "Home."

We didn't go back to the marital home, back to the house he and Kayla had decorated together.

We went back to the old house, the place where we grew up. The magnolia tree in the yard was the same as ever, a little taller than in my last life, its leaves rustling when the wind moved through it.

My brother stood under the tree for a long time.

I went inside to pour him a glass of water, and when I came back out I saw him crouched by the roots, fingers digging into the dirt.

I came closer and saw him pull out a tin box, its surface spotted with rust.

"What is that?"

He didn't say anything. He opened the box.

Inside were the letters I'd written in my last life, letters to my sixteen-year-old self, an entire diary filled with them.

The last page read: Don't let your brother marry Kayla.

I'd never seen this diary again after I buried it.

I'd buried it here, buried it for a whole lifetime.

My brother turned to that page. His hands were shaking.

"Belle..." His voice had gone hoarse.

I crouched down and looked into his eyes.

Those eyes were clear and clean, none of the murkiness of being used, none of the hollow emptiness of dying on an operating table.

"Bruce," I said. "This time I'm protecting you."

He pulled me in and held me tight.

Magnolia leaves drifted down and settled on our shoulders. He didn't brush them off, and I didn't move.

In the distance the firecrackers went off. The reception was breaking up.

The guests never knew the groom wasn't there. They drank the wedding toasts, ate the candied almonds, said all their congratulations.

My brother would never marry a second time in this life.

He would live. He would live to be very, very old.

The spring he never reached last time, I would give him this time.

It rained hard the day Kayla and Luke left. I stood on the balcony and watched their car pull out of the complex, Kayla in the passenger seat, Luke driving.

In the side mirror, her face blurred like a watercolor left out in the rain.

She glanced back once. I couldn't tell if she was looking at our building or at my brother.

I didn't let her see me.

The phone rang. It was my brother.

He said he was working late at the office, and asked what I wanted for dinner.

"Whatever you want," I said. "I'll make it."

He paused, then laughed. "Anything you make even edible?"

"Edible or not, you're eating it."

"Fine," he said. "Then I'll come home early."

I hung up and went back to the kitchen to wash the vegetables.

The faucet hissed, and I thought about how, at this exact hour last time, I'd been crying in a hospital corridor.

This time, I was washing vegetables for my brother.

That was good.

The knife was the same knife. I rinsed it clean and slid it back into the block.

I wouldn't use it that way again.

At least never again against anyone's throat.

The doorbell rang three times.

Through the peephole I saw Kayla standing outside, her hair soaked, her face wet with what could have been rain or tears.

She was holding a cake box, the pink ribbon coming apart in the downpour.

I opened the door.

"Belinda, I—" Her voice shook. "I want to see your brother."

"He's not here."

"I know he's here." She looked past me into the apartment. "His car's downstairs."

I stood in the doorway and didn't let her in.

She was drenched through, the dress plastered to her body. She'd lost a lot of weight; her cheekbones jutted out now.

"What do you want?"

Kayla lifted the cake, her fingers trembling. "It's his birthday today. I made it myself."

"He doesn't want it."

"Belinda, I know I was wrong."

Her eyes went red, her voice dropping low. "I've spent these last months regretting it every single day. I can't sleep. All I see is his face. He was so good to me, and I—"

"You almost got him killed."

Her tears spilled over and hit the cake box.

"I know. I know I owe him everything. But give me one chance. Let me say I'm sorry to his face, just once, and then I'll go."

My brother's voice came from behind me. "Belle, who is it?"

I turned. He was standing at the foot of the stairs, a book in his hand, in his house clothes and slippers.

The second he saw Kayla, the book slipped from his hand to the floor. He left it there.

She saw him, and the tears came down like a thread snapping loose.

"Bruce—"

She took a step forward. I put my arm out across the doorframe and stopped her.

"Say it from there."

She bit her lip, looking at him, her mouth trembling several times before any sound came out. "I'm sorry. Bruce, I'm so sorry. I'm not asking you to forgive me. I just want you to know I really do regret it. Every night I have nightmares. I dream of you lying in that hospital bed, dream of you calling my name—"

He bent down, picked up the book, brushed off the cover. His voice was perfectly calm. "Are you finished?"

Kayla froze.

"If you're finished, then go." He turned and started up the stairs.

He stopped. He didn't look back.

"Kayla, you nearly cost me my life."