Chapter 3The Girl in the Wardrobe

“Did you set the fire?”

I stared at him from my hospital cot, my voice cold and flat.

“No,” Hayden said, his denial swift and earnest. “The fire department investigated. It was old wiring.” He let out a dry, self-deprecating laugh. “Cora, you think I’m a monster.”

In this life, we’d only met a handful of times, yet he spoke to me with a disturbing familiarity.

“I just want to help you,” he said, his voice low. “If you agree to come home with me, I’ll cover all of Mrs. Davison’s medical bills.”

She had been badly burned trying to get us all out.

I let out a cold laugh. “Taking advantage of a tragedy. Does that make you a good person?”

He didn’t try to defend himself. He just said, “Cora, you don’t have to be my sister. You can just be a foster child. Living with us.”

He was persuasive, relentless in his compromise. But it only made me more suspicious. “Why are you so desperate to have me at your house?”

“My mother… she’s been missing my sister a lot lately. And you look so much like her,” Hayden said. “I thought bringing you home might comfort her.”

I was only half-convinced. His behavior was too strange, too intense. I pressed him. “Is that all?”

He hesitated for a fraction of a second before nodding. “That’s all.”

I didn’t want anything to do with him, but Mrs. Davison was lying in a hospital bed, her life hanging in the balance. I had no choice.

On the drive to the Shaw estate, Hayden kept trying to talk to me, but I remained silent, staring out the window. He must have sensed my hostility, because his tone softened, became almost pleading.

“The Shaws can give you a better life. It’s better than the group home, no matter how you look at it,” he said. “Cora, don’t be angry with me. I’m doing this for your own good.”

I’m doing this for your own good…

He’d said that in our last life, too. After hating me for more than a decade, his attitude had softened in my final days. But by then, the cancer was untreatable. My only companion was a small stray cat I’d taken in.

One day, on a whim, Hayden came to visit me at the villa. The first thing he did was have someone throw the cat out.

I’d asked him, my voice weak, “Why?”

He’d looked down at me, his expression cool. “I’m doing this for your own good.”

I knew then what it meant. It was never about my well-being. It was an excuse he used to satisfy his own selfish desires, his need for control. Or maybe it was just another way to torture me. He’d always been like that. Whatever I cherished, he destroyed.

…

As the car pulled up to the house, I saw Mrs. Shaw waiting at the front door. Hayden had called ahead. A room on the second floor had already been prepared.

“Cora, this will be your room,” she said, taking my hand with a cloying familiarity. “Do you like it?”

I looked down at our joined hands for a moment before pulling mine away. I was no longer the desperate, love-starved girl from my past life.

“Mrs. Shaw,” I said, my voice even. “This was your daughter’s room, wasn’t it?” I gestured to the perfectly preserved space. “You’ve kept all her things. You clearly treasure them.” I met her eyes. “If I stayed in here, I might accidentally break something. I wouldn’t want to cause you any pain.”

I finished, “I saw there’s a guest room downstairs. I’ll stay there.”

Mrs. Shaw looked at me, about to argue. “But…”

“Mom,” Hayden cut in. “If Cora wants to stay downstairs, just have the housekeeper prepare it.”

I glanced at him, the one who was supposedly speaking up for me. He had no idea. The real reason I refused to stay on the second floor was because his bedroom was right next door.

In our past life, before the engagement party, we’d had a harmonious relationship, or so I thought. I was a teenager with a crush. I remember Mrs. Shaw asking me, “Cora, what kind of boys do you like?”

I’d looked over at Hayden, flushed and sweaty from his morning run, and smiled. “Someone like my brother.”

That innocent, offhand remark later became evidence in the trial of my character. Proof that I had plotted to drug my own brother. Every time I tried to defend myself—“I didn’t drug you”—Hayden would grab me, his fingers digging into my neck. “You told my mother you liked me when you were sixteen,” he’d hiss. “You were obsessed. You drugged me to force my hand, and now you don’t have the guts to admit it?”