Chapter 4The Girl in the Wardrobe

Perhaps it was being back in this house, but that night, my dreams were filled with memories of the life before.

In my final days, my oncologist had suggested, “You shouldn’t be alone all the time. Call your family, your friends. Have them visit.”

“I don’t have any family,” I had told her.

As for friends… my best friend used to be Hayden’s fiancée, Scarlett Jensen. She returned to the country five years into my marriage with Hayden. He picked her up from the airport himself and threw a lavish ‘welcome home’ party for her.

Someone deliberately recorded a video at that party and sent it to me. It showed the two of them in a dark corner, locked in a passionate kiss. It was only a few seconds long, but I watched it on a loop all night.

That was the night I made a choice. I gave up on our second child, and I asked Hayden for a divorce.

He asked me, “On what grounds?”

I showed him the video. “Hayden, I know you were forced to marry me. But Scarlett is back now, and it looks like she’s forgiven you. Let’s divorce. We can go our separate ways.”

I had asked for a divorce many times before, and he had always refused. I thought, with Scarlett’s return, he would finally agree.

But Hayden just tore up the papers I’d prepared and deleted the video from my phone.

…

“Cora? Cora?”

I woke with a gasp, my hand lashing out, connecting with a sharp crack against Hayden’s cheek.

He looked at me, a boy’s face, his eyes wide with something that looked like hurt. “I heard you crying from the hall,” he said softly. “I just came in to check on you.”

He turned to leave, then paused at the door. “You should get up. We’re going to be late for school.”

Just like last time, the Shaws had enrolled me in Hayden’s high school.

As I followed him into the classroom, someone called out, “Hey, Hayden, who’s that?”

He introduced me. “This is Cora. She’s staying with my family for now.”

A flicker of memory. In our past life, before everything went wrong, he always introduced me with pride. “This is my sister, Cora Shaw.”

I looked at Hayden, standing just a foot away from me, and a strange realization dawned. He wasn’t the same as the boy I remembered from my first life. But he wasn’t the cruel, vengeful man he became, either. He was… something else.

My heart hammered against my ribs. A terrifying thought began to form.

“Hayden.”

“Hayden.”

Another voice called his name at the exact same moment as mine.

He glanced at me, then looked past me, towards the classroom door. I turned to follow his gaze.

It was Scarlett Jensen.

“Hayden, wait for me after school. I need to talk to you,” she said, her eyes fixed on him. Only then did she seem to notice me standing beside him. Her expression soured instantly.

She sized me up, a quick, dismissive scan from head to toe. “So you’re the girl staying at the Shaws’?”

She was my best friend in my past life. I knew her tells. And right now, the hostility rolling off her was unmistakable. This was completely different. Back then, when Scarlett learned I was Hayden’s sister, she had looped her arm through mine, called me Cora, and welcomed me into her inner circle.

Now, she looked at me the way she did the very last time I saw her. It had been an ugly confrontation. I had asked her, “The security footage shows only you and I went into Hayden’s room that night. I didn’t drug him. So it was you, wasn’t it?” I couldn't understand it. She loved him so much. Why would she ruin their own engagement party?

“Her name is Cora,” Hayden answered for me.

Scarlett forced a tight smile, then said nothing more.

Throughout the morning classes, I could feel her eyes on my back. As much as it unsettled me, I forced myself to ignore her, to focus on the words in the textbook in front of me.