I was Silas Thorne's wife for two lifetimes.
The first time, I stepped in front of a knife meant for him and died on a wet Connecticut road in November.
The second time, I took the fall for him, did seven years in a federal women's prison in Danbury, and on the morning I was released he had me committed to a private Berkshires retreat called Hartwell Manor.
The third time, I woke up at his birthday dinner.
Everyone there was waiting to watch me, Mrs. Thorne, kneel a little lower for the privilege of being kept.
Silas lifted a tumbler of bourbon and said, in that bored-vowel voice the family bred for, "Wren. Don't make a scene at my birthday."
I slid a manila envelope across the table into his dinner plate.
"Happy birthday, Silas."
"And get out of my life."
At six the next morning, the entire Thorne family was on the landing outside my Beacon Hill walk-up.
The woman who had spent two lifetimes calling me a stain on her name was on her knees on slate, crying so hard her mascara had reached her collar.
Silas had his forehead pressed against my front door.
"Wren. Don't leave me."
They all remembered.
I came back into my body at Silas's thirty-second birthday dinner.
One second I had been on a steel-framed bed at Hartwell Manor, listening to the duty nurse say Mr. Thorne signed off on the new dose, we're doubling it tonight.
The next, I was standing under the chandelier in the long dining room at Thorne House in Greenwich, holding a two-tier devil's-food cake in a white pasteboard carrier. I had iced it at five that morning in my own kitchen. Happy Birthday, Silas in white buttercream, the l tilting because my hand had been shaking.
Forty pairs of eyes on me. Foundation board members in black tie. The look in all of them was familiar enough to turn my stomach: pity, amusement, the soft anticipation of a guest who has paid for a show.
Silas sat at the head of the table. Black dinner jacket, no crease out of place. He looked at me the way one might look at a porch light someone had forgotten to switch off.
Beside him was Cassandra Penhallow.
The Thornes' Greenwich neighbor since they were both five. The girl Silas's mother had wanted for him since they were eleven. The orphan his family had folded in after her father shot himself in 2008.
Cassie was wearing Silas's tuxedo jacket over her bare shoulders. He sat at his own birthday dinner in his shirt and waistcoat, having given his jacket to her.
She said, in the soft little voice she had used for two lifetimes, "Wren, please don't take it the wrong way. Si just didn't want me to catch a chill."
I had heard that sentence in two lifetimes.
The first time, I had cried trying to explain. Nobody had believed me.
The second time, I had knelt on the rose-garden flagstones and begged him to look at me for ten seconds. He had said I was making a stain on his shoes.
This time, I looked down at the cake in my hands.
The buttercream smelled sweet. My stomach was turning over.
Silas lifted his eyes. The voice was flat with boredom.
"Wren. It's my birthday. Try not to embarrass yourself."
Then I heard something I shouldn't have been able to hear.
— Why isn't she answering. —
I looked up. His face hadn't moved. He was still watching me the way you watch the weather.
But the voice came through again, clearer than if he'd spoken it.
— Did she bake it herself? Did she burn her fingers? Why is she wearing something so thin, why is the house this cold, why didn't I tell Henderson to turn the thermostat up. —
The cake almost slid out of my hands.
Silas's mouth tightened. Out loud he said, "What are you doing, just standing there with that. You look ridiculous."
— She's pale. Cassie said something to her again, didn't she. Can I get to her without Cassie seeing, no, I can't, I can't, hold the line, hold the line. —
I started to laugh.
The room went quiet.
Eleanor Cabot Thorne, my mother-in-law, set down her glass. "Wren. What, exactly, do you find amusing? Silas was generous enough to invite you tonight. I'd remember that."
In the second life, she had used that same composed face when she stood over me with a paper cup of medical-grade pills and told me to swallow. A Thorne child does not come from a woman like you.
I set the cake down on the buffet table, beside an untouched tray of catered macarons.
Then I took the manila envelope out of my handbag.
The separation agreement. Notarized that afternoon at my own attorney's office on Boylston Street. In the second life I had drafted that document forty-one times and not once gotten it served. The last copy he had pulled out of my hands and torn in half over the breakfast tray. Wren. You'll rot in this family. That's the only future you have.
I walked the length of the table to where he sat.
Silas's eyes followed me. "What is this."
— A gift? Is she going to give me a gift in front of them? The cufflinks she promised me last Christmas? The watch she said she'd replace? —
I slid the envelope into his dinner plate.
The paper made a small, dry sound against the porcelain.
"Happy birthday, Silas."
I held his eyes. I said it the way you read a sentence in court.
"And get out of my life."
The dining room held its breath.
Cassie was first to recover. She always was. She pressed her fingertips to her mouth and her eyes flooded on cue.
"Wren. How could you do this on Si's birthday. He's been working sixteen-hour days. Couldn't you just, for once, think about what he's carrying."
I looked at her.
In two lifetimes, she had only ever had one move.
Always fragile, always kind, always slipping the knife into someone else's hand and stepping back.
In the first life, the night I was taken, she had called Silas and told him she had a fever. He had left the city to sit by her bed. I had waited in an empty warehouse on the Sound until dawn, and a piece of rebar had come down across my right leg.
In the second life, when the Thorne Capital deal began to bleed money, she had pocketed the original signing copies and told Silas, between sobs, that I had taken them. He had walked me into the State Police barracks himself.
I felt, for the first time in two lifetimes, calm.
I picked up the open bottle of Pomerol off the table and poured the rest of it down the front of Cassie's pale silk dress.
She screamed.
Silas stood up so fast his chair barked across the floor. "Wren."
— Good. About time. —
I stopped where I was.
His face was stone. His voice was the voice he used when he meant a thing. "Have you lost your mind."
— That dress was ugly anyway. Why is she still wearing my jacket. Did the glass cut Wren's hand. Did she scratch herself on the lip of the bottle. —
I narrowed my eyes at him.
There was something wrong with the world.
Eleanor slammed her palm flat on the linen. "I have had enough. Henderson — call the gate. We are having her removed."
Two of the security men who worked the door at Foundation functions started forward.
I stepped back half a pace and lifted my phone. I had set the file ready on the lock screen.
Cassie's voice came out of the speaker, threaded with the kitchen-hum of a recording made in private.
All I need is for Wren Thorne to do seven years. The seat at Silas's right is mine after that, regardless of what Eleanor wants.
I took the contracts. Wren loves him too much to think. She'll carry the loss for me. She was bred to.
Cassie's color went out from under the makeup.
Eleanor froze with her hand still in the air.
Silas was staring at the phone. His knuckles whitened on the back of his chair.
I had recorded that the week before I died on the Hartwell Manor bed. I had no idea why it had come back with me. It had.
Cassie shook her head, wet. "Si, that isn't real. That's a deepfake, she has access to all kinds of people, she's been making this up for years to ruin me —"
Silas said nothing.
His head was screaming at me.
— Deepfake. Her voice. I've listened to that voice for thirty years. Cassie. Cassie put her in prison. Cassie killed her on the bed at Hartwell. —
My chest folded around itself.
He remembered.
No. He couldn't. If he remembered, he would not be sitting here. If he remembered, he would not have walked her in here under his own jacket.
Silas reached over and, slowly, lifted his tuxedo jacket off Cassie's shoulders.
Cassie made a small sound. "Si —"
Silas, still bored on the surface, still that boardroom voice:
"Out."
Cassie didn't move.
Eleanor said, faint and offended, "August, you're throwing Cassandra out for —"
He didn't look at his mother.
He walked the length of the room toward me and stopped three steps off.
"I'm not signing it."
— She can't have it. She can't actually leave. —
His mouth: "Wren. Don't try to use a piece of paper to threaten me."
His head: — Please threaten me again. Stay angry. Just don't go. —
I slid the wedding band off my finger and dropped it into the tumbler of bourbon in front of his chair.
The ring hit the bottom of the crystal with one bright, fastidious chime.
"You won't sign," I said. "I'll file."