The first thing I remember when I came back was the sound of a bowl shattering against the floorboards, an explosion of ceramic just inches from my feet. A shard flew up and sliced a line across my temple before I even had a chance to flinch. “For God’s sake, Amelia! When are you going to stop this madness?” My husband, Ethan, stood there, his voice tight with a familiar frustration. "I told you, Leo is gone! Gone! We’re never going to find him! Why can't you just let it go?" He took a step closer, his face contorted with a pain that I used to think was for me, for us. "Do you have any idea what this is doing to me? If you put half the energy you spend on this hopeless search into… into starting over, we could have another baby by now. Have you ever stopped to think what people are saying about me, with a wife who’s completely lost her mind?" Ethan, always so put-together in his tailored suits, looking like he stepped out of a catalog. But now, his handsome features were twisted into a grimace. He saw the blank look on my face, grabbed me by the shoulders, and shoved me toward the bathroom mirror. He forced my head forward, his voice cracking with something I once mistook for desperation. "Amelia, look at yourself! Wake up! If you keep this up, how are we supposed to live? If you die… what am I supposed to do?" I stared at the reflection. The face looking back was gaunt, haunted, but it was younger. So much younger. And in that moment, I knew. I was back. I had come back. I was reborn into the second year of my own personal hell, the year after our son disappeared. A sob tore through me, a raw, ragged sound that came from a place deeper than memory. It was the sound of ten years of agony crammed into a single, waking moment. Ethan, misinterpreting my grief as he always did, sighed and pulled me into his arms. His embrace felt like a cage. "Amy, please," he murmured, his voice softening into a practiced, weary tone. "You have to pull yourself together. For me." "He was my son too, you know," he continued, stroking my hair. "You think I'm not hurting? But life has to go on. It just… has to." I dug my nails into my palms, hiding the inferno of hatred that was blazing behind my eyes. He thought I was calming down. He let me go and went to the kitchen to start dinner. I watched him from the doorway. He’d taken off his jacket, rolled up the sleeves of his crisp white shirt, and tied an apron around his waist. Cooking used to be my thing. But after Leo vanished, Ethan took over, insisting he needed to take care of me. He was so tender, so patient. If it weren’t for what I saw just before I died, if I hadn’t been given this impossible second chance, I would have gone to my grave believing he was the perfect, grieving husband. I would have never known that this man—this kind, caring, heartbroken man—was the architect of my entire nightmare. I squeezed my eyes shut, a single tear tracing a path down my cheek. "Amy." A thumb gently wiped the tear away. "Don't cry," Ethan whispered, his voice thick with what I now knew was counterfeit emotion. "When you cry, it breaks my heart." For a man as stoic as Ethan, those words were the equivalent of a sonnet. "Come on," he said, leading me to the table. "Dinner's ready." He'd made my favorites: braised short ribs and a creamy tomato soup. But my eyes froze on a separate container sitting on the counter, a thermos filled with that same rich soup. Ethan’s eyes followed my gaze. He let out a long, theatrical sigh. "Amy, don't start. You know Sarah's been having a hard time, all alone with the baby. Her body is still recovering. And her husband… he’s useless. It's just a little soup. You wouldn't finish it all anyway…" Before he could finish his excuse, there was a soft knock at the door. Of course. It was Sarah. She stood on our doorstep, a vision of effortless chic. She was a kindergarten teacher, and she always looked the part—a flowing floral dress, a tasteful cardigan, her blonde hair perfectly coiffed. She looked like a woman who had her life completely under control. In my last life, just before the darkness took me for good, I learned the truth. A few days after Sarah brought her own baby home, exhausted from sleepless nights, she’d rolled over in her sleep and accidentally suffocated him in the blankets. Her husband was a foreman at the local steel plant, a man with a temper as fiery as the furnaces he oversaw. Everyone in our small suburban neighborhood knew he had a heavy hand. If he'd found out their only son, the heir to his name, was gone because of her exhaustion… he would have killed her. So my husband, my loving, supportive Ethan, had a solution. He stole our son and gave him to Sarah. That day, Ethan, a rising manager at his firm, had called me in a panic. He needed an urgent file delivered to his office, something too sensitive to send with a courier. I didn’t want to leave Leo, but the urgency in his voice was compelling. Our son had just finished his bottle and was fast asleep in his crib. I asked our elderly neighbor, Mrs. Gable, to just keep an ear out. I’d be back in an hour, tops. I made it back in forty-five minutes. But Leo was gone. We turned the neighborhood upside down. We searched every backyard, every shed. I was convinced a stray dog had carried him off. Then I was sure he’d been kidnapped. I spent countless hours at the police station, begging them, pleading with them to find my baby. My mind became a torture chamber of possibilities. I dreamt he was found in the river that ran behind our town. I woke up screaming and ran barefoot toward the water, not even realizing I’d lost a shoe until a jogger grabbed my arm and pulled me back from the slippery bank. Another time, a nightmare showed me he was at the bottom of the old well on the edge of town. I went there in the middle of the night with a flashlight, peering into the blackness, calling his name until my voice was raw. I leaned too far, my foot slipped, and I plunged into the icy water. The shock took my breath away. As the water closed over my head, I gave up. I thought, If I can’t be a mother, I don’t deserve to live. Let the water take me. But I was saved. A teenager, out for a late-night run, heard the splash. I woke up in the hospital to the sting of Ethan’s hand across my face. He was crying, screaming at me, asking if I was insane, if I wanted to destroy what little we had left. I clung to him, sobbing that I couldn’t live anymore. My mother-in-law called me a curse, a woman who’d lost her golden grandson. I endured it all. But in the dead of night, the silence was filled with the phantom cries of my son, and the pain was a physical thing, a clawing beast in my chest. That day, in the hospital, Ethan held me tight. He kept whispering, "I'm sorry. Amy, I'm so, so sorry." I didn’t understand it then. I thought he was sorry for my pain, for our loss. Now, I understood perfectly. Ethan. You gave my son to her. You made me live this hell. I stared at Sarah, standing there in my doorway, a portrait of innocence. You’re right to be sorry, Ethan. You have no idea how sorry you’re going to be. Sarah’s gaze flickered past me, her smile soft and gentle as it landed on Ethan. "Ethan, hi. I’m so sorry to bother you, but do you have any infant Tylenol? Ryan feels a little warm." Ryan. That’s what she called him. My body tensed. I wanted to leap up, to scream, to tear her perfect hair out. But I forced myself to stay put, digging my nails so hard into my thigh that I felt the skin break. Not yet. It’s not time yet. "What? He has a fever?" Ethan was already grabbing his coat. Sarah glanced at me, her expression a perfect mask of concern. "Ethan, maybe you should just give me the medicine. I don't want to upset Amelia…" He frowned, looking back at me with a warning in his eyes. "Amelia, I don't care what kind of mood you're in, a sick child is not something to play games with. You stay here. And if you even think about pulling another stunt, I swear, I’ll have you committed again." My blood ran cold. He walked past me, grabbing the thermos of soup on his way out. As Sarah followed him, she shot a look back at me over her shoulder. It was a flash of something ugly—triumph, scorn, and a deep, satisfying pity. The door clicked shut. I collapsed onto the floor, my legs giving out from under me. Committed. The word echoed in my mind. In my previous life, that's exactly what he did. At Sarah’s suggestion, he convinced everyone I was a danger to myself. He had me institutionalized. I spent a year in a haze of medication, a ghost shuffling through white hallways. They told me I was sick, and when I insisted I wasn’t, they upped the dosage. My hair fell out in clumps. My memory became a fog. I learned to be compliant. I learned to say yes, I was sick. Yes, I was a suicide risk. Yes, I would take my pills. When Ethan finally took me home, I was a shell. I’d given up on finding Leo. I just wanted to feel normal again. But then I started noticing things. The way Ethan’s eyes would follow Sarah. The way she’d manufacture reasons for him to come over, to fix a leaky faucet, to help with her car. The intimacy between them was a poison ivy vine, slowly choking the life out of me. One day, I confronted her. I slapped her. And just like that, Ethan said I’d relapsed. He sent me back. This time, for three years. Those years broke me completely. When I finally saw him again, he was shocked by my appearance. He asked if I was being treated well. I didn’t dare cry. I just promised him I was better. I would never look for Leo again. I would never touch Sarah again. I just wanted to come home. He was going to let me out, but Sarah, who had come with him, gently suggested they keep me for "observation." Just to be sure. Another month of hell, convinced he’d abandoned me forever. When I finally got out, my body was already failing. I lived for another five years, a hollowed-out woman waiting to die. And in those final moments, as my life faded away, the truth finally came to me. Sarah had walked into my room, holding the hand of a ten-year-old boy. My boy. "Ethan," she'd said, her voice soft. "I brought Ryan to see her one last time. It’s the least we can do. So she can die knowing she was a mother." He was there. My husband. Watching me suffer, watching me descend into madness, for ten years. He let me believe I was crazy. He let me believe my son was dead. All to protect her. All to give my child to the woman he truly loved. And now, I was back. And this time, Ethan, the agony of losing a child? It’s your turn to feel it.
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