Chapter 1

In my last life, I gave my nephew a kidney. It cost me my wife and my family, and yet my brother and his wife hailed me as the man who saved their child.

My parents even signed over their entire estate to me on the spot.

What none of them ever told me was that the estate had been stolen from my real parents in the first place.

I spent thirty-some years alone with nothing, and in the end I died of kidney failure.

At my bedside, my nephew looked at me like I disgusted him, and every word out of his mouth cut straight into me.

"All that over one kidney. This whole family poured thirty-two years of blood and sweat into you. You could go out and buy a kidney and it wouldn't cost half this much."

I breathed out my last foul breath somewhere in that fading, and I died.

When I opened my eyes again, I was somehow back in the year I turned twenty-four.

My nephew was sick. The whole family got tested, and I was the only match.

My brother and his wife knelt on the floor and begged me. "Miles Armstrong, your brother is begging you here. Save the boy."

My parents told me the same thing, that I had to save their only grandson.

Looking at them, eyes streaming, I didn't go soft this time.

...

"Sorry. Russell Armstrong's life matters, but so does mine."

I turned Oswald Armstrong and his wife down flat. The tears in the corner of Oswald's eye hadn't even fallen yet, and when he heard me say it, he stared at me, stunned.

"Miles, how can you think like that? Russell is the only child in this family. He's the light of Mom and Dad's lives."

After I refused him, Oswald's face darkened, and the warmth he'd had toward me a moment ago was gone.

He'd been kneeling. Now he stood up.

His wife, Candice Lambert, was on her feet even faster than my brother. As she rose she brushed off knees that hadn't touched a speck of dirt, and shot me a look of pure contempt.

"Miles, Russell adores you, and you can be this cold-hearted about it. Real nice. Really something."

Candice looked at me like she wanted to kill me.

The two of them put on a perfect little show of it: all sweetness when they need you, all knives the second they don't.

"I'm upset too that Russell is sick. But I have my own life to live."

Last time, whatever they said, I did. This time I have to think about myself.

I pulled out my phone and called my wife, Greta, right there.

Last life, I insisted on giving Russell my kidney, and in her fury Greta divorced me.

Second time around, I can't afford to be reckless.

As I turned to walk out the door, Candice's voice reached me again.

"Oswald, you'd better think of something. If Miles won't give Russell a kidney, what happens to Russell? And if he and Greta have a child, we're finished."

My feet stopped dead. That conversation of theirs, why hadn't I heard it in my last life?

So the scheme had been in place from the very start.

I kept walking, and ran into my parents.

Last life, the moment they heard I was donating a kidney to Russell, they'd rushed to draw up the estate transfer papers for me.

I was so moved back then. It was only much later that I found out the whole thing was a front.

I wondered what they'd do this time, once they learned I wasn't donating.

The call hadn't connected yet when my father, Duane Armstrong, spotted me and hurried to wave me over.

"Miles, son, this whole family's hopes are riding on you now. You have to save Russell. He's only eight years old."

My mother, Florence Whitney, gripped my hand tight.

"Your father's right. Russell is the only grandson your father and I have. If anything happens to him, what are we supposed to do?"

Before, hearing them talk like this, I'd have felt it right along with them. Now I felt nothing at all.

"How is Russell your only grandson? I can have children too."

That stopped their crying. Florence stared at me blankly, then turned to look at Duane.

"Mom, Dad, I've got somewhere to be, so I'll go first. Oh, and I've already told my brother and his wife: I won't be giving Russell a kidney. You've got money, don't you? Better hurry up and find a kidney donor."

With that I turned and left. I had a wife to go win back, and I couldn't waste another minute.