Two Lifetimes to Protect You

My brother was born with a saint's heart. He couldn't even bring himself to step on an ant.

I was born the devil's spawn. At three, I was already puncturing a bully's bike tires.

He married his bride and loved her to the bone, and when she asked for a divorce, he signed the papers smiling.

It wasn't until later that I learned the truththat woman took his kidney-donation agreement and used it to save her first love.

When my brother died, he was clutching their wedding photo. On the back he'd written: Don't blame her, little sister.

Reborn into this life, I didn't try to stop the wedding again.

I just waited. On their wedding night, when she carried in the tea, I stepped out from behind her and laid a knife against the best man's throat.

The best man was her first love. His legs gave out under him.

"Sister-in-law," I said. "This is my brother's wedding. What are you crying for?"

...

When she carried the tea in, I was behind the curtain counting her footsteps.

One. Two. Three.

She stopped in front of my brother, her voice sickly sweet, like honey water left to sit for three days.

"Drink your tea, husband."

I pushed the curtain aside and walked out. The knife in my hand I'd swiped from the kitchensharpened, used on ribsand now it rested against the best man's throat.

His name was Luke Simmons. He wore a white suit and looked more like the groom than my brother did.

His whole body locked up, his Adam's apple bobbing against the blade.

The teacup tipped out of Kayla Fox's hands. Hot water splashed across her own fingers, scalding them red.

She didn't cry out. Her eyes were fixed on the knife, her lips trembling.

My brother rose from his chair. "Belle. Put the knife down."

I didn't look at him.

I watched Kayla, waiting to see exactly when those tears welling in her eyes would finally fall.

Luke cracked first, his voice shaking. "Dodo you know who I am?"

"I know."

I said, "You're the kept man Kayla's bankrolled for five years. She took my brother's kidney-donation agreement to save you. You think you're worth it?"

I pressed the blade in a fraction. A bead of blood slid down the edge.

My brother said my full name. "Belinda Henson."

Only then did I turn to look at him.

He stood there in his groom's suit, a red boutonniere pinned to his chest, and the look on his face wasn't anger. It was heartache.

He was aching for Kayla.

He'd worn the same look last time.

When Kayla asked him for a divorce, he signed it smiling and said, As long as Kay's happy.

Before they wheeled him into the operating room, he turned to me and said, Don't blame her, little sister. I chose this.

He hadn't chosen anything.

Kayla had tricked him into signing that agreement, letting him believe he was only donating a kidney to save some stranger.

He didn't know that kidney would go into Luke's body. He didn't know Kayla had spent three months feeding him drugs that crushed his immune system down to nothing.

Post-surgical infection. A fever that wouldn't break.

He lay in the ICU clutching that wedding photo, with one line written on the back: Don't blame her, little sister.

I knelt outside his room and bowed my head to the floor three times, hard enough to split my forehead open, and none of it brought him back.

This time I won't stop the wedding.

I can't.

Last time I cried, I raged, I starved myself, and my brother married Kayla anyway.

He said, You don't understand, Belle. Kay's a good girl.

She was a good girl.

Good enough to watch you die with a smile.

"Belinda," Kayla finally spoke, her voice quaking. "You've got this wrong, I never"

"Never what?"

I lifted the blade off Luke's throat and held it beside his carotid. "Never took my brother's kidney-donation agreement to save him? Then what is this?"

I pulled the photocopy of the agreement from my pocket and flung it in her face.

The pages scattered across the floor. The last one landed at my brother's feet. He bent down, picked it up, and his eyes dropped to the signature line.

His handwriting.

Kayla's handwriting.

And the notary's office seal.

Bruce's pupils constricted.

The color drained from Kayla's face.

Her mouth opened, then closed, like someone had a hand clamped around her throat.

"Bruce," I said, "she married you for your kidney, not your money."

Luke tried to bolt while I was talking. I drove my knee into him and pinned him back into the chair.

I set the knife again, this time flat against the carotid artery in his throat.

"Go on. Move."

Luke went rigid.

Then he started to cry. A grown man, sobbing like his mother had just died.

Kayla finally broke. She lunged and grabbed my arm. "Belinda, let him go. This has nothing to do with him. It was all my idea."

I stared at her. "So you're the one who tricked my brother."

"Yes. Yes, I tricked him."

The tears spilled over. "He didn't know anything. Let him go. Take it out on me."

"Take it out on you?" I gave a short laugh. "You think you're worth it?"

Bruce stepped closer and wrapped his hand around the wrist that held the knife.

He didn't pull. He just cradled it, gently, the way he used to guide my hand when he taught me to write as a kid.

"Belinda. Listen to your brother. Put the knife down."

His voice was still that gentle.

I thought of the last life, of the last thing he said on the operating table. Not that it hurt. Just my name.

Belinda. Don't blame her.

I moved the knife off Luke's throat, but I didn't lower it.

I turned to face my brother. "You know she tricked you, and you're still protecting her?"

He was quiet for a few seconds. Then he said, "That's my business."

"Your business?"

I laughed. "Your business is getting a kidney conned out of you, then dying by her hand?"

Kayla's head jerked up, her face streaked with tears, panic in her eyes. She hadn't known I knew this much.

"How could you" she whispered.

"How could I know?"

I walked over and tapped her cheek with the flat of the blade. "Kayla, the things you did, God knows them. And so do I."

Luke saw his chance and sprang out of the chair for the door.

I didn't chase him. I just flicked the knife after him.

It buried itself in the doorframe beside his leg, humming as it shook.

Luke crumpled to the floor, a dark stain spreading across his crotch.

Kayla shrieked and threw herself over him, cradling his head, shielding him with her body.

She looked back at me, the tears in her eyes turning to hate. "Belinda, you're insane."

"I'm insane?"

I crouched down, level with her eyes. "You tricked my brother into signing over a kidney to save this man. You dosed him with immunosuppressants so he'd die on the table. You tell me which one of us is insane."

Bruce stood a few steps away, not moving.

He was taking it in. Taking in the fact that the woman he loved had wanted him dead.

Kayla clung to Luke, shaking all over.

She looked at my brother, her lips trembling, working a few times before she managed to speak. What finally came out was, "Bruce, I'm sorry."

What good is sorry.

Last life, you said sorry, and my brother said it was fine.

This life it's your turn to say it, and I won't take it.

"Kayla." I stood and looked down at her. "I'll give you two choices. One: take your kept man and get out of this city, and never show your face in front of my brother again. Two: I hand this agreement to the police and have you charged with fraud and aggravated assault. Pick."

She held Luke as the tears fell, one after another, onto his face.

Luke was too terrified to speak now, his face ghost-white, the stain still wet.

"I'll take the first one," she said.

"Good."

I pulled out a document and threw it on the floor. "Sign this, and you two can get out."

Kayla picked it up and read it. A written pledge, laying out everything that had happenedtheir two signatures at the bottom would stand as evidence.

The attached clause: she owed my brother a sum of money, the exact amount she'd swindled out of our family, to be repaid in full within three years.

She looked at the figure, her lips trembling. "I don't have that kind of money..."

"That's your problem," I said. "Sell the house, sell the car, go find that rich father of yours. How you come up with it is your business. I'm just here to collect."

She bit down on her lip until it bled.

In the end she signed anyway, and Luke signed too, his hand shaking like a leaf.

"Now." I pointed at the door. "Out."

Kayla helped Luke to his feet. His legs were still trembling under him.

They reached the door, and Kayla suddenly turned back to look at my brother.

"Bruce, I'm sorry." She said it again.

He didn't answer. He watched her back, and something behind his eyes broke, but he didn't call her back.

The door closed.

Only the two of us were left in the room, and the papers scattered across the floor.

The reception was still going downstairs, glasses clinking, guests trading toasts, none of them aware of what had just happened upstairs.

My brother walked to the window and stood with his back to me.

His shoulders were shaking, but no sound came out.

I crossed to him and wrapped my arms around him from behind, pressing my face into his back.

He'd gotten thin. He'd been this thin in my last life too, thin enough that the hospital gown hung off him.

"Bruce," I said. "Don't be sad."

He turned around. His eyes were red, but he hadn't cried.

He reached out and smoothed a hand over my hair. His palm was warm.

"Belle's all grown up," he said.

My nose stung, and I nearly lost it.

In my last life I'd held him and cried like this too, the night before he stopped breathing, beside the bed in the ICU.

He'd been hooked up to tubes, the backs of his hands all bruised, his fever so high his mind was slipping, and still he'd smiled at me and said, Don't cry, Belle, your brother's fine.

How could he have been fine. His kidney was inside someone else's body. His life was clenched in someone else's hand.

"Bruce, let's go home," I said.

"Okay." He nodded. "Home."

We didn't go back to the marital home, back to the house he and Kayla had decorated together.

We went back to the old house, the place where we grew up. The magnolia tree in the yard was the same as ever, a little taller than in my last life, its leaves rustling when the wind moved through it.

My brother stood under the tree for a long time.

I went inside to pour him a glass of water, and when I came back out I saw him crouched by the roots, fingers digging into the dirt.

I came closer and saw him pull out a tin box, its surface spotted with rust.

"What is that?"

He didn't say anything. He opened the box.

Inside were the letters I'd written in my last life, letters to my sixteen-year-old self, an entire diary filled with them.

The last page read: Don't let your brother marry Kayla.

I'd never seen this diary again after I buried it.

I'd buried it here, buried it for a whole lifetime.

My brother turned to that page. His hands were shaking.

"Belle..." His voice had gone hoarse.

I crouched down and looked into his eyes.

Those eyes were clear and clean, none of the murkiness of being used, none of the hollow emptiness of dying on an operating table.

"Bruce," I said. "This time I'm protecting you."

He pulled me in and held me tight.

Magnolia leaves drifted down and settled on our shoulders. He didn't brush them off, and I didn't move.

In the distance the firecrackers went off. The reception was breaking up.

The guests never knew the groom wasn't there. They drank the wedding toasts, ate the candied almonds, said all their congratulations.

My brother would never marry a second time in this life.

He would live. He would live to be very, very old.

The spring he never reached last time, I would give him this time.

It rained hard the day Kayla and Luke left. I stood on the balcony and watched their car pull out of the complex, Kayla in the passenger seat, Luke driving.

In the side mirror, her face blurred like a watercolor left out in the rain.

She glanced back once. I couldn't tell if she was looking at our building or at my brother.

I didn't let her see me.

The phone rang. It was my brother.

He said he was working late at the office, and asked what I wanted for dinner.

"Whatever you want," I said. "I'll make it."

He paused, then laughed. "Anything you make even edible?"

"Edible or not, you're eating it."

"Fine," he said. "Then I'll come home early."

I hung up and went back to the kitchen to wash the vegetables.

The faucet hissed, and I thought about how, at this exact hour last time, I'd been crying in a hospital corridor.

This time, I was washing vegetables for my brother.

That was good.

The knife was the same knife. I rinsed it clean and slid it back into the block.

I wouldn't use it that way again.

At least never again against anyone's throat.

The doorbell rang three times.

Through the peephole I saw Kayla standing outside, her hair soaked, her face wet with what could have been rain or tears.

She was holding a cake box, the pink ribbon coming apart in the downpour.

I opened the door.

"Belinda, I" Her voice shook. "I want to see your brother."

"He's not here."

"I know he's here." She looked past me into the apartment. "His car's downstairs."

I stood in the doorway and didn't let her in.

She was drenched through, the dress plastered to her body. She'd lost a lot of weight; her cheekbones jutted out now.

"What do you want?"

Kayla lifted the cake, her fingers trembling. "It's his birthday today. I made it myself."

"He doesn't want it."

"Belinda, I know I was wrong."

Her eyes went red, her voice dropping low. "I've spent these last months regretting it every single day. I can't sleep. All I see is his face. He was so good to me, and I"

"You almost got him killed."

Her tears spilled over and hit the cake box.

"I know. I know I owe him everything. But give me one chance. Let me say I'm sorry to his face, just once, and then I'll go."

My brother's voice came from behind me. "Belle, who is it?"

I turned. He was standing at the foot of the stairs, a book in his hand, in his house clothes and slippers.

The second he saw Kayla, the book slipped from his hand to the floor. He left it there.

She saw him, and the tears came down like a thread snapping loose.

"Bruce"

She took a step forward. I put my arm out across the doorframe and stopped her.

"Say it from there."

She bit her lip, looking at him, her mouth trembling several times before any sound came out. "I'm sorry. Bruce, I'm so sorry. I'm not asking you to forgive me. I just want you to know I really do regret it. Every night I have nightmares. I dream of you lying in that hospital bed, dream of you calling my name"

He bent down, picked up the book, brushed off the cover. His voice was perfectly calm. "Are you finished?"

Kayla froze.

"If you're finished, then go." He turned and started up the stairs.

He stopped. He didn't look back.

"Kayla, you nearly cost me my life."

I know, I know. But you used to say it. No matter what I did wrong, you'd always forgive me

That was before. My brother's voice was soft, soft enough to sound like he was talking to himself. Before, I put my life in your hands. You thought I'd stay that stupid forever?

Kayla sagged against the doorframe, barely upright. The cake box slid out of her hand and hit the floor, frosting bursting out and smearing everywhere.

Luke's gone, she said. He took my money and ran.

I didn't say anything.

I sold the house. I sold the car. I borrowed from every relative I have. It still isn't enough to cover what I owe your brother.

She looked at me, her eyes nothing but pleading. Belinda, could you talk to him for me? Give me a few more years? I really can't pay it back

That's your problem.

But your brother loved me so much. He can't want to see me like this...

He loved you, I said. He didn't want you to get him killed either.

Kayla's mouth opened and closed, closed and opened, and not a single word came out.

I stepped back and shut the door.

The cake was out there. So was she.

In the kitchen, the water on the stove had come to a boil, bubbling away.

I turned off the heat, scooped out the noodles, and carried them upstairs.

Bruce! Kayla's voice climbed, thick with crying. You won't even look at me once?

My brother sat at his desk, a book open in front of him, unread. He was facing the window. The rain was still falling outside, the glass beaded all over with water.

Bruce, eat.

He turned around, looked at the bowl, and smiled. Egg noodles again?

It's the only thing I can make.

Then learn something else.

No. I handed him the chopsticks. It's not like it's your birthday every day.

He took them, lifted a bite of noodles, blew on it, and put it in his mouth.

Good? I asked.

It'll do.

I sat across from him and watched him eat the whole bowl, one bite at a time. He drank the soup too.

Bruce.

Mm.

If she comes again, I'm not opening the door.

He set down the bowl, glanced at me, and reached over to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear.

Belle, thank you.

For what?

For protecting me.

I didn't say anything.

Outside, the rain had eased, tapping against the leaves of the magnolia tree, drip after drip.

There was noise downstairs. The building staff, clearing away the mess.

Kayla and that smashed cake were both gone.

The days went by, one after another. The magnolia blossoms fell and bloomed again.

My brother ate on time, slept on time, went to the hospital for his checkups on time.

The drugs that wrecked his immune system last time never got the chance to reach his lips in this one. His body was fine. His kidneys were fine. His life was fine.

Sometimes he'd stand on the balcony and stare at nothing, an unlit cigarette between his fingers.

I'd look at his back and know there was a hole in him, and the hole was named Kayla. But I never pried at it. Some wounds have to close on their own. No one else can do it for you.

I signed up for driving school.

Last time, when my brother was in the hospital, I couldn't drive. Every trip there I had to take a cab, and on the nights I couldn't get one, I stood on the curb and cried like an idiot.

I wasn't going to live like that again. I'd learn to drive, learn to do more, learn to survive in a world without my brother.

Even though, this time, I would never let him go before me.

The instructor at the driving school was a middle-aged man named Whitney, dark and weathered from the sun, with a voice like a thunderclap.

The very first time I tried to back into the space, I sent the pole flying. From the passenger seat, Instructor Whitney clutched his chest and said, Sweetheart, are you here to learn to drive or to demolish my school?

"Either's fine," I said.

He shot me a look but let it drop.

During a break between runs, I was sitting in the shade with my water when a young man walked over and held out a bottle of iced tea.

"Hey. You're in Group B too, right?"

I looked up at him.

Twenty-three, maybe twenty-four. White T-shirt, jeans, and two little fangs that showed when he smiled.

There was a small tattoo on the back of his hand. A bird, it looked like.

"Mm."

"I'm Claude Delgado." He crouched down so we were eye to eye. "You're Belinda Henson, right? I heard the instructor call your name."

"Hi."

"You've got a pretty unique way of driving."

I caught the teasing in it and didn't bite.

He wasn't fazed. He just sat down next to me like he belonged there, twisted open his own bottle, and took a sip.

"Don't get me wrong, I'm not hitting on you. I just think you're interesting. Most people panic when they knock a pole down. You knocked one over and didn't blink. Like nothing happened."

"It's not like the pole feels it," I said.

He blinked, then laughed, his eyes curving up.

"Fair point," he said. "The pole doesn't feel it. The instructor's heart does."

The corner of my mouth tugged up before I could stop it.

Claude Delgado was, how do I put it, like a summer breeze. Not hot, not cold. Just right.

He didn't ask too many questions. He didn't pry into why I always came to practice alone, didn't force a topic when I went quiet.

He just sat there, easy and calm, handing me a bottle of water sometimes, a piece of candy other times, then went back to his own runs.

The day of the maneuvering test, I passed. So did he.

On the way out, he held up a hand for a high five.

"Congrats."

"You too."

He looked at me, hesitated, then said, "Belinda, can I take you to dinner?"

I thought about it. "I have a brother. Can he come?"

He laughed again, bigger than before.

"Sure," he said. "Good chance to meet my brother-in-law."

"What?"

"Nothing. Come on, it's on me."