Chapter 2

The test results came back three days later.

For those three days, Evelyn didn’t mention drawing my blood again. She didn’t tell me to go to bed early, drink more milk, or eat the iron-rich muffins she usually gave me.

She barely even looked at me.

Lily, on the other hand, threw tantrums for all three days because someone had rubbed a cotton swab inside her cheek. She smashed two glasses and kicked over a potted plant.

Richard stayed by her side the whole time and bought her a complete new set of Barbie dolls.

No one asked how those three days had been for me.

They’d been wonderful.

For the first time, no one dragged me out of bed in the middle of the night and told me Mommy was anemic again and needed an emergency transfusion. For the first time, I slept through three whole nights.

On the fourth morning, Evelyn sat at the dining table with a lab report spread out in front of her.

Richard stood behind her, his expression conflicted.

I walked over with my glass of milk and rose onto my toes to look.

Lily Bennett. AB-negative.

A perfect match.

Something that had been stretched tight inside me for twenty-three years finally loosened.

“Mommy,” I called.

Evelyn looked up at me strangely. It wasn’t the entitled expectation I remembered from my last life. It was the anger of someone who’d been exposed.

“How did you know Lily might have the same blood type?” she asked.

A five-year-old wasn’t supposed to understand genetics.

I’d already prepared my answer. “I heard Daddy talking to the doctor. The doctor said twins were really likely to have the same blood type.”

Richard coughed. “I did… mention it to your specialist.”

Evelyn said nothing. She turned the report over and laid it facedown.

It was a small movement, but I understood it.

She didn’t want anyone looking at that paper again.

“So,” I said, setting down my milk, “can Lily and I take turns giving you blood now?”

The corner of Evelyn’s mouth twitched.

“Hannah.” Her voice returned to that sickening sweetness. “Lily’s delicate. She can’t handle something like that. You’ve always been stronger than her. Mommy still needs you to help a little more, okay?”

Delicate.

Lily weighed three pounds more than I did. She was a fraction taller, ate an extra bowl of food every day, and never got sick.

Meanwhile, years of blood draws had left me anemic at five. At seven, I’d been diagnosed with iron-deficiency anemia. At twelve, I’d fainted at school for the first time.

“But Mommy,” I said, refusing to back down, “the doctor said I’m anemic too.”

A crack finally appeared in Evelyn’s expression.

“Who told you that?”

“My checkup report. The one from kindergarten.”

I wasn’t lying. In my last life, Evelyn had thrown that report straight into the trash. I hadn’t found it until I was eighteen, going through old belongings in the bottom of a box. This time, I’d taken it out of my backpack early and hidden it under my pillow.

Evelyn fell silent for a few seconds. Then she smiled.

That smile sent a chill down my spine.

“You’re getting so clever, Hannah.” She stood, walked over, and crouched in front of me, cupping my face in both hands. “But you need to remember that Mommy is very sick. Without your blood, Mommy will die. Do you want Mommy to die?”

Do you want Mommy to die?

She’d said that at least a hundred times in my previous life.

Whenever I hesitated, backed away, cried, or fought her, she brought out those words.

At five, they frightened me into tears.

At ten, they made me silently hold out my arm.

At fifteen, I repeated, “I’m saving Mommy’s life,” in my head until I believed it.

At twenty-three, I died.

“Mommy.” I looked into her eyes. “Lily’s blood can save you too. Why does it have to be mine?”

Her fingers tightened against my cheeks.

It hurt.

But I didn’t pull away.

“Because you’re the older sister,” she said. “The older sister is supposed to protect her mommy and her little sister.”

The logic was so absurd it was almost funny.

But in this family, absurd things had always been treated as perfectly reasonable.

Richard spoke from beside us. “Evelyn, maybe… we should have the girls take turns from now on? Hannah really is too thin.”

Evelyn stood and looked at him.

There was a warning in that look.

“Richard, you don’t understand medicine. Hannah’s blood markers are better suited to me than Lily’s. The doctor said so.”

She was lying.

We were identical twins. Our blood composition was almost exactly the same.

But Richard didn’t know that. He was a businessman who knew nothing about medicine. He believed whatever Evelyn told him.

It had been the same in my last life.

Richard hesitated, then said nothing more.

I watched him retreat to the couch and pick up his newspaper. I expected nothing from him.

This father had never truly protected me in my previous life.

Not because he didn’t love me, but because he was too lazy. Too lazy to ask questions, too lazy to challenge her, too lazy to argue with Evelyn.

His love was the cheapest kind. Sympathy that never cost him anything.

“Hannah,” Evelyn called from the kitchen. “Come drink your iron tonic. Mommy’s going to the hospital next week. You need to be good and cooperate.”

Iron tonic.

In my last life, she’d given it to me before every blood draw. Not because she cared, but because she was afraid I wouldn’t have enough blood.

You fed a pig to keep it fat. You gave a blood bank iron to keep it producing.

I picked up the cup but didn’t drink.

“Mommy, can I ask you something?”

“What?”

“If one day I don’t have enough blood, what will you do?”

Her spatula paused.

She turned to look at me, a smile on her lips and no warmth in her eyes.

“That won’t happen,” she said. “Mommy will keep you well fed.”

Keep you well fed.

Those words made my place perfectly clear.

Not a daughter.

A disposable resource.