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“But…” Her lower lip trembles, and her chocolate eyes fill with tears.

Fear mingles with guilt and anger, twisting into a heavy knot of rusty metal in my chest.

I should do something. Say something. But I don’t know what. Don’t kill your brother? Don’t wail like a mini banshee?

Don’t look at me as if I’ve shattered your world?

I set Cole down because my chest feels too tight, and my head is pounding too hard, trying to figure out a way to comfort them both. Not something I’ve had to do in years.

Taking care of others.

Not since the ground crumbled under my feet, taking me with it, into a pit so deep I couldn’t see the light.

And now you can?

Predictably, before I find the words or even move toward her, my five-year-old daughter climbs off the sofa and scampers out of the room, sniffling and sobbing.

Followed closely by three-year-old Cole.

What the hell am I doing here? How can I take care of them?

Love them, I hear a familiar voice in my mind and close my eyes in pain. Love them, Matt.

Of course I love them. They’re my heart’s blood. My own. There was never any doubt about that, not for me.

I shake my head, shake her voice loose, because she isn’t here, but I am.

And I won’t let myself sink into that bottomless black hole again. Not this time. I’m here to break with the past. To escape it once and for all. Remember who I was once.

I can feel it in my bones that it’s my last fucking chance…

“Jasper wants to talk to you first, face to face,” the guy on the phone tells me in a deep bass voice, “but I’ll be straight with you: the job is as good as yours already, and Jasper will pay extra to have you. Qualified mechanics are hard to come by around here.”

I blink. Didn’t expect to find a job so soon. This is good news, but I can’t find any joy in me, no matter how hard I search.

I also don’t know if I’m supposed to say anything in the stretching silence.

“All right,” the guy says finally, giving up on getting a reaction from me. Maybe he’s used to antisocial mechanics. “The shop opens at nine. Be here half an hour earlier.”

“Fine,” I mutter, just as a crash comes from upstairs.

My heart jolts. I drop the phone.

Fuck.

I stride to the stairs and take them two at a time, my fucking heart in my throat. “Mary! Cole!”

Cole is crying, and the sound twists something inside my chest, something that’s been twisted tight for years. Mary is shouting, but I can’t make out words as I pound up the last steps and run to their room.

I burst inside and stop, panting, when I see them both sitting on the floor, the shards of a mug and a dismembered doll between them.

Shaking my head, I bend over to catch my breath for a second. Fucking hell. We’ve only just arrived, and this is my second almost heart attack of the day.

And the day is still young.

One thing becomes clear to me as I crouch down to gather the jagged pieces of ceramic before either of them gets hurt—and where did they get the mug from?—to make sure they aren’t bleeding:

I need to find a nanny.