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"I don't have a sister."
Mia's eyes went red, and the way she trembled on the edge of tears took me straight back to our childhood.
Our father came home from a business trip and brought us each a snow globe.
She cried, and both of them became hers.
Now Barnaby was the snow globe we were fighting over.
Did I still want to fight for him?
Looking at our wedding rings glinting side by side on our fingers, I talked myself into it. One more try.
"Barnaby, I—"
I hadn't even finished the words through my headache when Mia broke into sobs first.
"Clara, I know you blame me, but no matter what, today is Barnaby's birthday. You shouldn't have made him wait for you that long."
The important date I'd ignored surfaced in my mind, and my voice went thin. "I forgot..."
Barnaby shook his head in disappointment. "You didn't forget. You did it to get back at me."
He curled his lip into a sneer. "I still felt guilty about yesterday. I wanted to make it up to you, to cheer you up... You didn't show, so everything I'd arranged went to Mimi instead."
Something smug rose in Mia's tear-bright eyes.
That was the exact face she used to make every time she won.
Strength drained out of me all at once. I slid the wedding ring off and dropped it on the nightstand.
"Fine. I'll step aside. I wish you a long and happy marriage."
My choice made Barnaby flush with anger.
"Clara Henson, what goes on in your head all day? Spreading filthy rumors about your own sister. You've got a rotten heart!"
"How come you're not the one with a congenital heart condition?"
I gave an involuntary shudder, my head ringing.
Barnaby, wishing I would die?
The bedroom, set to a comfortable warmth, turned in an instant into a cold morgue that chilled me to the bone.
Mia clutched her chest, her face pained. "Clara, if you don't believe me, fine, but how can you not even believe Barnaby?"
Something like tenderness flickered through Barnaby's eyes, but when they landed on our wedding photo, he pulled back the hand that had started to reach for Mia.
He yanked the wardrobe open, grabbed some clothes at random, threw them over my head, and barked out an order.
"I don't have time for your games. Get dressed, we're going to the hospital!"
The hospital?
He knew I was sick?
A small mercy fell into the barren place inside me.
Just as I thought I could finally cry in his arms—
his next words shattered the fantasy to pieces.
"Your mother's been diagnosed with kidney failure. The doctors recommend a transplant. Mimi has a heart condition, so the only one your mother can count on is you."
Mia dropped to her knees, weeping. "Clara, please, save Mom."
She cried with her whole heart.
And it made me look cold-blooded.
Still, I had to ask. "Why should I? She's the one who abandoned me!"
After my father died, the police brought me to my mother's house.
I never even made it through the door before Mia threw a basin of water over me.
"Get lost! Mom says she never wants to see you again as long as she lives!"
I became an orphan.
I had no mother!
Barnaby hauled me up, exasperated, as if I were a hopeless case.
"Clara Henson, that's your birth mother, a woman with a terminal illness. Can't you give her a little grace, a little hope?"
"I have a terminal illness too. Who's going to give me grace? Who's going to give me hope?"
Tears rolled down and struck the back of Barnaby's hand. He frowned, uncomfortable.
My pale face reflected in his eyes, and all at once he was studying me, tense.
"What... what illness do you have?"
"Brain cancer."
The air froze for a beat.
The worry that had just risen in Barnaby was torn apart by Mia's cold laugh.
"Clara, if you don't want to save Mom, there's no need to make up a lie like that.
You'll never understand how much fear someone lives with, every minute, every second, when they know they could die at any moment!"
"My life was given to me by Mom. If you won't save her, I will!"
Mia turned and walked out.
Barnaby scolded me in disappointment. "Ungrateful daughter! Next to Mimi, you're nothing!"
With that, he hurried after her.
I hesitated for a long time, then dialed my mother's number.
It went dead three times before she finally picked up.
She launched straight into cursing. "Who the hell is this? In a rush to get yourself reincarnated?"
Over the clatter of mahjong tiles, I said evenly,
"It's Clara Henson. Mia says you need a kidney transplant?"
