Darkness.

  At first, there was only warmth.

  Not comfort.

  Not peace.

  Just heat pressing in from every side, thick and wet and suffocating. Ryan drifted inside it without shape, without nguage, without any clear sense of where his body ended and the darkness began. Everything was muffled. Distant. Strange.

  Then the world squeezed.

  Pressure crushed in around him, sudden and violent, and instinct ripped through him like lightning. He twisted, or tried to. His body did not feel right. Too small. Too soft. Too weak. The walls around him pressed harder. The heat became unbearable.

  Something in him panicked.

  Not the calm, adult kind of panic that still tries to reason.

  The animal kind.

  The kind that only knows this is wrong this is wrong this is wrong.

  He tried to scream.

  Liquid filled his mouth.

  Then came a wrenching pull, a terrible crushing slide, and Ryan Anderson was torn out of darkness into blinding light.

  Cold hit him first.

  Cold and air.

  Real air.

  It stabbed into him like knives.

  His chest seized. His lungs convulsed. A raw, helpless cry burst out of him before he even knew he was making it.

  Noise crashed in after that.

  Voices.

  A woman sobbing in relief.

  A man saying something fast and shaky.

  Another woman, older, calmer, giving instructions like she had done this many times before and had no patience left for panic.

  Ryan’s eyes snapped open.

  Everything was a blur.

  Light smeared across his vision in pale gold and white. Shapes loomed above him, huge and distorted. He tried to lift his arms and felt them fil uselessly. Tiny. Weak. Wrong.

  No.

  No, no, no.

  He sucked in another ragged breath and screamed louder.

  The room slowly came into focus through tears.

  A ceiling of rough-cut beams darkened by age and smoke.

  Log walls chinked with pale cy.

  A small fire snapping in a stone hearth.

  White cloths hanging nearby, some clean, some stained.

  The whole pce smelled of woodsmoke, sweat, blood, wet linen, and herbs.

  Not a hospital.

  Not a dream.

  A cabin.

  An old cabin.

  Panic rolled through him all over again.

  He tried to speak.

  Tried to say Emma.

  Tried to say Lucy.

  Tried to say Jacob, Tyler, please, somebody.

  What came out was the thin, sharp cry of a newborn.

  A broad older woman with iron-gray hair tied back under a wrap held him in practiced hands. Her pin white dress was rolled to the elbows, and her apron was already smeared from the birth. She looked down at him with blunt approval.

  “Strong lungs,” she said. “That is good.”

  Her accent was unfamiliar. The words were English, but shaped wrong around the edges, as if they had grown up somewhere older than his world.

  Ryan’s whole body went still.

  English.

  That was somehow worse.

  It made this feel possible enough to hurt.

  Behind the older woman, on a narrow bed yered with bnkets, y a young woman with fire-red hair pstered to her temples with sweat. Her white shift was dirty from bor. Her face was pale with exhaustion, but her eyes were bright with tears and joy. Beside her stood a dark-haired man in simple white clothes, the hem of his tunic smudged with dirt as if he had rushed in from outside and never thought to change.

  Both of them were smiling.

  Smiling like this was a miracle.

  Smiling like the world had just given them everything.

  Ryan stared at them in numb disbelief.

  No God.

  No judgment.

  No Emma.

  No kids.

  Just this.

  The dark-haired man let out a shaking breath and stepped closer to the bed. His hands trembled as badly as the mother’s.

  “Well?” he asked, voice rough and hopeful all at once. “Boy or girl?”

  The question sliced through Ryan’s mind.

  He froze.

  His tiny chest hitched. His newborn body still cried and gasped, but inside, something in him turned cold and clear.

  That mattered.

  That mattered so much.

  He knew what the answer was supposed to be.

  Ryan Anderson.

  Husband.

  Father.

  Returned missionary.

  Software developer.

  A man who tied his boys’ ties before church and spoiled his daughter and kissed his wife in the kitchen while she made breakfast.

  A man.

  The older woman gnced down between the folds of white cloth.

  Then she smiled.

  “A healthy girl.”

  The room filled with joy.

  The red-haired woman broke into a wet ugh that became a sob halfway through. The dark-haired man covered his face for one second, then ughed too, stunned and full of wonder.

  “A daughter?” he breathed.

  “A girl,” the mother whispered. “Oh bless her. She’s perfect.”

  Ryan stopped crying.

  Not on purpose.

  His mind simply went bnk for a second, as if it had struck a wall too hard and could not decide what to do next.

  A girl.

  No.

  That was wrong.

  That was impossible.

  He tried to move.

  His tiny legs kicked uselessly inside the bnket. His hands clenched. His body felt different in ways he could not fully understand yet, but knew instantly and completely.

  Smaller.

  Softer.

  Wrong.

  Panic detonated inside him.

  No no no no no

  He tried to shout.

  Tried to say I’m Ryan.

  Tried to say send me back.

  Tried to ask where Emma was, where his children were, what kind of God would do this.

  What came out was the helpless, furious wail of an infant.

  The old woman chuckled under her breath. “Listen to her.”

  Her.

  The word hit like another death.

  The man moved to the bedside and knelt beside the red-haired woman. He looked down at Ryan with naked wonder on his face.

  “She has your hair,” he said softly.

  The mother smiled, exhausted and glowing all at once. “My little ruby head.”

  The old woman finally carried him closer and id him carefully into the mother’s waiting arms.

  The moment his body touched hers, instinct betrayed him.

  Warmth.

  Heartbeat.

  The smell of skin and milk and sweat.

  Something ancient inside him recognized safety and nearly melted into it before his mind recoiled in horror.

  No.

  No, this woman was not Emma.

  She was not his wife.

  Those were not his children.

  This was not his life.

  And yet his new body curled toward her anyway, helplessly seeking comfort.

  He hated it.

  The mother looked down at him like he was the sun rising just for her.

  “My little ruby head,” she whispered again, smiling through tears.

  The father ughed softly. “Then perhaps we already have the name.”

  The old woman raised an eyebrow. “Ruby?”

  The mother didn’t look up from the baby. “Ruby.”

  She said it like she had found treasure at the bottom of a river.

  “Ruby,” the father repeated, tasting it. Then he smiled wider. “Ruby.”

  The old woman made a small, thoughtful noise. “Ruby SunCleanser. Pretty enough.”

  SunCleanser.

  The name hit Ryan like cold water.

  Ruby.

  Not Ryan.

  Ruby.

  The mother brushed trembling fingers over the baby’s tiny forehead. “Our little treasure.”

  Ryan screamed.

  Not because he was cold.

  Not because he was hungry.

  Not because newborn lungs wanted exercise.

  He screamed because somewhere inside that tiny body, a thirty-two-year-old father finally understood the full shape of what had been taken from him.

  Emma was gone.

  His children were gone.

  His world was gone.

  And now even Ryan Anderson was gone.

  The baby Ruby cried harder, face turning red, fists trembling in the air.

  No one in the room understood why.

  The mother only gathered her closer, rocking gently despite her exhaustion.

  “Hush now,” she whispered. “Hush, Ruby. You’re safe.”

  Safe.

  Ryan almost ughed, if newborns could ugh.

  Instead he cried until his throat burned.

  He cried because he remembered Emma’s kiss over the center console.

  Because he remembered Lucy standing on his chest.

  Because he remembered the boys running back with candy after realizing it was Father’s Day.

  Because he remembered the sky through the shattered windshield.

  Because he had asked Heavenly Father why.

  And this, apparently, was the answer.

  A log cabin.

  A strange world.

  A new mother with fire-red hair.

  A new father with dark hair.

  A maid with practical hands and judgment in her voice.

  A little girl’s body wrapped in white cloth.

  Ruby.

  The room glowed with firelight and relief and joy that had nothing to do with him.

  Ryan cried until exhaustion dragged at him.

  The st thing he saw before sleep pulled him under was the red-haired woman smiling down at him like he was a blessing.

  The st thing he thought was simple, and broken.

  I want my family.