Cast Out at His Funeral, Reborn for Revenge

After my husband's funeral, his lawyer showed up at the door.

Ms. Whitney, your husband signed this house over to the university before he died. You need to pack your things and be out as soon as possible.

My legs were bad. I begged him for a few more daysjust long enough to gather my husband's paintings, the work he'd left behind.

"Ms. Whitney, it seems I haven't made myself clear."

"What your husband donated was this house and every valuable painting and piece of calligraphy in it."

"You may take your personal effects. Nothing else."

I had devoted my entire life to Nathaniel Swanson. I handled every mundane chore so he could lose himself in his artthe laundry, the cooking, the thousand small things that kept a household running.

And for all of it, what Nathaniel left me on his deathbed was one sentence:

"Teresa Whitney, in my next life I never want to be your husband again. You're beneath me."

He kept a spotless moon in his heart, so he left me to grovel for loose change in the dirt.

The devotion I thought would earn gratitude was, in his mouth, nothing but cheap self-abasement.

If only.

If only I could live it all again.

He could chase his moon. And I would gather my own sixpence.

When I opened my eyes, the world had changed.

The joint pain that had tormented me for half my life was gone, replaced by a lightness I hadn't felt in decades.

This place was

Before I could make sense of it, someone threw their arms around me from behind.

"Teresa! Why are you standing there spacing out? Aren't we going to the art exhibition?"

It was my best friend, Stella Simmons.

"Youyou had cancer, you died, you were gone"

The words tumbled out before I could stop them. Stella's face scrunched with displeasure, and she grabbed my cheeks, telling me to take it back right now.

"What is wrong with you? I'm right here, perfectly healthyeating well, sleeping well, not a thing wrong with me!"

"I take it back, I take it back!" Once wasn't enough. I said it again and again.

Cancer had whittled Stella down to almost nothing. If I could help it, I would never let her go through that again.

All the missing, all the griefI grabbed her and held on tight, held on like I'd never let go.

"Okay, okay" My intensity made her shy. She patted me where I'd buried myself against her. "You know your precious Nathaniel Swanson is going to be at the exhibition today, right? If we don't hurry, you'll miss him!"

Nathaniel Swanson.

That name still stung somewhere deep in my chest.

The humiliation of having nowhere to goI never wanted to feel that again.

I had been reborn. I was not going to end up old and homeless a second time.

"Stell, I don't want to go. I'm not feeling well"

"All right, what a waste of those tickets I worked so hard to get." Stella offered to walk me home first and then go enjoy the exhibition on her own. I nodded and let her.

When I got back, my parents were at work. My younger siblings hadn't come home from school yet. Only my eldest sister Layla was there, sweeping the floor.

She looked surprised to see methen her face soured, and she asked why I wasn't at the exhibition seeing Nathaniel in the flesh.

"Come on, Layla, Teresa's not feeling well!"

"Hmph. One look at that Swanson man and she won't be sick anymore." She raised the broom like she meant to sweep me right out the door, but when she actually reached me, the swings barely grazed the air.

I knewLayla despised Nathaniel.

She thought he was a drifter, the kind of man who'd never make a reliable husband.

"He can't do a lick of honest work and doesn't know the first thing about making a living. What kind of future is he going to give you?"

Back then I'd been stubborn, convinced Nathaniel was simply an unrecognized genius. Once someone saw his talent, everyone else would have to see it too.

Turns out, Layla and I were both right. After we married, Nathaniel was hardly ever home. He spent his days drifting wherever inspiration took him, sketching from life, while every last thing in that householdbig or smallfell on me.

Nathaniel's art would indeed appreciate in value over the years. But by then he'd donated every last painting and scroll to the school he credited as his "great patron." Not a single piece left for mehis most loyal follower.

The day I married Nathaniel, Layla was so angry she stayed home.

The night before, she'd still been pushing me to run from the wedding:

"Teresa, just listen to your sister this once. It matters who you tie your life to. That Swanson manhe's not the kind who'll ever settle down and give you a real life. You go with him, sure, maybe it looks good on the outside, but how miserable you are inside? Nobody's gonna know that but you."

She'd even hired a donkey cart. If I was willing to go, she'd take me to the city herself to start a business.

But the next morning, it was still my brother who carried me out the door.

After that, I never saw Layla again.

Looking back now, she tried to save me over and over. I was the one too stubborn to listen.

This time, I held her tight, eyes brimming with tears, and said against her ear:

"I'm sorry. I was wrong."

She hadn't expected this. She stood frozen, the broom slipping from her fingers without her even noticing.

She heard me crying, and all she could do was pat my back the way she used to when we were little, trying to calm me down.

Her warm arms, that familiar smellfor the first time in so long, I felt like I was home.

Nothing like Nathaniel's cold, lifeless house.

I was never going back to that. Falling asleep to the smell of ink, and everything I put on paper was suffering.

I didn't go to the art exhibition. I lay down in my room and slept peacefully for once.

After dinner, Stella came to find me again, bursting with gossip about what she'd seen that day.

"Teresa, honestly? Good thing you didn't go."

"Why?"

"If you'd gone, your heart would've shattered on the spot." Stella's eyes were wide. "Nathaniel confessed his feelings for Vivian Bennett in front of everyone!"

Vivian Bennett.

I turned the name over in my mind, again and again.

In my previous life, Nathaniel never had the nerve to do something like that.

Vivian's father was a man of real standing in the city. As his only daughter, she'd been sent to our county for labor.

Labor, they called it, but her hands didn't have a single callus on them.

Every day she sat in an office sketching and writing, just waiting for someone to bring her back to the city.

That air of refinement around her pulled at Nathaniel constantly, like something he couldn't stop reaching toward.

It was because of Vivian that a place like our little county even had something as grand as an art exhibition.

Everyone knew. The whole thing existed to keep her entertained.

A girl like that wasn't someone just anyone could reach.

Back then, Nathaniel was nobodya nameless "folk artist" working in the dirt.

Talented enough to look impressive here, sure, among people who didn't know the first thing about art. Big fish, tiny pond.

But outside this county?

Nathaniel's work wasn't worth a damn.

That's not me talking. I heard it myself, years later, pressed against the other side of a wall.

The man speaking was a collectorthe kind who lived to acquire pieces.

He'd just paid a steep price for Nathaniel's *Shepherd Boy with Ox*, then turned right around and told someone beside him that Nathaniel didn't understand art at all.

"Then why'd you buy his painting?"

The collector leaned in and dropped his voice. "Because the man knows how to market himself. Once he's dead, those paintings will triple in price."

Hearing that left me torn in half. It hurtNathaniel's life's work, in the hands of someone who saw it as nothing but an investment. But part of me was satisfied, too, because in a way, the man had just confirmed what I'd done.

That's right. Every bit of Nathaniel's marketing was my doing.

The gallery visits, the curator meetings, the networking with people in the art world. Nathaniel hated crowds, hated putting himself out there for a few extra dollars. He couldn't lower himself. It would compromise the dignity of being an artist, he said.

He couldn't afford a real agent. He just painted all day, staring at the pile of canvases growing taller and taller, waiting for me to bring him something to eat.

Looking after him meant I never held a steady job. The whole household survived on my thin dowry and whatever my family scraped together. Some days we ate; some days we didn't.

So I started trying to sell Nathaniel's paintings myself.

Little by little, I taught myself how to pitch artwork, how to get his pieces in front of people. Enthusiasts started calling his simple, unschooled style a kind of back-to-basics pastoral art, and slowly his name picked up traction in the market.

But the sneers and ridicule I swallowed along the wayI never told him about any of it.

He basked in the flowers and applause, soaked up the spotlight, and seeing him happy was enough to make me happy.

Back then I thought: as long as Nathaniel is happy, that's enough.

He didn't owe me anything. The bitterness I ate was my own willing choice.

Now, I was done being his silent, invisible workhorse.

I wanted to see just how Nathaniel Swanson would become a "celebrated artist of virtue and talent" without my help.

Word that Vivian Bennett had fallen for some penniless nobody spread through the county fast.

For reasons no one could figure out, she'd accepted Nathaniel's pursuit, and the two of them were constantly seen walking together.

Every time Stella spotted them, she'd grumble for ages:

"What does Vivian see in him? No parents, can't do anything but paintthe man can't even farm a single acre right."

"You think Nathaniel's got something on Vivian? How else did he get his hooks into her?"

"Heyyou don't think Nathaniel's gonna follow Vivian back to the city, do you"

She chattered on and on with her gossip, never giving me a moment's peace.

I set my high school textbooks down in front of her and told her to study with me.

"What's the point of studying this stuff?" Stella looked baffled. "The college entrance exam's been suspended for ages. You'd be better off helping your sister in the fields."

"You just don't get it." I put on a mysterious air. "I had a dreamthe college entrance exam's coming back soon. And when it does, college graduates are going to be the ones everyone fights over."

"Oh, come on!" Stella didn't buy it. She grabbed my textbook and started fanning herself with it. "You're better off gossiping with me. Weren't you all over Nathaniel before? Running to his place every day. Now you never go. Do you know something?"

Know something? Of course I did.

Looking into Stella's curious eyes, I wanted so badly to tell her the truth:

Because Nathaniel had come back with his memories too.

In our last life, Vivian Bennett was his white moonlightthe untouchable ideal he never got over.

How many nights did he refuse to come to bed because he was too busy writing love letters to Vivian?

All that raw, desperate longinghe'd leave the pages scattered across the desk for me to gather up one by one and put away in a box set aside just for them.

He assumed I was too simple to understand his feelings, too stupid to read the devotion on those pages, so he never once bothered hiding how far he'd crossed the line.

He loved Vivian Bennett. He loved the moon he could never have.

For Vivian, he gave up a touring exhibition and ran off to take a teaching job at whatever school she worked at.

Threw away every honor he'd earned, started from scratchjust to be a colleague she'd nod at in passing.

I had cried, I had fought. And all he ever gave me was one weightless line:

Vivian and I have never crossed a line.

Right. Never crossed a line.

His love letters were still hidden in that box. His feelings had never been spoken to Vivian. His body had never strayed.

What excuse did I even have to cry?

Hadn't I been the one who forced this marriage into existence?

Hadn't I been the one who silently allowed his feelings for Vivian?

Everything wrong was my fault. What right did I have to blame him?

So in this second life, I was determined to learn my lesson.

In the months since my rebirth, I'd stayed in and refused every chance to see Nathaniel, giving him back to Vivian. I thought that would be enough to stop the whole mistake before it started. I never expected Nathaniel to show up at my door.

In the middle of the night, someone pounded on our front gate.

My parents were still at the factory. My younger siblings were fast asleep. I dragged myself out of bed, threw a jacket over my shoulders, and went to answer.

"Who is it?"

"It's me. Nathaniel."

My stomach dropped.

I'd been trying so hard to avoid any entanglement with him. Why was he here?

When I didn't open the door after answering, he knocked again.

"Is Layla home? I need her. It's urgent!"

"Who's asking for me?"

Layla appeared beside me, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

"It's Nathaniel. No idea what he wants this late."

With Layla there, I went ahead and opened the gate. Nathaniel stood on the doorstep, caked in mud, a wreck.

"What happened to you?" Layla was taken aback.

Nathaniel was usually careful about his appearance. He didn't own much, but he always kept himself clean.

"Layla, please. I'm begging you. Save Vivian."

He dropped to his knees right there in the dirt and pressed his forehead to the ground at my sister's feet.

"She's bleeding so much. I can't stop it"

"Just save her, I'll do whatever you want. You want me to leave Vivian and marry your sister instead, fine, I'll do it"

A life was at stake. Layla didn't wait for him to finish. She was already turning back into the yard, wheeling out the family bicycle. She told me to stay and watch over the younger ones; she'd be back as soon as she could.

I sat in the courtyard until the sky turned pale. I made breakfast for my siblings. Only then did Layla come home.

Blood had smeared across her clothes, soaking her white top red.

"Here, wash up."

I brought her a basin of water and told her to change so I could scrub the clothes.

"No point. This one's done for."

She drank some water, then sat me down beside her.

"Listen to me." Her expression was dead serious, her eyes fixed on my face. "If you ever end up pregnant before you're marriedno matter who the man isyou absolutely cannot just buy pills and try to deal with it on your own. You tell me. I'll take you to a clinic."

I pulled free of her grip, stunned. "What are you saying? I'm still a virgin. Why would you suddenly"

No. It wasn't sudden at all.

Nathaniel's panic. Vivian's unstoppable bleeding. Layla's warning. The pieces locked together in my head and formed one truth.

Vivian was pregnant. And the baby was Nathaniel's.

In this era, getting pregnant before marriage was the kind of shame that would get you condemned behind your back for the rest of your life.

To keep people from finding out, they hadn't dared go to a hospital. They'd bought pills and tried to handle it themselves.

The result was Vivian hemorrhaging. Nathaniel had no other option. He came to my sister in the dead of night.

Layla had worked at the county health clinic before. Anyone in the neighborhood with a headache or a fever who didn't want to bother with the hospital would come to her.

"So is Vivian okay?"

"Hard to say. The county hospital couldn't handle it, so they sent her to the city in the middle of the night." Layla paused. "I heard Vivian's father sent people. Not sure if that's true, but there were other people in the car besides Nathaniel."

"Oh" I set a bowl of rice in front of Layla and went back to my room.

In my previous life, Nathaniel and I never had children.

I'd tried everythingcheckups, folk remedies, temples, prayers.

Nathaniel never cared much about it. He said he didn't like kids.

After I pushed and pleaded long enough, he finally gave in and agreed to go to the hospital for an exam.

We hadn't known until the test. Nathaniel's count came back deadzero motility, zero chance. The doctor said he would never father a child in his life.

"I already told you, stop thinking about having kids."

I suggested IVF, a sperm bank. He refused every option.

I let it go. His ego couldn't take it, and I didn't push.

But now Vivian Bennett was pregnant.

Nathaniel, who supposedly couldn't have children.

I tried to feel my sister out indirectly, asking whether the baby Vivian was carrying was really his. She shot me a look.

"If it wasn't his, you think he'd be fussing over it like that? He'd lose his mind."

Right. If it wasn't his, he'd never have stomached it.

A bitter laugh escaped me, and a blurred memory suddenly came into focus.

Not long after the wedding, Nathaniel had gone away on a business trip for a month.

When he came back, I'd missed him so badly I couldn't keep my hands off himkept pulling him toward the bedroom, night after night. He turned me down every time.

Back then I'd wondered if I'd done something wrong, if I'd upset him somehow.

Now I understood. It wasn't that he didn't want to. He couldn't.

He'd had a vasectomy. He was still recovering and couldn't sleep with me.

He'd let them cut him open rather than risk me ever carrying his child.

For Vivian Bennett, there was truly nothing he wouldn't do.

The next morning, I ran into Nathaniel again.

He was blocking my front door, waiting just to see me.

Stubble, bloodshot eyes, dried blood at the hem of his shirt. He looked wrecked.

"I know you've been reborn too." No preamble. "I need to ask you for one thing. For everything we were to each other in our last life."

I turned to leave. He stepped into my path.

He clearly wasn't going anywhere until he'd had this out.

"Quit fighting me on this. I'm begging you for one thingone thingand after that we're done. I won't bother you again. You go your way, I go mine, and we never cross paths."

"Cut the crap. What is it?" I'd been trying to figure out how to shake Nathaniel loose, and here he was, coming to me first.

"Have a child for me."