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 days—just 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 art—the 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.

"You—you 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 healthy—eating 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 grief—I 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 go—I 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 me—then 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 knew—Layla 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 household—big or small—fell on me.