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 way—I 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 paint—the 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?"
"Hey—you 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 dream—the 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 moonlight—the 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 longing—he'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 scratch—just 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?
