After all, the whole thing was so bizarre. If my mother-in-law didn't believe me—if she thought I was deliberately slandering Theo—her opinion of me would only sink lower.
I was still weighing how to break our cold war while simultaneously convincing her that Theo was plotting to kill us both when the next scene stopped me cold.
Madge strode into the kitchen and dumped the bird's nest porridge Theo had just bought straight into the trash.
Before I could process what I was seeing, she rushed to my side, her voice urgent. "Myra, please tell me you didn't drink that porridge that bastard brought home."
"If you did, we're going to the hospital right now to pump your stomach. He laced it with slow-acting poison."
"There are things I don't know how to explain to you—"
She didn't finish. My eyes went wide, and the words tumbled out before I could stop them. "Mom... you were reborn too?"
Madge froze. She stared at me, disbelief written across her face, then her voice cracked with emotion. "Myra, does that mean you also—"
"Thank God." Her eyes glistened. "Heaven finally opened its eyes and gave us a second chance."
We fell into each other's arms and wept.
A long time passed before our tears dried and our breathing steadied. I pulled back, wiping my face. "Mom, what do we do now? Should we follow Theo? Confront him and expose his fake death on the spot?"
Madge shook her head. Her jaw tightened, hatred sharpening every word. "If he wants to play dead, we'll let him stay dead."
Theo didn't come home that night.
Just after five in the morning, his secretary, Amy Baxter, showed up at the house looking frantic.
"Chairwoman," Amy said, worry creasing her brow, "Mr. Mason hasn't been answering his phone all night. There's an issue with that contract he was negotiating—the client isn't happy. I couldn't reach him, so I had no choice but to come here."
She glanced toward the hallway. "Is he still asleep?"
Madge and I exchanged a veiled look.
Amy was Theo's secretary in title. In reality, she was his mistress.
In our previous life, after Theo faked his death, he'd hidden at her apartment the entire time. And when I discovered Theo's journal—that carefully planted web of lies—it was Amy who had fabricated evidence of my supposed affair, presenting it to Madge and shattering what remained of our relationship.
She'd done everything in her power to help Theo get his hands on Madge's inheritance. All so the two of them could live out their days in luxury together.
Madge and I despised her.
But right now, we had to keep up the pretense—still feuding, still barely speaking.
Madge told her Theo had gone night fishing and never returned. Amy's face twisted into an expression of shock. "He's been gone all night? What if something happened to him?"
Right on cue, her phone rang. She answered, and the color drained from her face.
"This is bad." She turned to us, panic in her voice. "A friend of mine was walking along the shore last night and saw someone fall into the sea. She said... it looked like Mr. Mason."
I laughed inside. How predictable.
In our last life, Amy had used this exact lie to lead us around by the nose.
Now that Madge and I had been reborn, there was no way we'd fall for her act again.
We feigned shock and alarm, then hurried after her to the seaside pier.
A crowd had already gathered at the fishing spot. Theo's gear sat abandoned on the rocks, and a rat-faced man was loudly recounting how he'd witnessed someone plunge into the water the night before. Naturally, the commotion had drawn a swarm of onlookers eager for drama.
The rat-faced man, of course, was Amy's so-called friend.
