Cast Out at His Funeral, Reborn for RevengeChapter 1
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.