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.

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 me—his 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 man—he'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 smell—for 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 nobody—a 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 collector—the 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 hurt—Nathaniel'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 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?