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?

So in this second life, I was determined to learn my lesson.

In the months since my rebirth, I'd stayed in and refused every chance to see Nathaniel, giving him back to Vivian. I thought that would be enough to stop the whole mistake before it started. I never expected Nathaniel to show up at my door.

In the middle of the night, someone pounded on our front gate.

My parents were still at the factory. My younger siblings were fast asleep. I dragged myself out of bed, threw a jacket over my shoulders, and went to answer.

"Who is it?"

"It's me. Nathaniel."

My stomach dropped.

I'd been trying so hard to avoid any entanglement with him. Why was he here?

When I didn't open the door after answering, he knocked again.

"Is Layla home? I need her. It's urgent!"

"Who's asking for me?"

Layla appeared beside me, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

"It's Nathaniel. No idea what he wants this late."

With Layla there, I went ahead and opened the gate. Nathaniel stood on the doorstep, caked in mud, a wreck.

"What happened to you…?" Layla was taken aback.

Nathaniel was usually careful about his appearance. He didn't own much, but he always kept himself clean.

"Layla, please. I'm begging you. Save Vivian."

He dropped to his knees right there in the dirt and pressed his forehead to the ground at my sister's feet.

"She's bleeding so much. I can't stop it—"

"Just save her, I'll do whatever you want. You want me to leave Vivian and marry your sister instead, fine, I'll do it—"

A life was at stake. Layla didn't wait for him to finish. She was already turning back into the yard, wheeling out the family bicycle. She told me to stay and watch over the younger ones; she'd be back as soon as she could.

I sat in the courtyard until the sky turned pale. I made breakfast for my siblings. Only then did Layla come home.

Blood had smeared across her clothes, soaking her white top red.

"Here, wash up."

I brought her a basin of water and told her to change so I could scrub the clothes.

"No point. This one's done for."

She drank some water, then sat me down beside her.

"Listen to me." Her expression was dead serious, her eyes fixed on my face. "If you ever end up pregnant before you're married—no matter who the man is—you absolutely cannot just buy pills and try to deal with it on your own. You tell me. I'll take you to a clinic."

I pulled free of her grip, stunned. "What are you saying? I'm still a virgin. Why would you suddenly—"

No. It wasn't sudden at all.

Nathaniel's panic. Vivian's unstoppable bleeding. Layla's warning. The pieces locked together in my head and formed one truth.

Vivian was pregnant. And the baby was Nathaniel's.

In this era, getting pregnant before marriage was the kind of shame that would get you condemned behind your back for the rest of your life.

To keep people from finding out, they hadn't dared go to a hospital. They'd bought pills and tried to handle it themselves.

The result was Vivian hemorrhaging. Nathaniel had no other option. He came to my sister in the dead of night.

Layla had worked at the county health clinic before. Anyone in the neighborhood with a headache or a fever who didn't want to bother with the hospital would come to her.

"So… is Vivian okay?"

"Hard to say. The county hospital couldn't handle it, so they sent her to the city in the middle of the night." Layla paused. "I heard Vivian's father sent people. Not sure if that's true, but there were other people in the car besides Nathaniel."

"Oh…" I set a bowl of rice in front of Layla and went back to my room.

In my previous life, Nathaniel and I never had children.

I'd tried everything—checkups, folk remedies, temples, prayers.

Nathaniel never cared much about it. He said he didn't like kids.

After I pushed and pleaded long enough, he finally gave in and agreed to go to the hospital for an exam.