Chapter 1

Out in the countryside they say an unlucky old parent gets sent off by three kinds of sons: the poison son, the rope son, and the water son.

I'd always thought that with millions in redevelopment money, and three boys I'd spoiled rotten their whole lives, my old age was set.

But when a stroke left me paralyzed, my three sons decided I was dead weight. They tied me up with rope and dragged me into an abandoned pigsty.

They split my savings between them and stood there watching while I drank down that bottle of filthy water laced with rat poison.

Only the daughter I'd thrown out came to me. She scraped together borrowed money and half-crawled her way there to see me one last time.

The poison son, the rope son, the water son. Every last one of them had sent me to my grave.

Then I opened my eyes and it was the day of my sixtieth birthday dinner again.

My three sons stood in the yard with their wives, all raising their glasses to me with fake warmth.

"Mom, just give us the PIN to your bankbook. We'll take care of you the rest of your days, we promise."

I knocked their cups over with one sweep of my arm and announced it loud, in front of every relative and friend there.

"My savings and the four storefronts in town all go to my daughter."

"You three ungrateful dogs, get out of my house right now!"

...

The words hadn't even finished leaving my mouth before every pair of chopsticks in that yard went still.

Albert Finch was the fastest to react. He slammed the table.

"Mom! Have you lost your mind, gone senile on us? What kind of garbage is this to say on a happy day?"

In my last life it was that same face, smiling outside the pigsty, saying, "The old bag's still breathing."

I raised my cane and pointed it at the three of them.

"I'm perfectly clear-headed. Clearer than I've ever been in my life."

Not one person in the yard dared to say a word.

But my daughter, Beryl Finch, stood trembling at the very edge of the crowd.

In my last life, when she heard what had happened to me, she was so short on money she could only borrow three hundred dollars, then half-crawl her way to that pigsty.

She knelt beside me and wept, but I'd already stopped breathing.

I strode toward her, cane in hand, and pushed the property deed and the bankbook into her arms.

"Mom..." Beryl backed away, tears splashing down.

"I can't take it. Winston Finch and the others will beat me to death."

"This is what your mother owes you. Anyone who lays a hand on you today, I'll crack his skull open if it's the last thing I do with this old body."

There was a crash as Winston flipped the round rosewood table in front of him.

"So you're playing favorites, Mom! We're the roots of the Finch family! You're handing everything to a married-off girl who's nothing but a drain?"

I took a step toward him.

"Go on, then, beat me to death. Then nobody will ever know you stole twenty thousand off me last month to gamble it away."

That took the wind right out of Winston.

I turned to Jayden Finch's wife next. "And you can wipe that glare off your face."

"You've been sneaking rice out of this house back to your parents, a little at a time, close to a hundred pounds of it by now. You really thought I didn't know?"

All of it was what they'd bragged about right in front of me in my last life, when I lay in that bed unable to move.

The relatives in the yard started whispering to each other. Jayden's wife and Winston stood off to the side, faces gone the color of raw liver.

Albert opened his mouth to say more, and I jabbed the cane straight into his chest.

"Get out, or I'll call the police right now and have you arrested for theft."

Albert cringed, grabbed his wife, and left, Jayden's wife right on their heels.

Winston couldn't stomach being torn apart in front of everyone. He forced out one last vicious line.

"Fine. You want to give the storefronts in town to this useless girl, you old hag, go ahead."

"But this old house out here is what the ancestors left us. Tomorrow I'm bringing the mayor and the clan elder to settle this."

"Let's see how you go on living in this village."

With that he walked off without looking back.

The relatives in the yard began to drift away, every one of them looking at me like I was a madwoman as they went.

Beryl was still standing where she was, clutching those documents, shaking all over.

I patted the back of her hand.

"Don't be afraid."

The clan, the mayor, the ancestral rules. In my last life those were the very things that crushed me for a lifetime.

This time, I'll be waiting for them to come.