Chapter 3

Beryl's knees went weak.

In my last life it went exactly like this. She dropped to her knees and begged them to let her husband go.

The more she begged, the harder they squeezed her, until in the end they even cut off the money for his treatment.

I let go of Beryl, turned around, and slapped Albert across the face, once, twice.

"You so much as touch a hair on my son-in-law's head at that hospital, and I'll go straight to the kitchen for a cleaver and split you open first."

Albert clutched his cheek, the look in his eyes shifting from disbelief to fear.

He'd known me sixty years and never once seen me like this.

"Mom, you've lost your mind."

"If I have, you're the one who drove me to it. Get out!"

Albert stumbled back three steps. Great-Uncle Silas and the other clan elders traded glances, and none of them dared say another word.

I took Beryl by the arm and turned to leave.

"Mom, if they really do go to the hospital—"

"We're going there right now."

At the inpatient ward, before we even rounded the corner of the hallway, I heard Julia's shrill voice.

"Don't let this woman fool you! She ran off with her old mother's money to elope with some other man, and she doesn't care whether her own husband lives or dies!"

At the nurses' station, a few of the nurses stopped what they were doing and looked over.

Beryl froze where she stood, tears sliding down one after another.

Julia turned, saw us, and a flicker of triumph crossed her face.

"Well, well. The old lady's come to shield this shameless little tramp?"

"Hand over the bankbook and the property deed today, or I'll make sure she can't show her face in this hospital."

I took a deep breath and kept myself calm.

"Julia, if you want to settle accounts, then let's settle them properly."

"The fifteenth of last month, room 203 at the Riverside Inn in town, you and Riley, that contractor from the site, got a room together, and you accidentally paid for it on Winston's card, didn't you?"

The murmur in the lobby cut off all at once.

"That hundred thousand for the bricks when your brother built his house, that came out of Winston's project accounts too, cooked off the books by you."

"Should I call Winston right now and tell him to go home and check the ledgers?"

Winston had said all this in my last life, drunk, sitting at the edge of my paralyzed bed, crying.

He said he hated it, hated how spineless he was.

But once he was done hating, the next day he tied me up in the pigsty just the same.

"You wretched old hag, you're making it up!"

Julia shrieked and threw herself at me like she'd gone mad.

That was exactly what I'd been waiting for.

I brought the cane up, dead on target, and cracked it against her kneecap.

"Aah—"

She screamed and pitched forward, hitting the floor.

Security came running from the far end of the hall, took her by both arms, and dragged her out.

I took Beryl to go pay the next month's hospital fees in full.

The phone in my pocket rang. It was Chad Lawrence from the county housing authority in town.

"Ma'am, listen to me, this won't stay quiet much longer."

"That old country house of yours, the official paperwork is about to come down. It's being zoned into the core parcel of the new development district. You're looking at ten million at the very least in compensation."

"Word's already leaking out around town. Whatever you do, guard that property deed, and watch yourself."

In my last life, it was this money that made my three sons tie me up and throw me into the pigsty.

This time, it had come even earlier than I remembered.