Chapter 1

My husband and his first love drank pesticide together and killed themselves for love.

My mother-in-law laid the blame on me, and waved my husband's suicide note around, demanding the two of them be buried together.

"When they were alive, they couldn't be together because you stood in the way. His last wish was a joint burial, and you have to agree to it."

When I refused, my mother-in-law flew into a rage.

She rallied her relatives and friends and turned on me at the funeral.

My adopted son took a beating all over his body just to get me out of that funeral alive.

I was so moved that I poured my whole heart into raising him to adulthood, and left him a good deal of the family's wealth.

But just as I lay dying,

my husband and his first love came back from the dead, standing at the head of my bed, and laughed out loud.

"We never really died. The so-called joint burial and the funeral were just a way to fake our deaths and make you suffer a little."

"Thank you for raising our son so well. From now on the three of us will live a good life on your money."

Only then did I understand.

That so-called joint burial had been nothing but a play staged to make me the sucker who took the fall.

But there was nothing I could do. I could only watch the three of them, happy together as a family....

Given the chance to do it over,

I didn't leave this time. I calmly nodded.

"Since it was his last wish, of course I won't refuse. I'll arrange their joint burial right away."

One:

"Ronnie and Georgia were childhood sweethearts. If you hadn't shoved your way in, why would he ever have married you?"

"Ronnie already asked you for a divorce. If you'd agreed, would they have had to prove their love by drinking pesticide and dying together?"

"Today you're going to agree to bury Ronnie and Georgia together."

"And not only that, you're going to kneel here for three days and three nights and kowtow ten thousand times to apologize."

My mother-in-law, Kay Armstrong, glared at me, righteous with fury.

She had completely forgotten that she was the one who set me and Ronnie Weiss up, that Ronnie had come to my door again and again to ask for my hand, that I was his lawful wife, that we had even had a sweet spell together, and that it was only after that money-grubbing Georgia Parsons came back divorced that we turned into a bitter couple.

But she didn't notice the change in my eyes either.

She was too busy forcing me to kneel and kowtow to the coffins of Ronnie Weiss and his first love, Georgia Parsons.

That wasn't all.

She wanted me to set the record straight in front of everyone.

To declare that Georgia was Ronnie's real wife, that Georgia was the true daughter-in-law of the Weiss family, that I was nothing but a mistress, a second wife, that I had stolen what was hers, and that I owed her a lifetime of atonement.

To anyone watching, it would look like Kay Armstrong had lost her only son and broken down so completely that she'd thrown all reason aside.

But no one helped me.

Everyone thought Kay Armstrong was a pitiful woman, widowed in middle age and now childless in her old age.

So one by one they urged me to give in to her, to let it go, not to argue with two dead people like Ronnie and Georgia.

In my last life I listened to all this and could only stew in my anger. But this time I looked closely, and I saw it.

Kay Armstrong was seething with rage, but there was too little grief in her eyes. She hadn't even shed a single tear.

She was waiting for me to refuse.

The moment I refused, she could rile up the relatives and friends at the funeral, call me vicious, call me an undutiful daughter-in-law, and then, with the air of someone about to beat me to death to bury me alongside Ronnie and Georgia, she'd start swinging.

The moment she raised her hand,

my dutiful, sweet-natured adopted son, Theodore Weiss, would rush in to shield me, pull me out of the funeral, and weep that he'd already lost his father and absolutely could not lose his mother too.

And I would foolishly be moved, and with everyone fanning the flames, I'd spend the rest of my life lifting Theodore up, right up until I died, when I finally learned the whole truth....

I sank into the painful memories of my last moments and said nothing.

Seeing this, Theodore grew a little impatient. He glanced at the coffins of his birth parents in the hall and frowned slightly.

After a few seconds' hesitation, he rushed forward and threw his arms out in front of me.

"It was Dad who was irresponsible. He had Mom and still couldn't keep himself away from another woman. That's a cheater, that's a man eating from his bowl while eyeing the pot."

"My mom just couldn't accept a cheater getting to be happy with his so-called true love. That's why she refused the divorce."

"My dad did say he'd kill himself if the divorce and remarriage went through, and my mom egging him on, telling him to hurry up and go die if he was going to die, that wasn't right either. But no matter how you look at it, my mom did nothing wrong."

"Anyone who betrays a marriage deserves to die."

"As for today's joint burial, my mom is...."

I stepped forward, put on a doting look, patted his head, and cut him off.

Then I stared at the two coffins in the mourning hall and let out a sigh.

"Willing."

The word landed, and everyone froze for a moment.

I used that pocket of silence to add two more lines.

"I'm willing to have them buried together!"

"Not only that, I'll personally arrange their funeral, and once they're laid to rest, I'll kneel at their grave for seven days and seven nights to atone for my sins."