Chapter 1

My mother-in-law slipped something into my food while I was pregnant. I lost the baby, and my body was never the same again.

Before I could even confront her, my husband was already holding out her psychiatric evaluation report and apologizing to me.

"Mom didn't mean it. She wore herself out taking care of you, that's how she ended up with a mental illness."

"You lost the baby, and Mom and I are heartbroken too. If you keep blaming her, she'll have nothing left but to kill herself to make it right."

Then my mother-in-law knelt down and begged me to forgive her, promising she'd get proper treatment.

I was wrecked, body and soul, with no strength left to fight. So I swallowed it all down.

In the years that followed, her condition came and went.

On her good days she treated me like her own daughter. On her bad days she beat me like I was a stranger.

In the end, whatever my husband and I had fell apart, and we divorced.

But the moment I finished packing and walked out the door, I heard her say to his new woman:

"Don't you worry. The truth is, there's nothing wrong with me."

"But if you want to retire early, faking a mental illness is the easiest way to do it."

I pounded on the door and demanded an answer, but she only laughed at me through it, calling me a fool.

"If you'd just handed over your paycheck, I wouldn't have bothered faking anything for a little pension money."

I fell apart completely, and after everything she'd put me through over those years, my heart gave out right there on the spot.

Given a second chance,

I didn't expose her act, because I wanted to help her retire early and live the good life too...

One:

"Minnie Estes, sweetie, take this with you. I looked up all kinds of nutrition videos and made you a proper prenatal meal."

"Bring it to the office. Just heat it up at lunch and it's ready to eat."

My mother-in-law, Frieda Smith, smiled until her whole face folded into wrinkles. Anyone watching would have thought I had the gentlest, most devoted mother-in-law, one who treated me like her own flesh and blood.

But only I knew that wasn't the truth.

The meal looked delicious. It tasted good too.

But Frieda had packed it full of laxatives.

In my last life I'd been so touched that I even made a point of thanking her after I finished eating.

I never got her reply. My stomach twisted, and I ran to the bathroom, again and again, until I passed out on the tile floor. When I came to, the baby was gone. I'd bled so heavily that my body never recovered.

I figured out fast enough that it was the meal.

But I could never get justice for me or my child.

Because Frieda hadn't done it "on purpose."

She'd developed schizophrenia, you see, and mistook the laxatives for seasoning when she stirred them in.

She'd had the runs herself, and she was so consumed with guilt she tried to end her own life several times.

So I was "forced" to forgive her. And because of my health, I quit my job and stayed home to care for the woman my miscarriage had supposedly driven mad.

It wasn't until I was dying that I finally learned the truth. Frieda never had schizophrenia at all.

She'd done it for two reasons.

The first: she knew that once you'd carried a schizophrenia diagnosis for five years, you could retire early.

The second: I hadn't handed over my paycheck or my husband Kevin Donaldson's, and she'd been nursing a grudge over it...

Remembering all of it,

I wanted nothing more than to fling the meal in her face. But the thought of that forged evaluation report stopped me, and I forced my anger back down.

"Thanks, Mom. I'll clean my plate!"

After thanking Frieda, I took the meal box and walked out the door. Except I didn't head to work. I turned the car around and drove straight to the hospital...