Chapter 2

I twisted aside, and he grabbed at empty air.

"I'm spending my own money. Is there a problem?"

Clyde's face darkened. "Once we're married, we're one family. The mortgage isn't even paid off. Every cent you spend, you clear with me first!"

Phil nudged his head into my palm again.

【Mom! This scumbag is running a mind game on you!】

【In your last life, after you died, he didn't just refuse to speak up for you. He signed the letter of forgiveness himself! Your grandma and grandpa collapsed overnight from the shock, and he turned right around and used his son-in-law status to swallow your family's estate whole!】

Phil's voice caught for a moment.

【Last life, when Grandpa passed, he kept saying your name to the very end. Grandma ended up alone in a nursing home, her pension card in Clyde's grip, having to ask him even for medicine money.】

I clenched the phone, my knuckles white.

Clyde was still going. "What's the point of buying that cheap phone? Waste of money! You'd be better off with a secondhand iPhone. Cheaper, and it looks like something…"

I ignored him and tore the seal off the phone box.

"What are you doing!"

"It's unsealed now. Can't be returned."

Clyde went ashen. He looked ready to say more, then swallowed it back down.

"Fine, you bought it, you bought it. But when we get home, we do it the usual way. Don't you dare give me away!"

It wasn't until we stepped through the door that I understood what the usual way meant.

Brenda grabbed my hand and threw me a frantic look.

"Cheryl's back! Come, come, everyone's been waiting on you!"

"Tell Denise yourself. It's not that I won't buy it for her, it's that you, the older woman marrying her brother, wouldn't allow it!"

Denise sat curled up on the couch, eyes red, glaring at me.

Clyde circled around behind me and chimed in. "Your wife runs the money in this house. She said no, so Mom's hands are tied."

Then he shot me a quick wink.

I knew that look too well.

Every time Denise wanted designer shoes or some sky-priced tutoring program, Brenda didn't want to pay and didn't want to offend her daughter.

So she'd push me out front as the target and say it was me, the woman who married into the family, refusing to allow it.

Phil, my dowry dog, told me that last life I'd scrimped and saved to give Denise eight hundred a month for living expenses.

And Brenda had still made snide remarks about it, saying she'd meant to give three thousand.

But her pension was only a bit over two thousand. She could never have afforded it.

And yet Denise's hatred landed squarely, fully, on me.

This life, I would not be the scapegoat again.

I walked over to Denise and took her hand.

"Denise, getting into a top-tier high school is huge. What's one phone next to that?"

"Other kids' parents throw in the whole iPhone setup plus travel money on top. All our Denise wants is one phone. That's already so reasonable of her."

Denise's eyes lit up in an instant.

"You mean it?"

"Of course." I turned to Brenda. "Mom, take Denise out tomorrow and buy it. Nothing matters more than the girl being happy."

Brenda's lips trembled a couple of times. She dropped the act entirely.

"Cheryl, what's gotten into you? A phone that costs over ten thousand, that's several months of my pension. Denise is in high school, she should have her mind on her studies, not on chasing vanity with a phone that expensive!"

Clyde lost it too. "Cheryl, is your head full of water? Blowing five thousand on a phone for yourself wasn't enough, now you want to lead Denise astray?"

I put on my most innocent face. "Mom, weren't you the one who said you'd buy Denise an iPhone? So how come now buying an iPhone is vanity?"

"Or was it just an empty promise you made to string Denise along from the start?"