I left the hospital before noon.
Adrian was waiting for me in the lobby, standing beside the car with a calm expression restored to his face. He had even had time to buy coffee. In my first life, I took it as a sign that he was trying to stay strong for us.
Now I knew he simply hated looking like he was losing control.
“The doctor said you need to get plenty of rest,” he said.
“I know.”
He opened the car door for me. I got in without thanking him. Not because I wanted to punish him. I simply wasn’t ready to say the words that had once felt so ordinary.
Throughout the drive, Adrian glanced at me several times.
“Do you remember what happened at the funeral?”
“Not much.”
“You cried. Then you passed out.”
I stared out the window. The city buildings slid backward, carrying away the faces that still didn’t know my life had just been given back to me.
“Was Vivian there?” I asked.
Adrian’s hands tightened around the steering wheel.
“Yes. She was very worried about you.”
Of course.
Vivian always knew when to show up. Too quick to be called a coincidence, too perfectly timed to be dismissed as an ordinary coincidence.
“Who did she go home with?”
Adrian glanced at me. “Why are you asking?”
“Just curious.”
I gave him a small smile. The smile of a grieving wife, not the smile of a woman who had just remembered how her best friend killed her son.
“She went home alone,” Adrian replied.
In my first life, he had said the same thing.
But I remembered Vivian arriving at our house twenty minutes before Ethan was found. I remembered the hem of her coat was wet, even though it hadn’t rained that day. I remembered her going straight to the kitchen, taking the medicine from the bottom drawer, and then saying she had only followed the sound of crying.
There were too many things I hadn’t thought about back then.
Now they stood in my mind like witnesses waiting to be called.
Our house looked the same when the car stopped in the driveway. The black fence. The white roses lining the path. The large family-room window that had always made me feel like my life was on display for everyone else.
I stopped before opening the door.
Inside that house, I had once been a wife. Then a failed mother. Then an abandoned woman.
This time, I walked in as the owner of my own life.
Adrian touched my arm.
“Are you all right?”
“Not yet.” I looked at the door. “But I will be.”
He looked relieved to hear that. Maybe he thought I was talking about my grief.
I didn’t explain that I meant him.
In the family room, a large vase stood on the table. White lilies filled the room with an overly sweet fragrance. In my first life, Vivian had brought them after Ethan’s funeral.
I stepped closer and touched one of the petals.
“Those flowers are from Vivian,” Adrian said.
“I know.”
He fell silent.
I pulled my hand back and smiled at him.
“I mean, you just said that.”
Adrian accepted the explanation, but his eyes didn’t fully believe me.
Good.
A little doubt was a sufficient beginning.
That night, after Adrian fell asleep, I opened the old laptop that was still sitting on the desk in my study. The password hadn’t changed. Our wedding anniversary.
I almost laughed.
In my first life, I had thought it was romantic. Now I saw it as proof that Adrian always chose things that were easy to remember, not things that meant something.
I opened the bank accounts, company documents, and old contact list. Most of the names were still there. People who had once worked with me. Business associates I had gradually distanced myself from after getting married. Investors who had stopped contacting me because Adrian told them I needed time for my family.
I read the last message from one of them.
If you ever want to come back, call me.
The message had been sent three years ago.
I picked up my phone and dialed the number.
The call connected on the second ring.
“Evelyn?” The voice sounded surprised. “What’s going on?”
“I want to come back to work.”
There was no immediate answer on the other end.
Then he said, “When can you start?”
I looked at my reflection in the dark window.
“Tomorrow.”
After the call ended, I opened my calendar.
There were several years before Ethan was born. Several years before Vivian had the chance to get close to him. Several years before Adrian felt secure enough to destroy my family.
I wouldn’t rush.
An angry person wants to see their enemy fall as quickly as possible.
I wasn’t angry anymore.
I wanted to see them lose everything they thought could never be taken from them.
One by one.
By their own hands.