Second Chance at a Broken Marriage

My wife, Sarah, was dead. The police called it an accident-a slip in the bathtub.

But I knew better. The will reading shattered my world: Sarah left everything to her daughter, Emily, the life insurance, the house, every penny. I was left with nothing.

Then came the final blow. Her last request was to be buried next to her ex-husband, Robert. A letter, stained with pink, revealed a suicide pact between them. "Some loves are meant to last forever," she wrote, a cruel blade twisting in the wound of my twenty-year marriage.

The woman I had loved, the life I had built for her and her daughter, evaporated into a bitter lie. I was merely a bank, an ATM for her and her old flame. Emily, the child I raised, looked at me with chilling indifference. "Get out," she snarled. "This is my house now." I felt the floor drop out from under me.

The rage, the betrayal, it all consumed me. Then, a sharp pain, blood... and darkness.

I jolted awake, not dead but in my own bed, sunlight streaming through the window. It was October 12th, 2011, the fifth year of our marriage. I was back. The illusion shattered, the game reset. And this time, I knew all the rules.