Chapter 1

Everyone called me worthless.

My husband, David Carter, resented how little I earned. "Twelve hundred a month? What good is that?"

His mother, Sammy, never missed a chance to remind me I was a failure. "The woman next door makes more cleaning houses than you do."

My son, Caleb, was ashamed of me. "All my friends' moms dress so nice, and you always look so cheap."

I worked double shifts and skipped meals. I pinched every penny and poured every last cent into that family.

But when the doctors found a tumor on my liver and told me the surgery would cost a hundred thousand dollars, David said we didn't have the money.

Sammy said it needed to be saved for Calbe.

And Caleb said, "Mom, don't bother."

So I died.

When I opened my eyes again, I was staring at a resignation form on my desk.

In my last life, I had begged my supervisor not to let me go.

This time, I picked up the pen and signed it.

*****

I stared at the desk in front of me, and it hit me. I'd been reborn.

While I sat there frozen, my manager's voice cut through. "Anna, take a look at this report and sign off if everything checks out."

I snapped out of it. This was the exact same desk I'd been sitting at before they let me go in my last life.

Back then, I spent eight years at this company. Nine to nine, every single day, and working past midnight was the norm.

The pay was nothing special, but it covered the mortgage, Caleb's tuition, and Sammy's medication.

David never stopped complaining about how little I made, though.

"Look at my buddy's wife, Melissa. She runs an online shop and pulls in ten grand a month.

"But you, Anna? All you do is cling to that dead-end paycheck. No ambition at all. My coworker's wife does DoorDash after work and brings home an extra two grand."

After a while, the nagging became routine.

Every night I walked through the door, no matter how exhausted I was, David had something to say about it.

At first, Sammy would stick up for me.

But as time went on, she started seeing me the same way.

She said, "David works himself to the bone to keep this family afloat, and you can't pull in a little more? The woman next door cleans houses and still makes fifteen hundred a month."

Once Caleb turned eighteen, he started looking down on me, too.

He never invited me to any of his class reunions. He said I dressed too cheaply and would embarrass him.

Then I was diagnosed with a liver tumor. The surgery was going to cost a hundred thousand dollars.

David said we didn't have the money. Sammy said it needed to be saved for Caleb's future wedding.

Caleb looked me in the eye and said, "Mom, don't bother with the surgery. It's not gonna work anyway."

The day I died in that rented room, I had twenty-nine dollars left to my name.

Three months after I was gone, David went out and bought a seventy-thousand-dollar car. Paid cash.

So the money had been there all along. They never intended to spend a dime of it on me.

"Anna?" My manager's voice pulled me back to reality.

I looked up and saw the termination papers in his hand.

In my last life, I'd spent three days groveling, begging him to let me keep this job.

This time around, I picked up the pen and signed without hesitation.

My manager stared at me. "You're not even going to think it over?"

I smiled. "No need. I've made up my mind."

David was sprawled on the couch scrolling through his phone when I walked in. He didn't even look up. "How come you're home so early?"

I set my resignation papers down on the coffee table. "I quit."

His phone nearly slipped out of his hand. He shot upright, eyes wide. "You what?"

"I said I quit." I sat down across from him, my voice as steady as if I were commenting on the weather.

"You're always saying I don't make enough. That I have no drive and I'm wasting away at some dead-end job. So I listened to you. I'm done."

"But..." David's brow furrowed, and his eyes locked on the resignation form.

He opened his mouth to say something, but couldn't find the words.

And the truth was, he had said every bit of it.

Every time a pay stub came in, he'd sigh and shake his head. "Twelve hundred bucks. After the mortgage, what's even left? Would it kill you to find a better job?"

He'd said it so many times that even he had started believing she was a worthless wife.

But now that I had actually gone and quit, panic crept in. "I mean, you didn't have to resign over it."

I lifted my head and looked him straight in the eye.

I said, "Last time, you told me Melissa makes way more and I should take a page from her book. Well, that's what I'm doing. And this morning, walking out the door, you told me to stop clinging to that dead-end paycheck."

David opened his mouth to fire back, but Sammy walked in from outside right at that moment.