Chapter 2The General's Abandoned Wife

When I got home, Lydia was teaching Ryan French phrases.

“You have to practice,” she was saying, her voice a soft melody. “At the academy, boys your age can already hold a simple conversation.”

Ryan was hanging on her every word.

Lydia smiled and stroked his hair. “You’re such a quick study, Ryan. Not like…”

He reached out and wrapped his arms around her waist. “It’s all thanks to you, Aunt Lydia. If I sounded like Mom, everyone would laugh at me. She talks like such a hick.”

Grant, who had been reading a book in the armchair, looked up. A slow, gentle smile spread across his face.

What a picture of domestic bliss.

I’ve seen this scene twice now. Two lifetimes of it.

Lydia was a local girl, too. Her father was a drunk who used his fists, and her mother died young. Eventually, some relatives from out of state found her and took her away to the city for school. I never understood why she came back.

At first, I was grateful to her. Ryan had been playing too close to the creek, and he’d fallen in. Lydia saw him and pulled him out. I owed her his life.

But after that, things began to shift in ways I couldn’t quite grasp.

She came to our house and saw Grant. He was in the yard, splitting firewood. He moved with an easy, powerful grace, his back straight, the axe swinging in a clean, perfect arc. The rhythm was like a heartbeat.

She’d walked right up to him. “Grant, you have such a commanding presence. Audrey is a lucky woman.”

I never understood the things Grant talked about—honor, patriotism, the grand sweep of history. Our conversations were about the summer mosquitoes and the winter chill.

But the barb in Lydia’s words, the subtle mockery aimed at me—that, I understood perfectly.

I just stood there, my hands feeling clumsy and empty.

Soon, Lydia was at our house every other day. She even convinced Grant to volunteer as a substitute teacher at the small schoolhouse. From then on, it was always “Grant this” and “Grant that.”

After that, whenever I’d bring him his lunch, I’d find Lydia sitting right beside his desk. I’d watch as he’d take the chicken soup I’d simmered all night and carefully ladle it into her bowl.

Ryan would be there, laughing. “Mom, Miss Lydia says your cooking is the best!”

Yes. I was the one raising them, waking before dawn to forage, trading my best finds with neighbors for an old hen. I was the one who tilled that stubborn patch of earth behind the house until my back screamed, just to coax the most tender greens from the soil. I wouldn’t even let myself eat the best parts. And now, my husband and my son were using my labor to court someone else.

In my first life, I screamed those words out loud.

Grant’s jaw had tightened, his lips a thin, hard line. He turned to Lydia and gave a slight, formal bow. “Miss Raines, I apologize. My wife is not herself.”

He looked at me as if I were the most profound embarrassment he had ever endured.

Ryan was even more direct. “If you won’t let Miss Lydia have any, then I don’t want it either!”

Lydia, acting every bit the lady of the house, wrapped an arm around Ryan’s shoulders. “Ryan, what have I told you? That’s no way to speak to your mother.”

Ryan just pouted, burying his face in her side. “I’m sorry, Miss Lydia.”

She held him close, her eyes meeting mine over his head. There wasn't a trace of shame in them.

In that moment, with my son and my husband arrayed against me, I was utterly and completely alone. An outcast.

A bitter sorrow filled my chest.

Lydia was soft and pale, with delicate hands. I spent my days on the mountain and in the dirt; my strength was a wild, unkempt thing. After giving birth to Ryan, the slender shape of my youth was a distant memory. The three of them together—they looked right. They looked like a family.

Just like in the first life. She went back with them, and no one ever questioned that she was Ryan’s mother. At first, he called her Lydia, but she’d just smile and correct him gently. “Why don’t you call me Aunt Lydia, sweetie?”

It took me far too long to understand the quiet cunning in that suggestion.