Anthony had come back to life too.
He confessed, “In our previous life, I didn’t marry you, it was Holly. Your parents claimed she was my savior, but I just couldn’t warm up to her. That’s why, when the time came to move on, I asked to be sent to the coldest, most remote outpost, hoping to get away from her. Sure enough, she couldn’t stand the bleakness of the frontier and hightailed it back to Riverton in no time.
“After she went back home, she conned a bunch of people out of their money, pretending she could help them get a good position under my dad’s influence. However, she didn’t have the power, and not even my dad could cover it. The whole scheme came crashing down, and before we could clear things up, my dad was wrongfully locked up and died in jail.
“I was seething, but I remembered that she saved my mom and me once, so I couldn’t go through with anything harsh. I just asked for a divorce and sent her packing.”
As he got to that part of the story, Anthony’s shoulders shook.
I wrapped my arms around him, letting him keep talking, his voice close to my ear.
“I never imagined that the one who really saved us wasn’t her–it was you.”
I recalled how Holly, after the divorce, griped about the meager settlement and started bad–mouthing the Browns as soon as she got back to her village.
That was when she let slip about the switch.
Even before she took my life, she was ranting about how marrying Anthony in my stead had brought her nothing but trouble.
It turned out that Anthony had already heard about it.
I soothed his back, allowing him to nestle into my neck.
“Don’t worry. It’s all behind us now. At least this time, we found each other.”
He chuckled, nudged by my comforting words, and playfully flicked my nose.
“Kid, you sure look on the bright side!”
I was just about to wrap my arms around him for a comforting embrace when an unsightly face caught my eye nearby.
The face was a mess of contorted features, with strands of hair escaping the confines of slick, dark braids.
The moment its mouth opened, it was nothing but gripes and groans.
