Good Food Good Mood

On my 50th wedding anniversary, I took my worn, crumbling marriage certificate to City Hall to renew it. The clerk glanced at it—and froze. “This certificate is fake. Our records show you’ve never been married.” I stared. “Impossible. I’ve been married to Damien Slater for fifty years.” The clerk pulled up his file. “Well…Yes, Mr. Slater is married—but his wife’s name is Vanessa Grant.” Vanessa. His widowed sister-in-law. A military doctor who’d spent decades living among the troops. My hands shook as I returned home and confronted Damien. He didn’t even try to deny it. “I’ve treated you well all these years. Isn’t that enough? Vanessa is my true love. I only ever wanted her—our children, our life.” My son counseled me and said, “To spare your feelings, my parents kept it a secret their whole lives. You’re getting old now. What more do you want?” Only then did I learn the truth. The child I had raised with my own hands was never mine by blood. Decades ago, Vanessa and I gave birth on the same day. To ensure her child would grow up with intellect, privilege, and a future that I could provide, Damien switched our children. My own son? Damien drowned him in the pond the moment he drew breath. And I—fool that I was—raised Vanessa’s boy as my own. I even got him all the way to Claremont University. The truth broke me, and I collapsed. When I opened my eyes again—I was back. Back to the day I went into labor.

The nanny, Polly Jackson, pushes me down the stairs when I'm seven months pregnant. I suffer from major blood loss and go into premature labor. Before I can question her about it, Zachary Campbell brushes me off with a lame excuse. "Polly didn't mean it. You and the baby are fine, so don't be so petty about this." I get out of bed to move around. I'm at the bathroom door when I hear Zachary and Polly's conversation. "Are you sure that wretch can stay alive, Zachary? Switching it out won't be that easy if it dies." "Don't worry about whether Daisy Jameson's baby can live, Mom. Either way, mine and Danielle's child will be the Campbell family's sole heir." I pretend I've never heard this and raise my son for 18 years. During a banquet held in honor of a share ownership transfer, Polly suddenly shows up with my mentally impaired daughter. She cries, "Mason is my grandson! It's high time he's returned to his rightful place after being raised by the wrong family for so long!" I'm unfazed. I even laugh at her words. "Fine, then!"

Calvin and I had been married for seven years. While packing up some clothes, I found a cheap lighter in the pocket of his jacket. Everything he wore, from the inside out, had been carefully chosen by me to highlight his refined taste and status. However, in that girl’s Twitter photos, he looked like a college boy, dressed in cheap clothes and wearing a digital watch that cost only a few dollars while kissing her. Using a throwaway account, I casually liked the post and commented, "A perfect match." Then, I turned to Calvin and said, "How did I never realize you had such a thing for bargains?"

My mother claims my husband has cheated on me and pushes me to get a divorce. I want to collect evidence before proceeding with anything—if it's true, I have to uphold my rights. Yet she causes a scene at an art exhibition I've worked on for three years, humiliating me in public and making me sound like a gold digger. "How are you any different from a prostitute when you're holding this dumb exhibition with a man's money? I didn't raise you to be a gold digger! How can you be so revolting?" She slashes the million-dollar paintings in the exhibition, claiming that she's doing this for my good. She wants me to see the error of my ways and return to the right path. Meanwhile, I clutch my bloody hand, which she slashed with her blade. I say, "You say you want me to return to the right path, but is that what it really is? You want me to divorce my legally wedded husband, who's a CEO, without a penny to my name. "Then, you want me to marry a 45-year-old cheap man who has a child and no money? He even wants me to support him!"

On the way back to work after the New Year, my wife Liana Corn and I got into a car accident. Opening my eyes again, I realized that we had returned to the time we just started dating. In our previous life, we were married for eight years. Life was good, but she refused to have any children. Later, I learned that she had always kept her childhood sweetheart in her heart. After our regression, I decided to set us both free. We both deleted each other's contacts without a word, stopped seeing each other, and became complete strangers. Eight years later, Liana became a top investor. At our class reunion, she made a high-profile announcement with her childhood sweetheart Serge Gibson. Seeing that I had come to the reunion alone, she teased me. "Ryan Carter, I know I'm attractive. You love me for two lifetimes and still can't let go, but you don't need to cling to me like this." I pretended not to hear and took my son by the hand. Liana's face instantly turned pale, her eyes bloodshot. "Didn't you say you'd love only me for life?" she demanded. "How can you have a son with someone else?!"

My in-laws, who have flown back to the country for the Christmas holidays, visit my home on Christmas Eve for dinner. But Selena Collins, the housekeeper, has only prepared two plates of cold shrimp ravioli despite the fact that I've specifically reminded her about my mother-in-law, Lora Fischer's allergy to shrimps. Selena just tells me in a stoic manner, "Mrs. Peterson, I know that you country bumpkins love taking advantage of everything. So, I completely understand that your parents want to mooch off a meal from the Peterson family during the holidays. "But as Mr. Peterson's most caring housekeeper, I have the right to protect the Petersons' assets from getting leeched by outsiders. Yes, this includes a regular meal. "Then again, I have a heart of gold, you see. I won't starve the elders at all. These are leftover shrimp ravioli from last year. Your parents should hurry up and leave after polishing the ravioli off. "Mr. Peterson is very busy with his work. I can't let him deal with your impoverished parents after getting home from a stressful day at work." I'm stunned at first, but I soon realize that Selena has mistaken my in-laws for my parents. She's purposefully causing me trouble as always. I'm about to explain the truth to Selena when I see my enraged in-laws turning to leave. But Selena wastes no time in calling the bodyguards over to stop them. "I completely understand that country bumpkins like you two have poor character, but wasting food is a really bad trait. "Since the shrimp ravioli is already prepared for you, please finish them all before leaving."

In a world ravaged by global nuclear fallout, I struggled to survive alongside my fragile, sweet-faced best friend, dodging one radiation storm after another. The route to the Central Safety Zone was blocked—we had no choice but to use two detonators to blast open the tunnel. Otherwise, we would be caught in the storm, our bodies rotting away until we either dissolved into blood sludge or turned into zombies. … In my previous life, I had risked everything to secure those detonators, only for my best friend to hand them over to a complete stranger without hesitation. "They have elderly people and children on their side too," she said earnestly. "One detonator can save many lives. Iris, you can't be selfish." I was so furious my blood pressure nearly exploded, but with no other option, I went straight into a horde of zombies to steal backup detonators. I lost an arm in the process, drenched in blood and barely standing. Yet, she complained that I was covered in gore and had frightened the children. After finally regrouping with the main convoy, I rushed to deliver the formula for anti-radiation medicine to the research institute so that more people could be saved. But she accused me of stealing supplies and trying to flee, which led to my expulsion from the base, and death, my body rotting away under the radiation. When I opened my eyes again, there was still one hour left before the radiation storm hit. I looked down at the two detonators in my hand, then at my pitiful, tear-brimmed best friend—and I smiled. Since she loved being a good person so much, this time, I would let her be one to her heart's content.

The whole world got sucked into a survival horror game. While everyone else was grinding mobs and trying not to get wiped, the system bugged out and tagged me as an NPC. My role? Takeout girl. I cruised around on my busted scooter, dropping food at boss lairs. If my rating dipped under 9.0, I'd keel over instantly. I figured I was just some unlucky idiot skating on death's edge. Then a pack of dumb players tried to jack my ride. That's when the scariest bosses in the game roared at once: "Who the hell thinks they can touch my crew?!"

Our bridal room was set on fire, and my husband, a firefighter, was grievously wounded while trying to save me. I sent him to be saved at the hospital where Winnie Sloan, his childhood friend worked, but the surgery ended up being a failure, and my husband passed away. After the announcement that my husband was deceased, Winnie told me that his dying wish was that he wanted a child. Hearing that, I powered through my grief and used the sperm he had previously frozen to conceive a child through IVF, raising my son to be enrolled in the most prestigious university in the area. On the day of the celebration party, my son kicked me out and invited my husband and Winnie onto the stage as his 'biological parents', and that's when I found out that my husband had faked his death. All those years ago, he and Winnie had swapped out the embryo I'd conceived in secret. The son I had painstakingly given birth to and raised turned out to have no blood relation to me whatsoever. Meanwhile, my husband had been enjoying a luxurious life overseas with Winnie while waiting for a chance to reconnect with his son. In my rage, I confronted them and demanded an explanation, but ended up dying because they pushed me down the stairs. When I came to, I was back to the day of the fire.

Trevor Farren cheated on me—with a hostess, no less. He bought her a villa, handbags, necklaces, and even whisked her away to the Maldives. Everything I had, she had too. In my fury, I resolved to retaliate. I found myself in the smoky halls of a nightclub, learning shameful, provocative moves from the women there. I would seduce him and make him fall for me all over again. I vowed to crush him in the end. I'd ruin him. Strip him of everything he held dear until he tasted the bitterness of despair, the way I had. Standing before the mirror, I traced my curves with a sly smile. "Trevor, do you like what you see?"