Reborn The Bride Who Turned Her Slander Into a Weapon

On my wedding day, the woman who called herself the little queen of the opera scene showed up uninvited.

Sally Perez took my hand and that of my fianc, Owen Fleming, and dabbed at her eyes the whole time.

You'd better treat Arlene well. If it weren't for you, she'd have ended things long ago, back when the cook had his way with her.

"And Arlene, you have to keep yourself decent from now on. Don't go throwing yourself at men over a dinner roll!"

I was furious and frantic, explaining as hard as I could.

But no one believed me.

The crowd called me a woman who'd take any man, and my future in-laws started shouting that the engagement was off.

Owen overruled them all and went through with the wedding anyway.

But on our wedding night he never came into the room. He took my dowry and walked out the door.

After that, I became, fully and finally, the slut everyone whispered about.

To clear my name, I tried to go to the hospital for proof, but my in-laws sent me to my grave with a bowl of stew.

And before the seventh day after my death had even passed,

Owen brought Sally home.

That was when I learned the truth: everything at that wedding had been a performance they staged to get their hands on my dowry.

Reborn.

This time I didn't explain anything. I cried and nodded.

"Yes. Sally's right about all of it."

"When the cook had his way with me, she was standing right there watching. And after he finished with me, he had his way with her too."

The truth was, when Sally Perez showed up uninvited in a red dress, clearly meaning to outshine me, the bride, people already found it strange.

And when she announced that I'd thrown myself at that creep of a theater-company cook just to score an extra dinner roll, and that I'd been ruined before the wedding,

the lively room fell silent at once, and the murmuring started.

Quite a few of them put on a show of remembering.

As if I really had taken an extra dinner roll every single time I went up for food.

My future in-laws, who'd been nothing but pleased with me, saw their faces darken in an instant, and they yanked Owen away from my side.

"Owen, what is this? What's going on?"

Only then did Sally Perez put on her little startled act.

"Why does everyone look so shocked?"

"Don't tell me you all didn't know?"

No one answered that, of course.

Sally frowned and looked at me like I was a hopeless case.

"Arlene, didn't you say you'd be honest with Owen about your situation? Have you really been hiding it from his whole family?"

"That won't do. This isn't something you can paper over. You can keep it quiet now, but you can't keep it quiet on the wedding night!"

As the crowd's words turned uglier and uglier,

she did her best impression of someone suddenly realizing where she was, pretending to regret her slip, and started apologizing to me.

"I really didn't mean to. I just saw that after everything you went through, you could still marry a good man like Owen, and I was so happy for you that I had a couple too many drinks and let the truth out by accident!"

"Besides, I honestly thought you'd have told everyone about something this big."

"Tell you what. Let's all pretend I'm not here, pretend I'm invisible, and forget everything I just said. Let's pretend Arlene Butler never once threw herself at the cook over a dinner roll!"

Sally finished and went on looking at me with that apologetic face.

And not just her. Every single person in the room was staring at me, eyes burning.

But I didn't open my mouth to explain or deny anything. I just stood there, cold, because I had lived through this scene once already.

In my last life.

It went exactly the way Sally Perez had planned.

I explained like a madwoman, I denied it, I poured every ounce of strength into tearing that filthy label off myself, shouting that I'd confront the cook face-to-face, demanding to go to the hospital and prove I was clean.

But none of it worked, because Owen stepped forward.

He took my hand and faced the crowd, his voice leaving no room for argument.

"It doesn't matter whether Sally is telling the truth or not. All that matters is that I choose her, that she becomes my wife. That's enough."

And then he said more.

"Arlene, you don't have to rush to prove yourself. If you ran to a doctor every time some stranger called you impure, you'd spend your whole life doing nothing but sitting in a clinic."

I was so moved I could hardly speak. We were married without a single hitch.

But it wasn't until our wedding night that I learned every bit of it had been Owen's performance.

He never even crossed the threshold of the bridal room. He just stood in the doorway, looking at me with open disgust, as if I were a filthy rag someone had thrown in a gutter.

At the time I didn't understand why he'd turned on me so fast.

I told myself the crowd had laughed at him and wounded his pride, so the next morning I set out for the clinic, determined to clear my name.

Max and Marilyn didn't stop me. They didn't curse me either. They only told me to finish a bowl of stew first.

I finished that bowl of stew, and I never walked out of the Fleming house again.

It wasn't until after I was dead that I learned the truth was nothing as simple as I'd thought.

The Flemings weren't just the lead actors in this play. They were its directors. And the whole reason they did it was the few hundred dollars in dowry my parents had left me, and a clear seat at the State Theater Company for Sally to take in my place.

I was still lost in it.

Still picturing the faces of everyone who'd later called my death a shamed suicide. But Owen couldn't hold back any longer.

He just didn't know what his lines should be.

So he only stared at Sally.

"What kind of nonsense are you spouting here?"

"Don't think I can't see it. You're jealous that Arlene's going to perform at the State Theater Company. You couldn't get the part yourself, so you want to destroy her with rumors!"

"Let me tell you, Arlene and I have been close since we were children. I know her character better than anyone."

"Even if she really did eat one extra dinner roll, that's only because the cook admires her. Arlene would never do something like that over a dinner roll!"

"I believe in her completely!"

The moment the words were out, Max and Marilyn beat their chests in fury, while the friends and relatives who'd come for the wedding began praising Owen for being a good man, a man who stood by his woman, saying a whore like me wasn't fit for him, egging him on to call off the engagement.

Owen took my hand, exactly as he had in my last life.

"Arlene, say something."

"Just tell me it isn't true, and I'll believe you!"

It was only then that I looked at Sally, like someone waking from a dream.

"Sally, first you say the cook assaulted me, then you say I seduced him. Those aren't the same thing at all, are they?"

Right.

The crowd caught on too.

Assaulted meant forced. Seduced meant I'd thrown myself away by choice.

Sally hadn't expected me to ask that. She also knew I'd always kept myself clean, so she changed her story at once.

"It was assault."

"The cook tricked you with a dinner roll, lured you back to the dorm, and assaulted you there. It's true. I saw it with my own eyes!"

I still didn't argue.

I only nodded, as if turning something over in my mind.

"If you saw it with your own eyes, why didn't you save me?"

Sally grew more flustered.

"I"

I didn't give her the chance to speak. I kept on, my face puzzled.

"I don't want to deny what you've described. After all, even if I did, no one would believe you'd make up a story about me being assaulted out of thin air!"

"But I honestly knew nothing about any of this. So why don't you tell mewhat month, what day, what hour, what minute did it happen?"

"And here's the other thing. We're both martial-role actresses. We can hold our own. That cook may be a man, but he's lame in one leg. If the two of us had teamed up, how could he possibly have forced himself on me?"

The questions came one after another, and Sally lost her footing. She backed away, and her voice began to shake.

"The reason I didn't call for help was"

I cut her off again.

"I understand. You weren't free to act, is that it?"

"Because a girl as kind as you would never have just stood there and let it happen, right?"

Sally nodded fast.

"Right, right, right, I couldn't do anything!"

"My heart ached for you."

But the crowd had caught up by now, and they sensed something off in what she'd said. After all, if Sally were really as kind as she claimed, she wouldn't have picked this exact day to drag the whole thing out.

"If you cared so much about her, why bring it up now?"

"Showing up in a red dress like thatis that for her sake, or do you want to ruin her?"

"You don't think this whole thing is made up, do you?"

"Look at Arlene. So calm. That's the face of a woman with a clear conscience!"

Owen heard the wind change and started to sweat. He cut in, his words loaded with warning.

"Sally, talk is cheap. If you've got no proof, then I can only say you're chasing shadows."

"You think I won't write a complaint and make sure you never set foot in the theater company again?"

Sally realized she'd said too much. But Owen's words snapped her back into focus.

She shouted in a panic.

"I'm not making it up!"

"I have a witness."

The words were barely out of her mouth.

Sally gathered up her skirt and ran out to the yard, then hauled in the cook, Zane Parsons, who'd been lurking outside to watch the show.

Zane had been there the whole time, so of course he knew exactly why she'd called him in.

The moment he stepped inside, he nodded.

"That's right, that's rightme and Arlene Butler really did have a thing!"

It didn't surprise me that he'd admit to it.

He was ugly and sleazy, and if he could spin some scandal with the star of the theater company, he'd be over the moon.

When I didn't deny it, Zane rubbed his hands together and grinned.

"She said so herselfsaid she worked up too much of an appetite, that one dinner roll wasn't enough. So I gave up my own ration to feed her. She ate my food. Doesn't she owe me a little something for that?"

"And don't any of you blame Sally. She only spoke up today to help Arlene outshe just wanted Arlene to cut ties with me, that's all!"

"She's a good person. Don't you go blaming her!"

"Arlene, don't worry about it either. I'm a stand-up guy. Since it's all out in the open now, you might as well just marry me. It's not much of a match, but you'll never go hungry for a dinner roll, I'll tell you that!"

Before I could react, Owen lunged forward like a man gone mad and slammed his fist into Zane's face.

"Shut your mouth."

"Arlene would never stoop so low for a dinner roll. You forced yourself on her, you used violence!"

"I'm calling the police!"

At the word police, Max and Marilyn jumped in at once.

"Noif you call the police, Arlene really will be ruined!"

Owen heard that, and the fight drained out of him. He sank to the floor. In the end he said nothing more about the police. Instead he took my hand, his voice trembling but firm.

"Arlene, don't be afraid!"

"After everything you've been through, I don't care about any of it!"

It's you I love, the person, not your body!

And this is my fault too. I knew you weren't getting enough to eat and I did nothing about it. I'm the one who drove you to this!

Owen sounded so very reasonable.

But this time I wasn't moved the way I'd been in my last life, because I understood now: a normal man who truly believed his fiance would fight her corner, would haul her down to the police station and prove her innocence.

Not stand there muddying the water by confessing on my behalf.

This wasn't him helping me.

This was him nailing down the charge, building himself a tidy reason to walk out, handing my death a respectable excuse.

So I didn't follow Owen's lead.

I stepped back instead, my brow drawing tight.

Owen, a minute ago you said you believed me. But the second this cook showed up, you swallowed every word, that I'd let a man have his way with me over a single dinner roll!

Yes, I train hard. Yes, I go to bed hungry most nights. But I'm not short on cash and I'm not short on groceries. If I were hungry, why wouldn't I just go buy food? Why would I ever go crawling to a cook?

You stood there swearing you didn't care about my past. But did you ever once ask me?

I like being clean. I don't want people pointing at me and calling me a whore!

A laugh slipped out of me then before I could stop it.

Anyone who didn't know better might think you love me. Anyone watching this would think you couldn't wait to pin the crime on me.

Don't tell me

I let my voice climb on purpose.

Don't tell me you just enjoy playing the cuckold?

The words landed.

The whole room broke into laughter, finally catching what I'd caught, that Owen's little speech had been all about moving himself, and it had buried me completely.

Naturally Max and Marilyn weren't about to watch their son take a smear like that.

Cursing, they charged at me to slap the words right out of my mouth.

But I hadn't earned the title of lead performer for nothing. A few effortless flips, a couple of dodges, and I sent both of them sprawling.

I yanked the flower from my hair and flicked it into Owen's face.

Then I pointed at where Max and Marilyn lay.

See that? That's what you do when you actually believe in someone!

Owen, your kind of belief comes cheap. I'm not spending my married life getting smeared by you every single day, so this wedding, it's off.

Owen was furious and frantic all at once.

He'd staged this whole scene to walk away with the halo of the good man, so that after I was dead and he married again, nobody could whisper behind his back. He hadn't counted on me staying calm, turning the tide in three or four sentences, and now turning it into a perfectly justified breakup of my own.

Arlene, that's not what I meant.

I only didn't want things blowing up. I do believe you, I swear!

I'm certain this whole thing is a lie, that Sally's just jealous and trying to ruin you. If you want to prove yourself, I'll go to the hospital with you, get you examined, get it in writing!

Sally didn't want me calling off the engagement either.

After all, if the wedding fell through, how was she supposed to take my place at the State Theater Company?

So she squeezed out tears too.

The truth is, I was joking!

None of it's real. I only wanted to test whether Owen really loved you!

You've got so many admirers, what if there's gossip down the line? Wouldn't that be awful? I'm admitting it now, I lied, I'm sorry, just don't throw away a match this good because of me!

As she spoke, she shot Zane a look, signaling him to hurry up and admit he'd lied too.

Zane Parsons didn't want to.

But he forced the word out anyway.

"That's"

I didn't give him the chance to finish.

I looked around at the crowd, my face set.

"Yes. Zane had his way with me."