Back to the '80s: Divorcing My Trash Husband, He Regretted It

After Jared Shaw failed his SATs, he chose to marry me.

For more than twenty years we clung to each other through hard times, and then, on our wedding anniversary, he slapped me across the face.

Ivy already told me. I never failed back then. I got into a university in the capital.

You knew that if you'd gotten in, I'd have called off the engagement. So you burned your acceptance letter.

He didn't wait for me to explain.

Ivy Pruitt, who hadn't been in touch for years, walked through the door like she owned the place.

She pulled out a small scrap of scorched paper, and on it you could just make out two words. Acceptance letter.

"I kept quiet all this time because I felt sorry for you. But my child with Jared is getting married now, and I can't let him be called a bastard any longer."

All I felt was sick.

So it turned out that while I was drowning in the grief of losing my baby, their child was being born.

And it was entirely possible that losing my baby had been part of their plan too.

Cold to the bone, I asked for a divorce. But Jared said he'd only ever be widowed, never divorced.

In the shoving and struggle, all I could do was drag him down with me, both of us falling from the building.

Then my eyes opened again.

Jared Shaw, more than twenty years younger, stood in front of me.

"This time I'm not going to settle. I'm calling off the engagement and marrying Ivy. And I'm going to college and changing my life."

I froze for a moment, then quickly decided to let him have it.

Because the name written on that burned acceptance letter was mine.

One:

"I know you've been planning all along to marry me once you finished college. But the truth is, I never once wanted to marry you."

"All these years I let myself be called your fianc only because you threw yourself at me hard enough. Anyone with eyes could see the one I love is your cousin, Ivy Pruitt."

Jared held tight to Ivy's hand, as if he were afraid I wouldn't agree to break it off.

So he made his words as ugly as they could get, and when he worked himself up he waved his arms about, and he'd even called in every man and boy in the village to come watch the show.

At twenty, hearing this, my head spun and I wished I could find a crack in the ground to crawl into.

But the next second, a whole flood of memories poured into my head.

To be precise.

Memories from my twenty years married to Jared Shaw.

Every incident, one after another, flickered past me like frames of a color film.

The first to surface was the second year of our marriage, when I was pregnant and Jared said he had a craving for fish, and because of it I broke through the ice by accident and my whole leg went under.

When I woke, the baby was gone, and my leg was crippled. I was heartbroken, and instead of comfort my in-laws screamed at me that I was a murderer, while Jared only said I'd been too greedy for a taste of fish, never once telling them the truth.

To make something of myself, I rode the tide of the times and worked myself half to death to build up some businesses, and then Jared said a woman belonged at home enjoying an easy life, and used that to take my businesses straight from me and force me to stay home waiting on his parents.

I stayed home caring for two paralyzed old people, while Jared started staying out all night, and even when he came home he'd use the excuse of not wanting to wake me and sleep in the guest room, leaving me alone with my eyes open until dawn.

I thought all married couples were like this.

But on the day I died, I saw Ivy Pruitt, well-kept and untouched by hardship, and only then did I understand that I had been the sacrifice for their love all along.

At the thought, I forced the tears back and stopped my parents before they could try to smooth things over.

Looking at their clasped hands, I spoke calmly.

"I'm willing to call off the engagement. But it has to be done by the rules."

The moment the words left my mouth, Jared Shaw and Ivy Pruitt both froze.

And it wasn't hard to see why they were angry.

In our town, there was one rule everyone knew.

Whoever called off an engagement had to kneel in front of the whole town, let the other party take a switch to them, and then walk around the town for half a month with the marks still fresh.

That, in fact, was the very reason Jared had never dared to break the engagement. The thought hit him, and the smug look on his face went dark at once. Still, twenty-odd years of living side by side had given him a kind of nerve.

"Debbie Morton, are you out of your mind?"

"That engagement was made by word of mouth, so it can be called off by word of mouth. No rules to follow."

Ivy nodded along at every word.

Then she reached out and took my hand, playing at closeness.

"Cousin, I know you want to marry Jared, but love is free, and so is marriage."

"I didn't want to hide it from you, but Jared and I already went and got our marriage license. If you insist on refusing the breakup, then you'll be the third party wrecking our marriage."

"Cousin, you're so remarkable anyway. Just let Jared go to me, all right?"

"And I'm not afraid to tell you either. Jared's going to make something of himself. Don't make trouble for him just to feel good for a moment, don't get on his bad side!"

"Give us your blessing, and we'll always remember how good you were to us."

I glanced at Jared.

He gave a cold snort and nodded, as if agreeing with everything Ivy said.

It struck me as absurd.

I'd poured over twenty years of my youth into helping him become a rich man, and he couldn't remember a single bit of that kindness. How could one act of stepping aside be anything he'd ever remember?

Besides, I wasn't the twenty-year-old me anymore.

What I wanted wasn't for him to remember me kindly. I wanted his tears. I wanted him to pay for what he'd done.

So I shook Ivy's hand off and spoke, cold.

"Jared Shaw, you keep saying ours was only a verbal engagement."

"Then let me ask you. Who bought your SAT prep books? Who paid and worked to nurse your parents when they were sick?"

"When you were taking things and money from my family, why didn't you say it was only a verbal engagement then? Why were you crying and shouting that we were engaged, that our two families were one?"

At that point.

I let out another cold laugh.

"If I hadn't done all that for you as your fiance, where would you have found the leisure to go falling in love with Ivy?"

I wasn't exaggerating.

So the onlookers around us all took my side, pointing at the two of them, and here and there you could catch the words tramp and shameless.

Mom and Dad had always respected me, so once the anger passed they came around too.

"Debbie's right."

"If you want to break the engagement, then you'll do it by the rules for breaking an engagement!"

"And it's not just the engagement. From now on, we don't claim Ivy Pruitt as family either."

Ivy burst into tears on the spot.

Jared had been angry to begin with, and the sight of Ivy crying only made him more frantic.

"I already said it, marriage is free, so is breaking one off. You can't refuse me, you can't make these demands. There's no law that says any of this."

I gave another few cold laughs.

"There's nothing unfree about it. If you'd come and asked me to break it off properly, I might not have said a word about any rules."

"But you didn't ask properly. You showed up at my door waving a marriage license, calling me a woman throwing herself at you. I'm a person too. Why shouldn't I be angry?"

"If it were me today, showing up at your house with some man and a marriage license, making a scene and cursing at you, would you just casually agree to break it off?"

Jared couldn't force out a single decent word.

The way he saw it, I might not be his wife yet, and I would soon be a woman he cast off, but somewhere in his head I was still his to own.

So he spoke without thinking.

"In your dreams. A woman who spreads herself around belongs at the bottom of the river!"

Then he caught himself.

He realized he'd said the wrong thing, gritted his teeth, and changed his tone.

"You've got some nerve. The reason I'm calling off the engagement is all on you!"

"You did so many things to wrong me. Why shouldn't I be the one to break it off?"

Ivy nodded right along with him.

"Exactly!"

"Cousin, we wanted to leave you some dignity, keep being family and visiting like nothing happened. But you're too shameless to take the kindness. Do we really have to say it out loud and drag your name through the mud?"

The words dripped with insinuation, and the onlookers were suddenly curious about what I could possibly have done to make both Jared and Ivy turn on me.

"What Jared's saying can't be coming from nowhere."

"Debbie's pretty, sensible, comes from a good family. If there were no problem, why break the engagement?"

"How can a woman wrong a man? Could it be... that kind of thing?"

"Very possible. Jared doesn't seem like a man with a cold, black heart, does he?"

I knew how enough loose talk could melt a person's reputation, so I blocked the two of them before they could slip away in the confusion, and pressed them, question after question.

"I wronged you?"

"Everyone in this village knows I've liked you since we were kids. After the engagement I treated myself as one of the Shaws. How many times did I nurse your parents when they were sick? How much did I worry over them?"

"And now you've got Ivy, and you say I wronged you?"

"If you don't make it clear today, we'll take it somewhere that will make it clear."

Five:

Jared went mute.

He knew it too. I had never done a single thing to wrong him. The one thing was burning his college acceptance letter, but that letter hadn't even reached my hands yet. He couldn't blame me for something that hadn't happened.

Ivy couldn't get a word out either, only kept insisting it was all a misunderstanding.

That was when the crowd caught on that the two of them had been talking nonsense the whole time, so they joined my parents and cursed the pair as ungrateful vipers.

I looked at the two of them.

"One of you is a scum who betrayed a marriage promise, the other's an ungrateful wretch who forgot everything done to raise her. You really are a matched set. But you don't get to have it both ways. If you want to break the engagement, the custom gets followed."

"And one more thing. You just reminded me. I'm not only breaking this engagement, I'm taking back every cent I spent on the two of you all these years!"

Jared had already been anxious the moment the custom came up.

The second he heard money, he got worse.

"Whether it went to me or to Ivy, you gave it all willingly."

"Money that's been handed over doesn't get demanded back."

"Coming here to break it off today was me doing you a favor. Since you're too shameless to take it, I don't need to say more. What can you even do if I don't follow your little custom?"

"I'll be off to college soon. I'll never lay eyes on trash like you again in this life, so don't think you get any say over me..."

He stopped there.

Jared clapped a hand over his mouth, seeming to realize he'd said too much.

I didn't stop him this time. I turned to the neighbors instead.

"Fine. I'm calling the police right now, and every one of you will testify for me, that he's a scum who ruins a woman and then throws her away!"

"Never mind that Jared hasn't even gotten into college. Even if he had, I don't believe any college would want a man like him!"

He also knew exactly how prized a college degree was in these years.

Barring some accident, he could turn his whole life around on his own this time. But he knew too how much a reputation was worth in this era. If I really went to the police, if I made a scene at the college, there would be no way he'd ever set foot in a classroom.

So Jared's face went dark, then pale, pale, then purple.

In the end he had no choice.

"Fine. It's just paying the money back. It's just going through the breakup ritual. I agree!"

Jared grabbed Ivy and left.

Within a few days he'd paid me back a large sum, and even had the nerve to try a few soft words, hoping I'd drop the breakup ritual. After I refused, he had no way around it. In front of the whole town, wearing a ribbed undershirt, he knelt and read out his apology letter.

I couldn't be bothered to listen. I simply took the apology letter, picked up a switch, and lashed him hard, more than twenty times, every stroke with all my strength. By the time I finished, Jared had passed out cold from the pain.

Jared's parents were already in poor health, and watching their son suffer like this, they nearly stopped breathing on the spot and dropped dead right there.

And yet I still, kindly, held both their hands and said,

"Uncle, Auntie, you really can't blame me for this. This is the price you pay for marrying the wrong wife."

Jared's parents had always liked me better, and hearing that, they were half dead with rage.

After that.

The Shaw household got lively. Every time Jared went out to circle the village apologizing to me, his parents would start grinding Ivy down, and within a few days we heard the news that Ivy had lost the baby...

And once that got out.

People found the pair even more sickening. Married only a few days, and already there was "good news"? It only proved that the two of them had been together behind my back long, long before.

7:

The two of them didn't care, though.

Jared had his open-minded views, and Ivy simply relied on having no shame at all, so none of it touched them. After the breakup ceremony was done, they still sent everyone invitations to their wedding.

Ivy blamed the baby's death on me, so she made a point of bringing me an invitation herself.

"Money's tight at home, but Jared says marriage is a once-in-a-lifetime thing, so it has to be done big, done properly."

"Since you can't be the bride, you can always be a guest."

I checked the date. It was exactly the day I'd received my acceptance letter in my last life, so I nodded.

"Don't worry. I'll definitely be there."

The day came in the blink of an eye. Only when I got to the wedding did I realize today wasn't just a wedding. The banner strung up above had the nerve to read,

A wedding night by candlelight, and a name on the honor roll.

Angling for a double blessing, I supposed.

The guests who came for the feast despised the pair, but for the sake of that meal they still forced out praise, calling them a golden couple, a match made in heaven. It was only when they saw me that their faces turned a little awkward.

I acted as if I hadn't noticed.

And walked up with a bright smile.

"A wedding night by candlelight, and a name on the honor roll?"

"That doesn't seem quite right."

"You've already got a baby on the way, so clearly the wedding night happened a while ago. And this name on the honor roll, aren't you two a bit overconfident?"

Because of "my" words, Jared's parents had lost their grandchild, so they bore me a deep grudge too.

"Don't run your mouth about things you don't understand. Would we write that if we weren't completely sure?"

"Since everyone's here, it's about time our honored guest made his entrance."

The words had barely landed.

Ivy helped the mailman out from the room next door.

"Sir, didn't you come to deliver an acceptance letter?"

"The whole town's here now. You can deliver it."

Jared even shot me a look, leaning close to murmur in my ear,

"I picked today on purpose, just for this. This time, don't even think about stealing my acceptance letter."

But Jared's smile froze fast.

Because the mailman paid him no mind at all, and instead walked toward me with a smile.

"Debbie! I thought you were the bride today, so I waited here on purpose. But no matter, not being the bride doesn't change the fact that you got into college!"

"Congratulations. You're the first person in our whole city to be admitted to the nation's top university!"