Chapter 3

3: 3

Stella's eyes flickered and went shifty. She stopped hitting me and stopped shouting too, just covered her face and kept crying.

The villagers who had marched me over frowned, and Aunt Marlene, at the front, slapped me straight across the face. "Shameless animal! You force yourself on a woman, and then you threaten her!"

"You live closer to Stella than anyone, and you're the only new face in the whole village!"

"Who else would do something this filthy, if not you?"

"That's right. We're all decent people. None of us would even give a widow a second glance walking past."

"Yeah, yeah. I didn't even come out today, but when Stella screamed, I think I saw a man darting toward that Floyd guy's place!"

"I saw it too. He was skulking around outside Stella's yard."

One after another, the villagers piled on, building their case against me.

Now they had more than suspicion. They had witnesses.

I found the whole thing bitterly absurd.

I'd only moved in two days ago. I didn't even know all their faces, hadn't spoken with any of them. And yet here they were, dead certain I was a lecher, a criminal.

This was what it meant to say that once someone wants to condemn you, they'll never lack for an excuse.

I waited until the wave of shouting accusations died down, then looked at each of them in turn, my gaze a warning. "Slander and false rumors are all being recorded by law. Every word you say, if any of it is a lie, you will be held responsible."

Stella stopped crying and spat at me viciously. "Floyd, quit putting on an act to scare people."

"What you did to me, Heaven sees it, and my dead husband sees it too!"

"I came to borrow your cat, and you refused right in front of everyone. I never thought that once everyone went home to cook dinner, you'd quietly let your cat out, then say you were coming to my house to look for it. But the moment you got inside, you threw me down and tore my clothes."

Stella wore the look of someone reliving something unbearable, and she wailed at the top of her voice.

Aunt Marlene patted her back with concern. "Stella, don't worry. We'll get justice for you, no matter what!"

Stella shook her head, her expression dazed. "What good is justice to me?"

"I've been violated, my name is dirt now, I can't go on living in this village. I, I might as well be dead!"

Stella's face turned to resolve and she made to run outside.

Several villagers rushed to hold her back.

Stella broke into sobs again, and that shrill, keening cry twisted something in everyone's chest.

A few of the women couldn't help wiping away tears.

At that point, one of the male villagers who had come with Aunt Marlene to trash my house suddenly spoke up. "Why don't we have that Floyd guy pay Stella some money, so she can move somewhere else."

Stella's crying dropped lower, and she traded a discreet glance with the man who'd spoken.

So it seemed that in this life and the last, Stella framing me had all been arranged in advance.

But why? Why had she fixed on me?

Whatever her scheme was, I'd been given this life again, and I wasn't going to let it work!

I refused the man's suggestion outright. "I won't pay a cent!"

"I never touched her. If you don't believe me, call the police."

"I trust the police to do their job right. They won't wrong an innocent man, and they won't let a guilty one walk."

As I said it, I fixed my eyes on Stella.

Whether her nerves were just that strong, or for some other reason, she didn't so much as flinch.

"Floyd, if you dare call the police, I'll kill myself right here in front of you!"

"Right now only the people in this village know. Call the police and it'll be in the news, and then every town for miles around will know that I, Stella Pruitt, was... I'd have nothing left to live for at all!"

"But I really didn't do anything to you. I never even left my house today!"

"This has to go to the police. Your good name matters, and so does mine!"

"You're a grown man, what good name do you have? And a thing like this, so shameful, would Stella really lie and frame you over it?"

Aunt Marlene, who'd led the ransacking of my house, flew into a rage.

The villagers who'd been swayed by my firm stance now leaned back toward Stella's side.

"That's right. When something like this happens to a woman, she can't even show her face. Why would she lie about it?"

"This Floyd kid, decent-looking, seems like he's not a bad sort. Who'd have thought he'd do it and then not own up. A man like that staying in the village, if we let him off today, tomorrow whose wife or daughter gets hurt?"

"We can't let him off easy!"

"He has to pay for it!"

The villagers roared, worked into a frenzy, looking at me the way you'd look at a mortal enemy.

Their eyes merged with the eyes that had beaten me like madmen in my last life, and I knew that if I didn't do something now, the tragedy of that life would play out all over again.