Chapter 1

1: 1

The first thing I did after waking up back in 1985 was take back my college admission spot and throw away my foreman husband.

In my last life, I gave that admission spot to my husband, Julius Delgado.

"The factory assigned me an apartment. I'm taking Noreen and her son with me, otherwise a widow and a fatherless boy will just get pushed around in the village."

Afraid I'd go to D.C. and make a scene, he mailed the divorce papers back and then sold me to the village bully.

Twenty years. Twenty years worse than death, every day a living hell, and in the end I didn't make it through that last winter.

"That Julius is cold-blooded, all right. He sent money every month just so I'd have more reasons to torment her."

I still had a breath left in me when they beat that breath out. I died with my eyes open, unable to rest.

I never imagined heaven would open its eyes and send me back to the very day I handed him that spot.

1

"Enough. This is between the two of you, husband and wife, and you've dragged it all the way to the village office. You want the whole place laughing at you?"

The team leader's words froze me where I stood, my body trembling faintly. When he saw I wasn't going to speak, he pressed on.

"Beulah Gilbert, I'm telling you, make all the fuss you want, it won't change a thing. I'm taking the two of them with me. And if you keep this up, I'll divorce you."

He thought divorce would scare me. In this era, after all, a divorced woman was something people spat on.

I clenched my fists so hard the nails bit into my palms, and I felt nothing. The hatred from my last life was still sitting in my chest.

Tortured for twenty years. If I could, I'd have killed him right there. I lowered my head, swallowing the fury inside me, my palms bleeding.

He was braced for me to keep fighting. He never expected me to say, flatly, only one word.

"Fine."

He hadn't counted on that calm. In the second he stood there stunned, I was already out the door.

Heart pounding, I ran straight to the general store, and the first thing I did was pick up the phone and take back the admission spot that belonged to me.

In my last life, my husband, already holding a key position at the factory, was going to sit the college exams alongside me. He landed just outside the admission list, and I was afraid it would wound his pride.

He was the only factory foreman in all the surrounding villages, a man who cared about face. If people found out he hadn't gotten in, he'd be furious. So I gave up my own place, the top spot, and handed him the last opening.

The first thing he did when he got home wasn't to share the good news. It was to tell me the factory in D.C. had arranged a work unit and an apartment for him, so he could study and work at once, and after graduation he'd step into the D.C. factory chief's position.

So he was taking his childhood sweetheart and her son to D.C. with him, and once he was settled he'd come back for me.

I refused. I fought it for days and nights, I even starved myself, and none of it worked. All I could do was watch him leave with Noreen Simmons and her son.

The day I lay dying, the two of them appeared on the television, dressed bright and beautiful, while I lay white-haired on a broken-down bed.

If not for the words spoken just before I died, I would never have known that all twenty years of my suffering had been handed to me by them.

The phone rang, pulling my thoughts back. When I had my answer, the fear that had been hanging inside me finally settled. In this life, I would never step aside again.

Standing in the doorway, looking at the shabby house I'd lived in for decades, my eyes went red.

I slapped the divorce papers straight down on the table.

"Sign them."

I ignored his stunned face, turned, gathered the few things that were mine, and left.

"Do you even understand what divorce means? You actually dare to threaten me with divorce?"

"Julius, you think far too much of yourself."

"I'm a college student. Someday I'll be a factory chief, and you'll always be nothing but a country woman."

He signed. He was certain I wouldn't dare turn the papers in, because without him I'd have nothing.

The cold look in my eyes as I left confused him, and left him uneasy for reasons he couldn't name.

The night the divorce stamp came through, I knocked on that rough man's door. I knew who he really was. He could keep me safe.

"Do you want me?"

He wore only a military-green tank top, his body pulling taut at those few words, a raw force rolling off him.

I slapped the divorce papers against his chest.

"We share the wedding night tonight."

In my last life, wearing the title of a married woman, I missed him for decades. Living it over, I didn't want that regret to go on.

That night, I finally understood why every woman in the village had wanted him for so long, why even in their dreams there was only him.