I Won't Be Your Perfect Wife Again

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I gave up my family's inheritance to marry Leslie Heath, and for twenty years I was the perfect, devoted wife and mother. Everyone praised how capable and devoted I was, said he was blessed to have won me.

In the end I dropped dead from exhaustion, and left behind nothing but a good reputation.

But the moment I died, Leslie turned around and married his first love, Julia Finch. He hired a housekeeper specifically to run the household so she'd never have to lift a finger.

After the wedding he signed half of everything in his name over to her, and drew up a will naming Julia's son as heir to the family business.

My son was thrown out of the house, and died on the roadside with no one to care.

Reborn on the day of our wedding, I withdrew my renunciation of the inheritance.

Then I sent Leslie a text:

"Something's come up today. Let's call off the wedding for now."

......

I looked at my young face in the mirror. Nothing like the worn-out woman in her forties. Now I was young, and I still had time, still had strength.

I really had gone back twenty years.

A second later Leslie's call came through. The instant I picked up, he was already tearing into me.

"Have you lost your mind, Mercedes Butler! Every relative is coming today, and now you're telling me something's come up? What is that supposed to mean!"

He was roaring down the line, unable to understand what had gotten into me.

"Our engagement ceremony. You had company business too, didn't you, and we pushed it back three days?"

My voice came out cold. In the past I had always put Leslie first. He'd shown up three hours late to the engagement dinner, kept my parents waiting all that time, and finally strolled in with a breezy little "something came up."

And I still spoke up for him, still smoothed things over with the relatives, even agreed to his unreasonable demand to postpone.

The memory pulled a cold laugh out of me. After all I did for him, I never once got so much as a thank you, as if every bit of it was simply my duty.

Leslie went quiet, at a loss for why I'd suddenly bring up the engagement.

By the time they all came looking for me, I was still at the office, still in my work clothes.

"Mercedes!" Leslie stormed in, face like a thundercloud, and reached to snatch my laptop away.

Crack!

I raised my hand and slapped him, told him to give the laptop back. Disbelief spread across his face as he wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, that handsome face gone terrifyingly dark.

The other relatives who'd rushed over were horrified. They hurried to pull us apart, assuming the two of us were just quarreling, and started in on the reconciliation talk:

"Whatever it is, deal with it after the wedding, Mercy. Give your man some face in public. You're the wife—you don't hit your husband where people can see."

"Exactly. You're going to go back to the home once you're married anyway. What's the point of all this effort now? You're just working for your brother."

They talked over each other, one line after another, and not one of them said a word about Leslie being at fault.

I couldn't stop the cold laugh rising in me.

It hadn't been like this in my last life. On the day Julia married him, Leslie fussed over her endlessly, said everything would come second to Julia's career, that it wasn't easy for a woman to have something of her own to stand on, and he wouldn't let the relatives tie her down with all their old-fashioned lines.

But when it came to me, I was supposed to give it all up.

Seeing that I wasn't moved, my mother-in-law stepped forward, swept a cold glance over me, and told me not to throw away my dignity when it was handed to me—there were plenty of women lining up to be her daughter-in-law.

Ever since she'd learned I was giving up my family's inheritance, she'd taken on every kind of superior air.

Looking at this mother-in-law I'd waited on for twenty years, I couldn't hold the anger down.

Crack!

I grabbed the water glass beside me and hurled it to the floor, and it shattered. The huge crash shut everyone up at once. They stared at me, stunned, unable to understand how the gentle, soft-spoken girl they knew had suddenly turned into something so fierce.