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 fiancé, 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.
