The day Nelson Vance received his college acceptance letter, he lost his memory.

He remembered everyone.

Including the first love who'd cut him off the moment he was sent to the countryside.

The only person he forgot was me.

And our marriage filled him with nothing but disgust.

“I'm in love with Joan Fox. There's no way I'd ever marry some village hick like you.”

He smashed everything I'd ever given him, and never set foot in our home again.

Even when I told him I was pregnant, all I got was a single dismissive line about my cheap tricks.

And yet.

I actually felt relieved.

No ties, no attachments. That was the only way I'd ever make it in Harbor City.

……

After the surgery for the miscarriage, I came back to the village.

Nelson spotted me from a distance. His smile faded. His eyes went cold.

Even the villagers who'd been chatting away fell silent at the same time, turning to look at me with pity.

Honestly, I didn't feel much of anything.

But the hand Bernice Pruitt had on my shoulder was trembling hard.

“That animal! And he thinks he deserves to get into Capital University.”

“If it weren't for him, you wouldn't have had to go through any of this.”

Her eyes were rimmed red, teeth clenched, and she was already stepping forward to go confront Nelson.

I held her back and shook my head gently.

“Nelson won't believe a word of it.”

Just like before.

I'd explained countless times that this marriage wasn't something I wanted. Nelson only ever sneered.

He said I was a liar through and through. He was certain I'd thrown myself into the river on purpose, let him rescue me on purpose, and deliberately used obligation and my ruined reputation to chain him for life.

Our marriage was nothing to be proud of.

Suspicion and fighting ran through nearly every day of our two years together.

In front of others, he was civil enough. He wouldn't humiliate me publicly.

Behind closed doors, he recoiled from everything I'd touched.

He'd smashed the face cream I bought him and snarled at me not to waste my effort.

He'd torn apart the new books I'd saved up to buy him.

Scraps of paper drifted through the room like snow, but there wasn't a trace of regret or sadness on Nelson's face.

“Don't think a few little gifts can make up for what you did.”

“Nanette Simmons, you're going to pay for what you've done.”

That line was a curse.

A constant reminder, hanging over me and over him.

But I hadn't done anything. Why should I have to endure this?

If I could go back, I'd rather he had never saved me……

That thought consumed me.

So much so that the next time Nelson started in on me, the words left my mouth before I could think.

He froze for a second.

Then his expression shifted to open revulsion.

“So you finally can't hold it in anymore.”

“If I could do it over, I'd never save you again.”

“Throwing away my entire life for someone like you. Not worth it.”

Too bad.

There are no do-overs in this world.

And no second chances.

Two years of being wrongly accused had taught me exactly what kind of man he was.

So.

Even though Bernice was seething, calling me a fool for swallowing the humiliation alone, I didn't change my mind.

I looked at him and smiled. I didn't feel wronged.

“I'm not a fool. I've just stopped expecting anything from him.”

Explaining yourself over and over to someone who refuses to believe you is just another way of humiliating yourself.

Isn't it?

After Nelson moved back to the sent-down youth quarters, I was the only one left in the house.

Worried I wouldn't recover properly on my own, Bernice packed up her things from the quarters and moved in with me.

Just like that.

In the mornings, she went out to work the fields. I stayed in bed.

In the afternoons, she went out to work the fields. I was still in bed.

She kept her word and didn't tell anyone about the miscarriage.

So when I missed two straight days of work, the villagers just assumed Nelson had broken my heart.

When Mrs. Hargrove came to talk some sense into me, she looked around the room and her brow furrowed tight.

She opened her mouth, seemed about to ask something.

The words made it to her lips and died there.

She pulled up a chair and sat beside the bed.

Only then did she try again.

“Nanette, you know Nelson lost his memory. You two have been husband and wife for so long — you can't let something like this come between you.”

“It's just amnesia. Give it a couple of days. It'll probably clear up, and then won't things be good again?”

She smiled gently.

She brought up the time I'd scraped together everything I had and gone all the way to the provincial capital alone, just to buy Nelson new books — then spent every last cent and had to walk for hours to get home.

It was dark by the time I made it back.

She mentioned how I'd nearly dropped to my knees begging when he fell sick.

In a downpour, I'd hauled him to the hospital on a borrowed bicycle.

Came home drenched and filthy myself.

Everyone in the village knew how good I'd been to him.

But had he ever been good to me?

I asked Mrs. Hargrove that. No bitterness, no heartbreak in my voice.

Just stating a fact, the way you'd talk about the weather.

“Mrs. Hargrove, I'm really just tired.”

She didn't push further. Just let out a long, slow sigh.

The second round of persuasion came from my parents.

Unlike Mrs. Hargrove, they walked in with accusations already loaded.

One line — “Instead of figuring out how to win Nelson back, you're sitting here moping — what good does that do?” — and whatever willingness I had left to talk shriveled up.

All I felt was suffocation.

“Nelson is such a catch — young, handsome, and now he's gotten into Capital University. His future is wide open.”

“If you don't hold on to him, what happens to us? What happens to your brother?”

“We always said you had no brains and we were right. It's just amnesia, not a divorce. What's there to be upset about?”

They went on and on.

They valued Nelson more than their own daughter. That much had always been clear.

I managed a thin, bitter smile.

Didn't argue.

I just remembered how, whenever I'd fought with them before, Nelson had stood right there on their side, piling on one cutting remark after another, and at the end, pressing my head down and making me apologize.

He carried a grudge against me, and he took every chance he could to grind me further into the dirt.

But in my parents' eyes, Nelson could do no wrong.

The only one at fault was me. It could only ever be me.

I lowered my gaze to the plans Bernice and I had drawn up together, hidden under the quilt, and said quietly:

“Then let's divorce.”

“What?”

Both of them shot to their feet, livid.

“Nelson is the first person from this village to get into college. If you dare divorce him, don't bother calling us Mom and Dad ever again.”

A serious threat.

And yet, even as they stormed out with fury on their faces, I never gave in.

When Bernice came in silently carrying a warm bowl of brown-sugar poached eggs for me, she looked so pained, so careful, that I couldn't help but laugh.

“What are you laughing at? And here I am worrying myself sick over you.”

She huffed, her eyes going red at the edges.

“Nanette, everyone is telling you to back down. If you're going to regret this, now's the time.”

I wouldn't.

I knew that much.

Spend a lifetime ground down by Nelson's baseless suspicion, or let myself go and start over.

The choice was clear.

My decision to divorce Nelson was far more certain than my decision to marry him had ever been.

But he dragged his feet, never once agreeing.

Even when I brought it up myself, all I got was that suspicious glare of his, and the words would die in my throat.

In his version of things, I was always scheming — no telling what I was plotting next.

Then Joan Fox showed up in the village, dusty and disheveled, looking for him — and Nelson was overjoyed.

He stopped paying attention to me.

All his time went to hovering around Joan Fox, reminiscing about every little moment they'd once shared.

The closeness between them was obvious, the air thick with something more.

The villagers watched it all, and the gossip never stopped.

“Nelson's lost his memory, fine, but now an old flame shows up too? Nanette's definitely done this time.”

“I think so too. He doesn't even remember her. It'd be stranger if she didn't leave.”

My face gave nothing away. I could have been watching someone else's life.

But when I turned my head and caught Joan's triumphant gaze, my brows drew together before I could stop them.

She walked toward me, smile fixed in place the whole way.

When she stopped, that smile didn't waver, but the words that came out were pure venom.

“Nanette Simmons, you are the most pathetic woman I've ever met.”

“Nelson told me everything. You schemed your way into marrying him. If he hadn't lost his memory, would you still be clinging to him like this?”

“And what about you?” I stopped what I was doing and let out a quiet laugh.

“The moment you found out Nelson was being sent to the countryside, you broke up with him and cut all ties. Now that he's gotten into Capital University, you come running back to rekindle things. You're quite something yourself, Ms. Fox.”

Joan's body went rigid.

But she held herself together better than I'd expected.

She leaned in close, her lips near my ear, and whispered like she was sharing a secret she was proud of.

“So what? Nelson's heart belongs to me. You'll never compare.”

I nodded.

She was special to him. He'd been abandoned and still forgave her without a second thought. Of course I couldn't compare.

I was about to speak when Nelson's voice exploded behind me.

“Nanette Simmons, what the hell are you doing?!”

He shoved me aside and pulled Joan behind him.

Every line of his body was tense, guarded, as if I were some kind of threat.

“I already told you I lost my memory. I don't remember anything from before. What are you trying to do to Joan?”

The shove sent me stumbling.

The soil underfoot was damp, and mud splattered across my clothes, leaving splotches of brown.

He glanced at me, then looked away.

He didn't notice it was the same outfit he'd complimented before the college entrance exams, told me it looked nice.

All he said was, “So it's dirty. That ugly thing needed to go anyway.”

He guided Joan away with careful hands. Even from a distance, their voices carried back to me.

“Stay away from Nanette Simmons from now on. She had the nerve to trap me into marriage. There's nothing she won't do.”

“You're kind, and you're better than her in every way. Who knows what she might try.”

“A woman that conniving? I'm definitely divorcing her.”

“I don't even know why I was stupid enough to save her in the first place. Two years of my life, wasted on nothing.”

……

The contempt dripping from every word was so thick even a fool could hear it.

I clenched my fists and let out a long, unsteady breath.

Then bent my head and went back to work.

It's fine.

That's what I told myself.

As long as he's willing to sign the divorce.

I can take a little more of this.

Midsummer heat bore down, and the cicadas wouldn't stop screaming.

What came first wasn't the divorce.

It was a chance to go to Harbor City.

Bernice threw her arms around me, words tumbling out about how she'd tracked down the director, how she'd landed us this one shot at a meeting.

Her eyes were shining.

“We made a deal, remember? If Director Ellison says yes, we go to Harbor City. You act, I manage you, and we make something of ourselves there. We have to.”

I nodded hard.

I knew exactly how rare this chance was.

Nelson used to point at my face and tell me I'd used my looks to ruin people's lives.

I'd heard it so many times that confusion had turned to loathing, and I'd started to hate my own face.

Now, for the first time, I was almost grateful for it.