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Not Your Bride, Not Your Free Nanny
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It had been barely a week since my sister's funeral when my brother-in-law casually picked up my niece's toy diamond ring and proposed to me. I turned to my mom. "Did that come free with the funeral wreath?" My mom grabbed my hand and pushed it toward his. "You're twenty-nine already. If your sister hadn't died and left Ivy without a mother, would a rich family like the Campbells ever look twice at you? Just settle and make it work." My niece clutched the hem of my skirt too, and spoke hesitantly, "Auntie, when I grow up, I'll take good care of you, I promise. Please don't think of me as a burden, okay?"
Chapters (5)
Chapter 1
It had been barely a week since my sister's funeral when my brother-in-law casually picked up my niece's toy diamond ring and proposed to me.
I turned to my mom. "Did that come free with the funeral wreath?"
My mom grabbed my hand and pushed it toward his.
"You're twenty-nine already. If your sister hadn't died and left Ivy without a mother, would a rich family like the Campbells ever look twice at you? Just settle and make it work."
My niece clutched the hem of my skirt too, and spoke hesitantly, "Auntie, when I grow up, I'll take good care of you, I promise. Please don't think of me as a burden, okay?"
I looked at her little hand and felt nothing at all.
It had gone exactly like this in my past life.
Back then, I'd looked at the poor father and daughter and nodded yes.
After the wedding, he gave me money every month and told everyone how little trouble I was. We had twenty years of quiet, stable life.
Until he fell gravely ill and, with the sudden strength of a dying man's last rally, shoved me hard away.
Clutching my sister's memorial photo, his eyes full of hatred, he accused me.
"What disgusts me most is that your sister wasn't even cold in her grave, and you couldn't wait to marry me for my money! You're worse than her in every way, and you took her place. Even having you sleep next to me made me feel dirty."
My niece, whom I'd raised from childhood, was glared at me resentfully.
"Dad, from now on it'll just be you and Mom buried together. As for this woman, I have nothing to do with her."
He finally smiled, then turned to give me one last instruction.
"In the next life, stay away from me. I really don't want to settle again."
He didn't want to settle. Did he think I did?
So in this life, I pulled my hand back.
…
"Mom, I'm not getting married. I want to live on my own."
"You’re playing hard to get? Look at you. You think anyone's going to come begging at your door?!"
Mom's voice shot up as her nails digging into my flesh, making my wrist throb.
I looked at her agitated face and felt only tired.
"Mom, I never said I wanted to marry someone better. I just don't want to get married."
"Don't want to get married?"
The relatives sitting in the living room all looked over.
My brother-in-law, Martin Campbell, tossed the plastic toy ring onto the table. Then he stood, picked up his daughter, and retreated to a corner, his gaze remained cold and unreadable.
My seven-year-old niece, Ivy Campbell, rested her head on his shoulder, peeking at me timidly.
My aunt, Linda Porter, sidled over holding her teacup.
"Martin's worth over ten million dollars. You won't lose a thing, marrying into the Campbell family."
"And Ivy needs someone to look after her. You're her own aunt. Why let some outsider have that spot?"
She said it like it was obvious, as if I should be grateful for the match.
I tightened my grip on my bag.
"Clearly, the Campbells are out of my league. Besides, I really don't want to get married."
"Then what about Ivy?"
Mom's eyes were brimming with tears.
"Your sister's funeral was barely a week ago, and the child is only seven. She can't go without a mother, can she?"
"Martin runs such a big company and has a child to raise on top of it. Can you really stand by and watch?"
I felt my throat tightened.
I'd heard all of this in my past life too.
In the end, I'd softened and given in, closed my studio, and married him.
Married life really had been as stable as Mom promised.
Martin gave me $10,000 a month for household expenses, and I gave up my entire social life to focus on raising Ivy. School drop-offs and pickups, homework help, three meals a day. My days revolved entirely around her.
In public, he praised me for being sensible, but at home he was cold and distant, never saying one word more than he had to. He kept his guard up around me, convinced I'd only slipped in at a vulnerable moment because I wanted his money.
I thought that was just what a practical marriage of convenience was supposed to look like.
Until twenty years later, when he lay in a hospital bed and told me how disgusting it was to be married to me.
He was cursing me for rushing into his bed while my sister was barely cold in her grave. He called me worse than my sister in every way and said even sleeping next to me made him feel dirty. And finally he warned me to stay away from him in the next life, that he didn't want to settle again.
I stood by his bed and listened to him to the very end, feeling nothing but numbness.
Twenty whole years of marriage, more than seven thousand days and nights, and in his eyes it had all been nothing but a scheme and a compromise.
Chapter 2
That was the moment I finally understood.
Everything I had given over those twenty years, he and his daughter had taken as their due.
Because I was her aunt.
Because the whole reason I had married into that house was to take care of them.
Ivy's voice pulled me back to the present. She wriggled out of Martin's arms and ran over to me.
"Don't you want me anymore?"
Her eyes glistened with tears as her small hand tugged at the hem of my top.
I crouched down and stroked her hair.
"Be a good girl, Ivy. I'll come see you, but I can't be your mom."
"Why not?"
Tears spilled down her cheeks.
"Kids at school say a kid without a mom is a stray. I don't want to be a stray."
My mother scooped her up right away.
"Marry Martin and you'll have a mansion and a child. What could be better?"
I looked back at the hopeful eyes fixed on me.
It was as if this marriage were the greatest gift anyone could ever give me.
Martin finally spoke, "If she thinks the terms aren't good enough, just forget it."
He lifted his head and looked at me. "I don't want to force anyone, and I'm certainly not going to use Ivy to bargain with people."
My mother panicked. "Martin, don't say that. Vanessa just hasn't come around yet. It’ll be fine once she comes to her senses."
Martin turned and headed for the door. "I'll take Ivy home first. You don't need to talk her into anything."
Seeing him about to leave, my mother grew frantic.
"Vanessa, what exactly do you want? You think you're still some twenty-year-old girl?"
"You're a twenty-nine-year-old, practically an old maid. If you don't marry Martin, what wealthy family is ever going to want you?"
Her shouting made my ears ache.
I took a deep breath.
"Then I won't get married at all."
The living room went quiet. Everyone froze.
My mother's face changed. "What did you say?"
"I said I'm not getting married. I'm fine never getting married."
I picked up my bag. "I'm leaving, Mom."
My mother grabbed my arm.
"If you dare walk out today, don't ever come back to this house!"
I could hear mom crying and Ivy calling after me.
But I didn't stop. This time, I wasn't going to make myself suffer for anyone.
***
"Are you out of your mind?!"
My brother, Trevor, called the minute I got home.
"Mom's crying her eyes out, and you still walked out?"
"I'm not out of my mind. I just don't want to get married."
"You don't want to get married?"
His voice rose. "Then what's your plan? Spend the rest of your life alone?"
"Yes."
The line went silent for a few seconds.
"Vanessa, are you still blaming Mom for favoring me back then? I've been married for years, and you're still hung up on that?"
I laughed.
In my past life, I really had held on to it.
I remembered that when he got married, Mom gave him three million dollars for a house.
I remembered that when my sister got married, Mom gave her ten percent of the family company's shares as her dowry.
I remembered that when I married Martin, Mom gave me nothing but a single comforter, and pressured me into signing a prenup that said I'd walk away with nothing.
But I never said a word of complaint.
Because Mom had told me, “You're marrying your sister's husband, we're all family, don't fuss about money, or Martin will think you're after the Campbell fortune.”
In this life, I didn't want to hold on to any of it anymore.
"Trevor, I don't blame Mom. I just want to live my own life."
"What's so great about living on your own? How much can that little studio of yours even make?"
Trevor sighed. "Martin's worth over a hundred million, and Ivy's a good kid. Marry him, be a rich man's wife, and you won't lose out."
"Besides, you're twenty-nine. What do you think you can still be picky about?"
That line again.
As if, at twenty-nine, I should be grateful anyone was willing to marry me at all.
Chapter 3
None of them cared, even if this man was convinced I was a gold digger and only wanted to marry me so he'd have a free nanny.
"Trevor, I'm not marrying him. Stop trying to talk me into it."
I hung up.
The phone rang again. It was Aunt Linda. I didn't answer.
Right after her came my cousin, then a few relatives I barely ever spoke to. More than a dozen calls came in one after another, and they all said the same thing.
Marry Martin Campbell.
They scolded me for being so willful, for playing hard to get. They said I should think of Ivy, and not ruin the bond between our two families.
A dull ache throbbed in my temples.I turned off my phone.
The apartment finally went quiet.
I sat on the couch and stared at the empty living room. It was my rented one-bedroom, about five hundred and forty square feet, simply furnished. But it was my own place.
In my past life, once I married and moved to the Campbell Mansion--all thirty-two hundred square feet of it—I'd had no space of my own. Every day revolved around the stove and the child. Even sitting quietly for ten minutes was a luxury.
Martin was always on guard against me and never let me spend much. He said household expenses were high, so we should save wherever we could.
I would agonize for ages over a forty-dollar blouse.
Yet the burial plot he bought for my sister cost a full seven hundred thousand dollars. Beloved Wife, engraved on the headstone.
Every year on the anniversary of her death, he would cling to that headstone, sobbing as if his heart were being torn out. He said she was the love of his life.
At that moment, standing beside him, my hands and feet cold as ice, I felt like an outsider. In his heart, I was nothing but a money-grubbing nanny.
I lay down on the couch and closed my eyes.
In this life, I would never let myself live like that again.
***
Early the next morning, the doorbell rang.
I opened the door to find my mother standing outside with Ivy.
The child's eyes were swollen from crying. The moment she saw me, she threw her arms around my legs.
"Aunt Vanessa, don't you want me anymore?"
Mom used the moment to step inside, then pulled Ivy in front of her.
"Go on, tell your aunt what you said at home."
Ivy glanced at her, then turned and tugged at my sleeve. "Aunt Vanessa, please marry Daddy. I promise I'll be good from now on."
In my past life, she had said the exact same thing.
But later, when all I did was remind her to do her homework, she shoved a scalding bowl of soup across the table and shouted.
"You're not my real mom! You only got in because my mom died. What gives you the right to boss me around?"
The hot soup splashed all over my hand, leaving me frozen in place. But Martin didn't even look up.
"Quit acting like her mother. She's just a kid, go easy on her."
Now, that same hand was clutching me again.
I gently pulled free and crouched down to look at her.
"Ivy, I can still come see you even if I don't marry your daddy."
She blinked, taken aback.
"Then who's going to make my healthy meals? Who's going to take me to school and pick me up?"
"Your daddy will hire a nanny to take care of that."
"A nanny won't understand me. And Daddy runs a big company with hundreds of people. He gets tired from working so hard to earn all that money."
I looked at her. "Well, I have a studio to run, and I get tired too."
Ivy pouted. After a moment, she muttered under her breath, "Grandma says your crummy studio doesn't even make thirty thousand dollars a year, and you don't have any kids of your own anyway, so that little bit of money is useless."
Mom's hand paused on her water glass.
"Kids only half-hear things. Don't take it seriously."
Ivy hurried on. "I can be your daughter! If you move into my house and cook for me and sleep with me at night, I'll call you Mom when we're out in public!"
When we're out in public.
Those words brought back my past life.
Back then, I went to her elite private school for a parent-teacher conference. The teacher praised her mother for being so attentive, and Ivy smiled and accepted it.
But back at home, she saw the photo of the two of us on the table, pried the frame open right away, pulled out the picture, and tore it to pieces.
Chapter 4
The glass from the frame cut my finger.
She glanced at it and said coldly, "This is where my real mom's picture goes. Don't mess with things in my house."
Back then, I told myself she just missed her mother. I quietly gathered the pieces and put them away in a drawer.
They stayed there for fifteen years.
Remembering it, my chest felt tight. I gently pushed her little hands away.
"You don't need to call me anything new. Aunt Vanessa is fine."
Ivy pouted again.
"Then why won't you come live at my house?"
My mother pulled her into a hug and looked up at me.
"The child is willing to call you Mom. You'll also get to spend the Campbell family's hundreds of millions. What more could you want?"
I got to my feet.
"Because I'm better off on my own."
Ivy got upset and wriggled out of my mother's arms.
"Better how? Both grandma said you're already twenty-nine, and when you get older nobody's going to want you."
"My dad is worth over a hundred million and he's still willing to marry you. Are you mad he didn't buy you a real diamond ring? Are you playing hard to get so you can ask for more money?"
The room went quiet.
My stomach turned sour. So in the Campbells' eyes, my refusal was just a way to raise my price.
My mother's expression changed, and she slapped the back of Ivy's hand.
"Why are you repeating grown-up talk?"
Ivy started sniffling and crying instead. "Aunt Vanessa, I don't have a mom anymore. Can't you just let me have this?"
I spoke coldly.
“Marriage is a matter for adults. I don’t want to get married, and your crying won’t change anything.”
My mother shot to her feet and jabbed a finger at my nose.
"She's only seven! Why are you saying this to her? If your sister knew you this was how you were treating her only daughter, would she ever forgive you from her grave?"
I met my mother's eyes.
"If she knew you were all using her death to force me to marry into this family just to be a free nanny, would she be happy?"
My mother's turned grim. She grabbed Ivy and headed for the door.
"Fine! Don't you ever regret this! And as for your niece, you can forget she exists!"
Ivy gripped the doorframe and looked back at me.
"Aunt Vanessa, if you say yes now, I won't be mad at you. When I grow up and take over Dad's company, I can even take care of you when you're old."
I didn't go over to her. "I can make my own arrangements for when I'm old."
The door slammed shut.
The phone on the table lit up. It was a message from Martin.
[I'm sorry for the trouble. Ivy can't be without you, and there's nothing I can do. Calm down first. If it's the toy ring that seemed cheap, once you've thought it over, I'll have someone pick out a hundred-thousand-dollar one to make up for it.]
I stared at the screen, shaking with anger.
To him, I was only throwing a tantrum because I hadn't gotten enough out of it.
In my past life, he'd told me himself, as he lay in his hospital bed, to stay away from him in the next life.
Now that I was doing exactly what he wanted, he couldn't get used to it.
I sent one last reply.
[I've thought it over. I'm not marrying you, and I'm not waiting either.]
Then I deleted his contact.
This time, whoever's life got hard could figure it out themselves.
***
A week later, my mother called out of nowhere and said Ivy's seventh birthday was coming up.
I meant to hang up and refuse right away.
But my mother was crying on the phone.
"The child just lost her mom, and this is her first birthday since her mother's death. She's hoping you'll be there. You won't marry into the Campbell family, and we'll never force you. But can't you even have a simple meal with the child?"
I held the phone in silence for a long time. In the end, I gave in and agreed.
When I reached the gate of the Campbell Mansion, I saw red wedding decorations pasted on the front doors.
Chapter 5
I stopped short.
My brother Trevor was already coming out to meet me. He snatched the birthday present out of my hands.
"You're here. Go get inside. Both families' elders are waiting."
"Since when does Ivy's seventh birthday need wedding decorations on the front door?"
Trevor avoided my eyes, grabbed my wrist, and dragged me toward the house. His grip made it ache.
The moment the door swung open, I finally had my answer.
Wedding streamers hung across the living room, and the marble coffee table was covered in wedding favors.
Aunt Linda was pointing her phone at me, filming. With a laugh, she shouted, "Look, everyone, the bride's here!"
Martin stood by the sofa in a white dress shirt, a groom's boutonniere pinned to his chest, frosty stare.
My mother hurried over holding a white dress with the tags still on and pushed it into my arms.
"Vanessa, go change in the guest room. Relatives from both families are here today. We'll just have a simple family welcome dinner, and from now on you'll be Mrs. Campbell, fair and proper."
I stood in the entryway, cold all over.
"Didn't you say this was just Ivy's birthday?"
"We're celebrating her birthday, and we're taking care of your wedding while we're at it."
My mother pushed at my shoulder.
"You're twenty-nine already, and you're only going to be your own sister's replacement wife. There's no need for all that fuss. Today you'll give the wedding toast, and first thing tomorrow you two will go get the marriage license."
Aunt Linda chimed in with a laugh.
"Everybody knows you turned him down the other day because the toy ring looked cheap. You were just raising your price. Well, here you go. The elders have set the stage for you. Everyone's here, so stop putting on airs and embarrassing Martin."
I looked around at the glaring wedding decor filling the room. The whole thing was beyond absurd.
In my last life, I hadn't worn a wedding gown when I married into the Campbell family either.
Back then, my mother had said it was only one week after my sister's funeral and we couldn't make a show of it. One family dinner, one comforter. Plus a prenup that meant I would walk away with nothing. And with that, I handed over the next twenty years of my life.
This time I had clearly said no, and they didn't even need my yes anymore.
I threw the dress in my hands onto the floor.
"Whoever agreed to this can marry him." With that, I turned to leave.
Trevor took one stride over and threw his arm across the door, blocking it.
"Vanessa! There are over a dozen elders watching you right now. Don't make a scene!”
"We brought a private chef in from a five-star hotel, and all the relatives have been told. How is Mom supposed to face anyone in her circle after this?”
"On top of that, Martin promised that as long as you give the toast today, he'll wire $700,000 into my company tomorrow to keep it afloat. You think you can ruin this for me?"
I reached for the door handle. Suddenly a small figure rushed at me from behind.
Ivy wrapped herself tightly around my legs.
"Auntie, don't go!"
"Grandma said starting today you're my mommy! You can't leave!"
I bent down and tried to pry her fingers loose.
"Ivy, I came here for your birthday, not to get married."
"I don't want a birthday! Mommy, I want you to make me dinner!"
"Are you still mad because I said you were after our money? I'll listen to you from now on, I promise! I'll never call you a gold digger feeding off your own sister again!"
The moment those words left her mouth, the faces of several relatives around us changed.
Ivy was crying so hard she could barely breathe. Her arms locked around my waist, and she let her whole weight drag me down.
"You have to marry Daddy! If you don't say yes, I'm not letting go!"
The force knocked me back against the doorframe, and my back slammed into it, sending pain shooting through my bones.
My mother stood off to the side. Instead of pulling Ivy away, she started dabbing at her eyes.
"Look at the poor child. She's crying her heart out just to keep you here."
"Then why don't you tell her this whole wedding today was a lie you all set up to trick her?!"
