She Chose My Brother Instead

In my past life, I treated my wife with unwavering devotion, spending twelve long years caring for her as Alzheimer’s slowly dismantled her mind. She forgot my name. She forgot our front door. The only person she remembered was my older brother, Owen. Whenever Owen visited, she would light up, trailing behind him like an eager shadow. Whenever she saw me, she screamed and drove me out of the house. I took the slaps, swallowed the curses, and drained every cent of my savings on her care. Through it all, my parents only offered a dismissive shrug: "She’s sick, Jesse. Just be the bigger man and bear it." In the final three minutes before she died, a fleeting spark of lucidity returned to her eyes. She gripped my hand with everything she had left, but the name on her lips was still my brother’s. She left her entire estate to Owen, whispering with her last breath: "If there’s another life, I want to marry the right man for once." When I opened my eyes again, I was back in the autumn of 1985, on the eve of our trip to the county clerk's office to file our marriage license. Corinne had beaten me to it. She had already crossed out my name on the application and replaced it with Owen’s. She had come back, too. And this time, I stepped aside and let them have each other. … "I changed the name on the license. The wedding with you is off." Corinne stood over me, her gaze cold, detached, and entirely devoid of warmth. I sat in silence, staring down at the familiar strokes of her handwriting on the county application. Where "Jesse" had once been typed and signed, a thick black line had been drawn through it, with "Owen" neatly scrawled above. In our past life, the handwritten will she left for Owen had carried that exact same penmanship—meticulous, deliberate, reverent to the point of worship. I clenched my fists under the kitchen table, fingernails biting hard into my palms, but I couldn’t feel a thing. I had tried three times to burn that will over the woodstove. As the flames finally caught, she had been lying in the bedroom down the hall, crying out Owen's name in her delirium. I remembered standing by the hearth back then, watching my tears sizzle and disappear into the gray ash without even leaving behind a trace of smoke. Seeing that I wasn’t throwing a tantrum or demanding an explanation, Corinne’s brow furrowed. "I’m the one calling it off," she snapped, her tone defensive. "This has nothing to do with Owen. If you have a grudge, direct it at me." Owen peeked out from behind her, his voice low, raspy, and practiced in its fragility. "Little brother… you’ve always been sharper than me, more responsible. But Corinne told me… she said she’s always loved me…" He gave Corinne a soft, tender smile, slipping an arm around her waist. "Corinne says love shouldn't be settled for. I know I’m not worthy of her. But just this once… your big brother wants to be brave." He turned his moist, earnest eyes on me. "You’ll be happy for us, won’t you, Jesse?" The icy detachment in Corinne’s face melted into an expression of fierce protectiveness and tender affection—a look I had starved for over an entire lifetime and never once received. She took Owen’s hand, leaning her head against his chest. "Owen," she murmured, her voice quiet but unyielding, "in this life, I will never let you grow old alone." The screen door creaked open. My mother walked in from the yard, carrying a heavy, brand-new crimson satin duvet. I had saved my textile ration coupons for three months to buy that fabric, and paid an elderly seamstress extra to hand-stitch delicate lotus patterns along the borders over seven sleepless nights. My mother walked straight past me, heading directly into Owen’s bedroom. "Jesse, since you won’t be needing this, it goes to your brother," she said without looking back. "Since Corinne chose Owen, you need to be gracious about it. You’re still young. You can always find someone else down the road." My father stepped over the threshold right behind her, slapping a red inventory sheet onto the wooden table. "Go to the shed out back and check off Corinne’s dowry list. Make sure not a single piece is missing." Listed on that paper were a brand-new Singer sewing machine, a cruiser bicycle, and a mechanical wristwatch. In my past life, every single one of those luxury items had been bought with money I earned breaking my back at double shifts, given to Corinne as my wedding gift to her. In this life, she had gone out and bought them all in advance—for Owen. Seeing my silence, my father’s voice sharpened into a gravelly bark. "Don’t you go giving us that sullen face. If you dare cause a scene before the ceremony, I won’t let you off easy!" I slowly pushed my chair back and stood up. Corinne instinctively shifted, pulling Owen behind her as if bracing for a fight. The black ink striking through my name on that paper felt like a mirror of my past life—a heart drained dry, worked to the bone, yet never able to warm her up. Yet at this exact moment, my chest felt completely hollowed out. Light. Weightless. It was as if an anchor weighing ten thousand pounds had suddenly been cut loose from my ribs. I gave a quiet nod. "All right." My voice wasn’t loud, but the sheer calm in it left everyone in the room stunned. After checking the crates in the back shed, I walked back inside and poured myself a cup of water from the kettle. Corinne reached out on pure muscle memory, expecting me to hand it to her. But when her fingers met empty air and caught Owen’s bewildered gaze, her hand froze awkwardly. In the next second, as if trying to erase her own reflex, she deliberately knocked the tin cup from the table, sending it clattering across the floor. Owen took a startled step back. Flustered and irritated, Corinne grabbed Owen’s wrist and pulled him toward the door. "Stop acting like you’re doing me favors," she threw over her shoulder at me. "I don’t want Owen getting the wrong idea." Several neighbors from the lane were already leaning over our low brick wall, peering curiously into the courtyard. Corinne paused on the front steps, raising her voice so every ear within fifty yards could hear: "Listen up, everyone! In three days, Owen and I are getting our license and holding our reception at the county workers' hall!" Her eyes cut straight through the morning mist, locking onto me with frigid disdain. "Jesse, after this weekend, I will be your sister-in-law. You’d better pack away whatever inappropriate ideas you’re harboring." She pulled a stamped transfer notice from her coat pocket, crumpled it into a tight ball, and tossed it at my feet. "And one more thing. That machine-operator post the Foster family reserved for you at the textile mill? I’ve officially transferred it to Owen." She had no idea that an hour earlier, I had already walked out of the local post office, having finalized my plans to leave town for good in three days. The neighbors erupted into a flurry of whispers and titters. "Just yesterday she was engaged to the younger brother, and today she’s marrying the elder? Where does that leave Jesse?" "Did Jesse do something shameful behind closed doors? Or does he have some hidden defect?" "Look at that—lost his bride, and now he’s lost his job too!" The gossip swirled like a bitter draft, but to ears that had lived through a lifetime of quiet misery, it couldn't leave a scratch. ... The next morning, I walked past the front gates of the county textile mill. Pinned to the bulletin board was the new hiring roster. Owen’s name sat proudly where mine was supposed to be. In my last life, I had spent twelve grueling years in front of the roaring looms of that very mill just to keep food on our table. The coarse cotton threads had shredded my fingers until the blisters hardened into thick, cracked calluses. After Corinne fell ill, I spent my nights taking on illicit side-hauling jobs in the freezing rain to afford her imported prescriptions. She had never once spared me a glance of pity, never once asked if I was tired. I turned my back on the mill gates and walked into the biting wind, heading back toward our house. Inside, my mother was using a damp rag to polish the gleaming chrome of the new sewing machine. "Your reputation is in the gutter, and you’re still wandering the streets every day? If you don’t care about your dignity, I still care about mine!" She straightened her aching back, tossed the rag into a tin basin, and shot me a look dripping with disgust. "Your brother’s wedding is in two days, and we’re buried in chores. Can’t you make yourself useful for once? Why did I have to birth such a thick-headed, useless boy?" Owen walked in through the front door, wearing a crisp, tailored shirt and beaming from ear to ear. "Mom, look! Corinne had someone bring me the latest leather briefcase from the city, and a brand-new wool suit!" My mother’s face instantly softened into proud, beaming wrinkles, praising him endlessly. Owen strutted over to me, deliberately smoothing down his collar and adjusting his cuffs. "Little brother, how does it look? Corinne told me that after we marry, she’s putting the deed to the Foster family estate entirely under my name." He leaned in, dropping his voice to a cruel, triumphant whisper. "She told me that in this life, she will only ever treat me well. You’d better let go of your little fantasies, Jesse, before you make a total fool of yourself." I took a step back, widening the space between us, my face completely expressionless. "Good for you. Congratulations." The smug grin on Owen’s face froze. His sharp barb had landed like a punch into dead cotton. He glanced out the open doorway, his eyes darting as an idea sparked. Suddenly, he grabbed a ceramic bowl from the edge of the sideboard and hurled it violently to the floor by my boots. The porcelain shattered into jagged shards. Owen snatched up a sharp fragment, quickly dragging it across his own forearm. Beads of bright crimson blood welled up instantly. "Ah! My arm! Jesse, why?!" He clutched his forearm, staggering back dramatically until his shoulder hit the wall. Corinne came sprinting in from the courtyard. The moment she saw the blood dripping down Owen’s wrist, she lunged forward and shoved me with all her strength. The back of my head slammed against the hard brick wall with a dull, sickening thud. "Jesse! If you dare lay another hand on Owen, I will make you wish you were dead!" The scene was a terrifying echo of the past. When her mind was slipping in our previous life, it had been the exact same story. Owen would claim, "Little brother pushed me," and Corinne would throw violent tantrums, screaming and forcing me to kneel on the cold floor to apologize. Back then, with red-rimmed eyes, I had pleaded and explained myself for three days and three nights, only to hear her say: "Owen never lies." This time, I didn't defend myself. I didn't move. I merely let the corners of my mouth pull up into a faint, bitter smirk. Corinne’s pupils contracted sharply. "Jesse, this is the last time. For the sake of the past…" I looked up, meeting her eyes squarely. Her sentence died in her throat. "You little bastard! You’re just jealous of your brother!" "Smack!" A stinging slap landed hard across my cheek, whipping my face to the side. My mother stood there, hands on her hips, spittle flying as she pointed a trembling finger at my nose. "You’ve never measured up to Owen in anything! Small-minded, vicious to the core! He’s your own flesh and blood, and you still have the stomach to hurt him?" My cheek burned like fire, but inside my chest, the lake had completely frozen over. Corinne helped Owen up. Owen put on a weak, pained smile. "Mom… please don’t yell at Jesse… I’m sure he didn’t mean it…" "Of course he meant it!" my mother screeched, her voice climbing higher. "Owen, you’re just too gentle for your own good! He’s bitter because you took the girl he wanted! Oh, Corinne, I’m so ashamed you had to see this. My younger son… he’s always been jealous of Owen, always complaining we favor the elder. But look at him!" Corinne didn't join in. She kept her head down, silently wrapping a clean cloth around Owen’s scratch. I looked down at the shallow cut on my own shin where the flying porcelain had grazed me, then tilted my head back to force the prickle of tears back down my throat. "Mom’s right," I spoke, my voice unnervingly quiet, startling even myself. "I am jealous." The room went dead silent. My mother froze. Owen stared at me with wide, unsettled eyes. "I’m jealous that he never had to lift a finger to get brand-new clothes," I said, looking at Owen. "I’m jealous that all he had to do was lie in bed pretending to be frail, and sweets were brought to his pillow. I’m jealous that no matter what mistake he made, you two always dismissed it with, ‘Owen is still young.’" A lifetime of stifled agony surged to the surface. I was three years younger than Owen. Yet because he was labeled "delicate," I was standing on a wooden stool cooking family meals at age six. At fifteen, when our family was required to send a son to the rural work brigades, I went in his place. I had reaped wheat in the muddy fields with a 104-degree fever, while he sat in the shade back in town, drinking cold soda and reading comic books. Corinne finally raised her head, looking at me with a strange, unsettled flicker in her eyes. Owen looked lost, playing the victim with trembling lips: "Jesse… how can you say that? Mom and Dad have always loved us equally…" "If believing that helps you sleep at night," I said quietly. I straightened my posture, turned around, and walked out the door without looking back. "Mom, do you think something will happen to Jesse?" Owen asked from the doorway, his tone laced with performative worry. "Let him go! What could happen to him? That stubborn brat has been nothing but trouble since the day he was born." I didn't wander. I walked straight to the community clinic to clean the scratch on my leg. From there, I headed to the county records office to pick up my reissued high school equivalency diploma and the rural service certificate that had arrived from my old village committee. By the time I returned home, the autumn night had set in thick and black. As I moved quietly down the unlit hallway toward my small corner room, the low murmur of my parents’ voices drifted from behind their bedroom door. "…We have to listen to Owen on this," my mother was saying, her voice muffled but resolute. "Once the wedding is behind us, we’ll finalize Jesse’s arrangement with Councilman Holt." "Owen is going to follow Corinne to the provincial capital eventually. We can’t hold back his bright future." My mother dropped her voice even further, though every word cut through the wood like a blade. "Jesse is different. Jesse has to stay behind and take care of us when we get old." My father took a long drag from his pipe, the orange ember glowing and fading in the dark room. "Holt’s daughter has violent fits, and she’s already got that ten-year-old simpleton son. You think Jesse is going to agree to marry into their house as a live-in caretaker?" "He lost his bride, he lost his job, and his name is ruined in this town," my mother sneered softly. "A disgraced bachelor should be grateful someone’s willing to take him in! Besides, Holt is offering three hundred dollars cash plus a butchered hog." I stood frozen in the dark hallway, my fingernails digging into my palms until the skin split. The cold seeped into my marrow, inch by agonizing inch. They had already mapped out the rest of my life—discarding me like a piece of worthless, unsightly junk, desperate to dump me onto whoever would pay a bounty. "Fine," my father grunted. "I’ll talk to Holt tomorrow morning. We’ll give all the money to Owen so he can hold his head high in front of Corinne's folks. As for Jesse… he’s just going to be an errand boy and a stepfather anyway. It doesn't matter." The very last sliver of hope I had harbored for this family vanished into the dark. ... Early the next morning, I tucked my identification papers and my household registration booklet securely into the inner pocket of my coat. As I reached for the front door, Owen blocked my way, grabbing my sleeve. "Where do you think you’re going?" he demanded, dressed in his crisp wedding suit, his face glowing with triumphant arrogance. "Mom told you to stay put. Today is my big day with Corinne." "Owen!" Corinne called out from the courtyard gate. Owen immediately let go of me and hurried toward her. Corinne didn't spare me a glance. She leaned into Owen’s side, smiling softly. Owen wrapped his arm tightly around her waist, looking back at me with a smirk. "Jesse, Corinne and I are heading to the photo studio to take our official portraits. Why don’t you tag along and watch?" I didn't answer. I simply pressed my hand against my breast pocket, feeling the stiff edges of my papers through the fabric. The reception for Owen and Corinne was lavish, a stark contrast to our past life when we had merely signed the certificate and shared a simple meal. Thirty banquet tables were laid out in the workers’ hall, decked in red banners and paper lanterns. Owen held Corinne close on the center stage, soaking in the toasts and cheers of the town. "Move faster, you useless thing!" my mother hissed, shoving me hard in the back as I carried empty crates. "The head tables are out of liquor! Get the fresh bottles out there now!" Up on the stage, Corinne formally handed an envelope containing property deeds and bank passbooks into Owen’s hands. "Everything of value I possess in this life belongs to Owen," she announced into the microphone, gazing into his eyes. "He is the only man I have ever truly chosen." Dressed in his imported wool jacket, Owen raised his hand and gestured toward me. "Little brother, come up here! Today is your brother’s wedding day—you should propose a toast to us." He held out a glass, his smile gentle on the surface, cruel underneath. "From now on, Corinne is your sister-in-law. You can’t be reckless with your boundaries like you used to be." A wave of mocking, pitying stares fell over me from every table. Someone even called out, asking loudly if Corinne hadn't been engaged to the younger brother first. Corinne didn't confirm or deny it. She merely raised her hand to gently push Owen’s glass down, speaking softly: "Owen’s stomach is delicate. Drinking too much isn't good for his health." Laughter erupted across the hall. "Look at how she dotes on her new husband!" Owen beamed, his eyes darting sideways at me, drunk on his own triumph. "What are you standing there like a statue for?" My mother pinched my arm viciously from behind, her nails digging into my muscle. "Go get more liquor from the back room! Stop embarrassing us!" As I slipped out through the side exit of the auditorium, I glanced past the gravel driveway. Parked by the curb was the green regional coach—the only bus heading out to the provincial capital, departing at precisely 3:00 PM every afternoon. When I stepped back inside to set down the tray, I saw my father standing near the entrance with Councilman Holt. My father pointed in my direction. Holt grinned, baring a mouthful of crooked, yellowed teeth, and nodded. He slipped a thick brown envelope into my father’s hand. My mother intercepted the envelope, her eyes widening greedily as she peeled back the corner, before quickly passing it over to Owen. Corinne somehow appeared at my side. "Jesse," she said, her voice softer than before, warmed by the glow of getting everything she thought she wanted. "If things ever get too hard for you, you can come ask me for help." She looked down at me with gentle condescension. "I know you’ve always loved me. But feelings can’t be forced. As long as you keep your head down and stay in your place from now on, I won’t let you starve." "I don’t need your help," I said, every word quiet, clear, and unyielding. "I don’t want a single thing you have to offer." Corinne’s smile stiffened. She glanced over at Councilman Holt, who was already making his way toward me with an unsettling grin, and let out a cold scoff. "Jesse, I’ll be waiting for the day you come crawling back to beg." By twilight, the banquet hall had emptied out, leaving behind sticky floors and cigarette smoke. Councilman Holt suddenly grabbed my father by the lapels, his face purple with rage. "You old cheat! Where the hell is your younger boy?" Holt roared. "We agreed I’d take him straight out the back door to the farm! Are you trying to back out on my three hundred dollars?!"