Back to the 80s

The arrangement was that Julie Stein would marry a divorced man with two children of his own, standing in for the daughter the family had actually borne. She had been raised as their child by mistake, the real one had come back, and Julie had been put out of the house. The wedding was the last thing they wanted out of her. Julie had woken up in that body, in the 1980s, with no warning about any of it. She went through the terms and found two children already born and no labour to get through, which struck her as a fair trade, and she agreed to the marriage without arguing. The old man turned out to be Alex Monte, tall and nothing like what she had been told, and inclined to hand her money the moment they disagreed. The relatives talked about where she came from. The family's real daughter needled her over it, and the couple who raised her were free with insults. Julie gave it back every time. "Sorry, my pedigree is unknown," she told them, "but the harder you come at me, the harder I come back."