Sweet Romance11 min read
My Second Life Started with Tea Eggs
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I woke up in a hot, dusty room and the first thing I thought was: this is not my bakery.
"Who are you?" I asked the cracked wooden door, though no one answered.
I am still Ida Ogawa. I am still me. But the year on the calendar in the corner said 1984, and the name stitched on the thin quilt over my shoulders matched the name on the marriage certificate pinned to a crooked nail: my name, married into the He family of Rainbow Village. It felt like someone had taken my twenty-something self out of a running food truck and shoved me into a patched-up life I didn't order.
"My shop... my recipes," I muttered, trying to remember the exact measurements I used for my soy eggs back in the city. "I can't die over a bad timeline."
Outside, the day was already too hot. The wind lay flat over the fields, and even the crows were lazy. The window offered only a row of still tree tops and a sky that would bake anything left in the sun.
"Ida!" a voice called. It was Julio Bonner, my grandfather-in-law. "Take it easy today. Your legless husband is in the hospital, remember?"
I swallowed. The husband I had never properly met—Zane Callahan—lay in a ward somewhere in town with a broken leg. In the old life, I had a cafe and a life I loved. In this life, I had a faded dowry, a small trunk of clothes, and a family that looked at me like I ought to be grateful for whatever crumbs they let me keep.
"I went to the hospital last night," I told Julio. "I couldn't leave him out there."
"Good girl," he said. He always said things like that: small, simple rewards I didn't expect. "You earn your keep, Ida. Don't let them make you small."
"Thanks, Grandpa." I meant it. I needed his kindness like I needed a breath of the city air.
Cordelia Dell—the woman who called herself my mother-in-law—never hid her dislike. She arrived as if summoned by the word trouble.
"So you left the pot out," she snapped the morning after I had cleaned the house and tried rearranging the bedding. "You think you can keep burning our oil and water because you remember how a city does things?"
"I'm careful," I said. "I used only half the oil. And the eggs—"
"You bought eggs?" Cordelia's voice snapped like a snapped twig. "Do you think our men are fools? We have mouths to feed. Keep your city ways to your own things."
Felicity Ryan—the sister-in-law who smiled like a blade—sneered from the doorway. "She expects to sell what? Eggs? In this heat? As if."
"I'm selling what I can," I told them. "I sold a few yesterday at the market. Tea eggs. People liked them."
Felicity's laugh was thin. "Tea eggs. That's your great idea? City recipes don't help here, Ida."
I kept my mouth shut. A fight would do me no favors. I had my plans. With the small amount of money Julio had tucked into my palm, I bought spices and a pot and I cooked through the nights. I would make egg after egg, steep them in tea and soy, let them simmer until they smelled like a different tomorrow.
"I'll sell a few more at the market," I said to Julio. "If it works, I can buy a jar, more spices. Maybe I can even save for a doctor for Zane."
Julio's eyes shone. "You are ambitious, girl. Good."
The market was hot and dusty. I carried a large jar on the cart Julio arranged, the one that rattled like a future. I had sealed twenty-five tea eggs in it, each one blackened and fragrant from a long marinade. I wore the finest frayed skirt I owned and a braid that made me look less like a runaway and more like a woman with a mission.
"Tea eggs! Fresh! One for seven cents!" I called.
"Who makes these?" a woman asked. Her name badge said she was Laura Thomsen, visiting from the next village, and her interest was real enough to be dangerous.
"They're tea eggs," I said. "Wild eggs from the hills, then marinated in my own blend."
A small crowd gathered because every market has gossip and hunger. People leaned in, smelt the jar's sweet and salty steam, and then one after the other, my eggs found new palms.
"Three, please," said a matron. "One to try, two to take home."
"These taste like something my mother used to make," a young man said. "Give me five."
"Five? Here?" someone else asked.
"Yes, five," he said. "My friends in the ward will love them."
I sold and smiled and counted coins like a woman who'd been given the right answers. The jar wore out its smell, and my first small pile of cash felt like proof I could act. People walked away talking. People always talk.
Back at the hospital, I squeezed in through the side door and saw Zane lying propped up, eyes like iron, looking smaller than I imagined.
"You found me?" he said when I handed him a bowl with two eggs.
"I found you," I said. "Eat. Trust that they're good."
He peeled one slowly, stared at the glossy brown shell, then bit.
"Not bad," he said. "Where did you learn this?"
"Back home." I shrugged. "We had a little place. I cooked. It stuck."
He laughed once. It was a small sound, like wind through loose siding. "So this is your plan."
"I sell eggs. I buy jars. I buy spices. I keep your world from getting smaller."
"And you think you'll carry it through? Business in this place, with them?" His voice cooled. "You are underestimating how easily things break."
"I know." I set my jaw. "But I've got something to fix this time."
After I left the hospital that night, carrying the empty jar fragments that Katelynn Mancini, the village leader's daughter, had kicked and broken in the ward—she had laughed and said: "Soup for the floor!"—I felt small and furious, like a pot whose lid was rattling. The jar had been our vessel, Julio's promise. She stomped on it as if I were trash.
"You! She broke it!" I said to Zane. "She kicked it!"
Katelynn shrugged. "It was in the way."
"She'll pay," said an old man in the bed across the corridor. He had eyes like river stones and a voice like slow gravel. "You teach her manners for us."
"You teach her?" Katelynn scoffed. "Who are you, old man?"
"Who are you to break what you didn't earn?" he said.
Time later, when I told the story at the market, people were quick to take sides. The jar had been more than clay; it was proof I was trying. The more I sold, the louder the whispers: some admired me; some called me bold, some called me a schemer.
"Don't be foolish," Cordelia had hissed that night at the supper table. "Selling outside the village makes you visible."
"Visible how?" I asked.
"Visible to men," Felicity snapped, almost gleeful. "Visible to anyone who wants to take what you make."
I looked at Cordelia. "If I can't make money, we'll be poor and helpless. If I can, we treat Zane right and we can fix his leg."
"You think she'll spend the money on him?" Felicity's smirk was like ice.
"I will," I said, not raising my voice. I did not have to be loud. I had to be steady.
The next market day, I sold more eggs. I sold them until my throat hurt and the jar was empty. Ladies brought eggs from their own baskets and left them for me to bargain for. People began to call me "the tea egg girl," and when you have a name in a small town, you have traction.
Then the rumor reached a breaking point. Felicity had whispered about me to the women at the wash circle, told them I was a thief of hearts and money. Cordelia carried murmurs to Julio, and that night the house smelled of iron words and old grief. Felicity laughed aloud in front of me.
"You think you're building something, Ida?" she said. "You'll run at the first train out."
"Maybe I do run," I said. "But for now I'm here."
She rolled her eyes. "Only a fool would leave riches on the table."
We had been footing around each other like dancers with the wrong music, but the moment the market turned, the town's tide turned with it. My eggs sold out every week. People tasted and came back. The village petitioned me for more.
Felicity's face changed from smug to a thin line as she watched me hand Julio a folded bundle of coins one afternoon. I counted what I could spare and spent it buying the chicken eggs she had offered. I needed stock.
"You idiot," she whispered to Cordelia. "She's buying our eggs. What plan is that?"
"She'll burn out," Cordelia said. "She'll think we let her, and she'll steal our work."
I did not reply. I kept working. I kept making more flavors: tea and star anise, soy and fennel, a little chili to surprise.
The public punishment came because the world in Rainbow Village is small and prone to fever. Felicity and Cordelia kept mocking me at the fountain one day—one of those thin, public slings where small cruelty feels excusable—until I had had enough.
I had spent the morning setting up, and by noon my spot was full. I had two barrels of tea eggs, a small bowl of stew, and a few neighbors lined up. Felicity—who had been loudly telling anyone who would listen that I had no right to take the honor of cooking for the table—walked up to my stall with Cordelia at her side, both wearing that insolent smile.
"Look at her," Felicity said loudly. "She thinks this little stunt will save her husband. She thinks she is better than us."
"Who are you to sell out to the market?" Cordelia added. "You're a newcomer and a show."
The market quieted gradually. People sensed a conflict. Some drifted closer. A child stopped to stare at my eggs; an old woman sniffed the air and narrowed her eyes as if trying to find the truth in the steam.
I could have answered them with words. I could have defended myself and sounded like the woman I used to be in the wrong way. Instead I pulled out my small ledger—words written on the inside of a recycled grocery cover where I had been tracking sales.
"I'll do something better," I said, my voice steady. "If you accuse me of stealing the village's livelihood, then let us show the facts to everyone."
Felicity blinked. "What facts?"
I stood and uncapped the ledger. I had every coin written down, every barter, every egg bought and sold—names, dates.
"Here's how much I paid for eggs, and here's how much I sold my eggs for," I said. "I give the village a market price and a share. If anyone has sold eggs before me, tell me how many and where. I will pay what is fair."
A murmur. Then, "She keeps a record."
Felicity's smile thinned further. Cordelia's face flushed.
"Who asked you to be accountant?" Felicity spat. "You—"
"Everyone who has sold here knows me," I said. "Laura Thomsen, Fiona Castro, Hope Lynch—call them. Ask them if I paid and when I bought. Ask the men in the ward who ate my eggs. Ask Julio if I used his money to buy eggs."
Two women I had served that morning, Fiona Castro and Laura Thomsen, stepped forward. They had eaten and paid and smiled. They were not wealthy, but they were honest.
"She bought mine. I gave her thirty eggs," Fiona said. "She paid me well and said she'd come again."
"Same here," Laura added. "She paid and she promised to buy more. Is that a crime?"
The market shifted. People began to talk, loudly now.
"Isn't it odd you're jealous of a woman who buys from you?" an older man asked Cordelia. "You'd rather see her starve than thrive?"
Felicity's face paled in public. The crowd's tone hardened.
"You said she would run when she had money," Julio said, stepping forward. "You said a woman who earns will leave. Which of you kept money in your pocket when your man needed a doctor?"
Cordelia tried to answer, but the words failed her. Her anger had been private, fossilized into a habit. In public, it fell flat.
Felicity, who had mocked me into silence at home, found herself being named where everyone could hear. "You told the women at the fountain that Ida would run. You told the ward she'd be gone like the smoke. Are you a prophet or a liar?"
"People here heard you." A dozen voices—some sharp, some weary—spoke at once. The market closed ranks around me. The same crowd that once whispered now openly looked to Felicity and Cordelia for proof. They had none.
Then someone produced a small notebook—a woman I had given an egg to earlier, Hope Lynch—who had written her name, the day, and the price on the back of a receipt when she bought three eggs. She offered it to the crowd.
"You promised you'd sell our eggs for us," Laura said. "You promised to buy more of our eggs, Ida. We believe her."
When the crowd turned, the expressions were no longer curious; they were accusatory. Hands went to cheeks. Phones were not a thing here, but voices carried.
Felicity's gates of bravado crumbled. She started with denials, then the old pattern of falsehood: "I never—" "I didn't—" "You misunderstood—"
Her voice shook. The people around us began to lean in, not with malice but with the raw hunger of truth. A child asked a simple question, loud enough that everyone heard: "Why are you being mean to someone who helps us?"
Felicity's face split and then collapsed. "I—" she tried to explain, and then she couldn't. Her eyes darted, seeking support, and found only the hard faces of the people she had mocked.
Cordelia, who had led the charge, saw her ally fall. Her own speech turned to pleading. "It's not what I meant—"
"Not meant?" a neighbor snapped. "You meant it enough to say it."
Felicity's knees buckled. She sat on the empty bench with the feel of thousands of eyes on her, and for the first time she looked small. She began to apologize in clipped, urgent phrases, trying to pick up the lightness she had thrown like pebbles. She tried to stand, to say that she had been hurt in her pride, bet that she could pivot—only the market would not let her rehearse.
They filmed her—well, not filmed, but they repeated her words so they would be recorded in gossip. "She wanted to be heard and said spite," they said. "She laughed at a broken jar that mattered."
Felicity alternated between anger and pleading: "I'm sorry. I didn't—"
"No," the old man across the way said, the same who had protected his words like river stones, "you laughed when you shouldn't have. You called a woman a liar in the market. That is your punishment. The town sees you now."
Villagers slammed down baskets. People turned away, refusing to buy from Felicity or to accept Cordelia's explanations as anything but weak defense.
Felicity begged, "Please—"
"Not now." The crowd answered. "You can apologize to Ida in private. But here? You broke something that wasn't yours to break. You showed what you would do if you had the power to take from someone earning their keep."
Her humiliation was not raucous. Nobody spat or pushed. There were no theatrics. It was worse: a communal withdrawal of support, a slow, suffocating silence where praise had been. People who had lauded her before turned their backs. Even those who hadn't known the details shook their heads.
She tried to storm off, face blotched. But people called to her, not in anger, but in a blunt wake-up:
"Apologize to the old man too!" someone cried.
"Apologize to Ida, and mean it," another voice said.
She muttered something, head bent. Cordelia reached for her hand and held it like a drowning woman would grasp a plank. But the grip couldn't hold. The villagers dispersed like wind after a lantern is snuffed.
I stood there in the clear market light, feeling neither triumph nor pleasure. I felt only a fierce, resolute quiet. They had tried to make me small for buying eggs, for daring to start. They had tried to make me small for daring to love a man who needed care. Public shaming had finally landed where it belonged: on the mouths that used to throw stones.
"Good," Julio said, beside me, voice soft. "People should know who builds and who breaks."
"Thank you," I said, not to him but to the market. "I will sell my eggs. I will buy their eggs. I will do the work."
The rest of that week, my stall was full. Felicity tried to come back with a coaxing smile. People still turned away. Cordelia's offers to bargain for gossip were refused. The town's opinion had turned the wheel.
"Do you feel better?" Julio asked that evening as we counted the coins.
"I feel like I can breathe," I said. "And I feel like a jar does matter when people know it carries more than clay."
Zane's recovery was slow. I kept the promise in small, stubborn ways. I bought him warm broth. I sent coins home. He looked at his leg and then at me, and sometimes a softness crossed his face I'd never seen in the imagined rush of our old lives.
"You're stubborn," he said once in the hospital corridor, peeling an egg with delicate care.
"I sold tea eggs at the market," I said. "I used the money to pay the man who sold us hay for splints. I saved a little more. I will find a doctor."
"You make plans like a businesswoman," he said, almost a tease, almost an approval.
"I used to run a small place that pampered palates," I said. "I'm not about to let life here swallow my taste."
He smiled then, thin and real, and reached for my hand.
The market kept changing. People who had mocked me bought eggs from me for their own tables. Some of them tried my recipes and came back with new seasonings. We traded and learned. I once thought a small jar and a pot were not enough to move the world, but the world here turns on simpler things: trust, taste, and the willingness to bargain face to face.
Weeks passed and the jar that had been broken in the hospital was replaced—not by Julio's old pot but by a new one bought with careful coins. It held spices now and new experiments: a hint of ginger, a few cloves, and a touch of city memory I could not let go of.
When Felicity passed the stall months later she bowed her head and mumbled an apology that had substance this time. She had learned, publicly and painfully, that cruelty shows who you are.
"Are you staying?" Zane asked me the day I set the pot on a rented stall with a little sign: Ida's Tea Eggs.
"Yes," I answered. "Until the leg is fixed. Until we have a better roof. Until people stop thinking a woman can't sell hope and call it food."
He looked at the jar and then at the man who had been the first to believe in me. "And after that?"
"After that," I said, picking up an egg and holding it between finger and thumb, "we will open a place with proper jars and licenses and roasted soy on the side. We'll call it something that makes people smile."
He laughed, and for the first time since waking up in this new-old world, I believed him.
The End
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