He Burned My Future, So I Built a New One

He walked in carrying a bowl. I was sitting on the edge of the bed, mending a sweater.

It was his favorite gray one. The cuffs had worn through.

“Eat while it's hot.” Luther set the bowl on the small table, his tone noticeably softer.

“I know you're upset. But we have to be decent about this. You've seen the Ryder place. Is that any kind of home for a human being? A girl like Olympia, delicate as she is, she wouldn't survive a week in there.”

I didn't respond. My hands kept moving, needle through yarn, mechanical and even.

Luther watched me for a moment, sighed, then sat down beside me and tried to put his arm around my shoulders.

“Isabella, we're husband and wife. We're one. Helping her is good for our conscience too. Besides, you're here with me. I can look after you. If you'd gone back to the city, we'd be living apart, and that's no kind of life either.”

So that was what he really thought.

Keep me pinned at his side, feed his need for control, and still get to play the saint who “saved a damsel in distress.”

“Luther,” I stopped sewing and looked up at him.

“I remember sophomore year. The whole class turned their backs on me because of my family's political status. You were the one who split your roll in half and told me that as long as you had food, I'd never go hungry.”

A flicker of nostalgia passed through Luther's eyes：

“Yeah. Those were hard times. That's exactly why I say we've been through the worst together, and we should be understanding with each other.”

“Later, after we were sent to the countryside, I came down with a high fever. You didn't think twice. You carried me on your back twenty miles through the mountains to the county hospital.”

“That was my duty.” Luther sat up straighter.

“But Luther,” my voice shifted, and my gaze drifted to the bowl of dumplings still steaming on the table,

“do you have any idea how many times my rheumatism flared up in the last six months?”

Luther blinked：

“I saw you put on the medicated patches……”

“Last month I coughed up blood. I told you it was nothing, just a sore throat. The truth is my lungs are failing. The doctor said if I don't get out of this kind of labor, it'll turn into tuberculosis.”

The color in Luther's face shifted：

“Why didn't you tell me sooner? Something this serious……”

“I tried to.”

I held his gaze, my voice level,

“That night you'd just come home. I told you I wasn't feeling well. You said Olympia's window paper was torn and you were worried she'd freeze. You grabbed your tools and left. You were gone for two hours.”

Luther's expression went rigid：

“She's a neighbor, I was just……”

“And,” I set down the sweater,

“two months ago, I had a miscarriage on the river embankment.”

The air in the room turned to stone.

Luther shot to his feet. The bowl on the table went flying.

Dumplings scattered across the floor, rolling through the dirt.

“What did you just say?!” His voice was shaking. His pupils contracted to pinpoints.

“It was a boy. Fully formed.” I touched my flat stomach. There was nothing there now but cold skin.

“I didn't want it to affect your evaluation for the model-worker commendation. Didn't want you distracted. So I handled it myself. Up at the old graveyard on the hill.”

“Isabella! You…… have you lost your mind?! You kept something like this from me!”

Every trace of blood drained from Luther's face. He stared at me like I was a stranger.

“I wasn't trying to keep it from you.”

I bent down and picked up a dumpling from the floor, blew the dust off it,

“That day I came back white as a sheet. There was still blood on my pants. I asked if you could boil me some hot water. You said the Village Brigade was meeting to discuss the nomination list and told me to tough it out.”

Luther opened his mouth as if to argue, but the memory caught up with him, and his face turned even worse.

That night, he had said exactly those words.