Đang tải thông tin quảng bá...
He Burned My Future, So I Built a New One
NovelShort
Hoàn thành
I'd wrecked my body in the countryside, grinding through every last day just to earn that single shot at a city-transfer slot. And the day before the papers came through, my husband, the party secreta...
Chương (6)
第1章
I'd wrecked my body in the countryside, grinding through every last day just to earn that single shot at a city-transfer slot.
And the day before the papers came through, my husband, the party secretary himself, burned my file with his own hands.
All because Olympia Swanson, a city youth from the neighboring settlement, had wept about not wanting to marry the village ruffian.
Luther watched me scream in front of the fire pit, his brow creased with nothing but impatience：
“Even if you stay in the countryside, you're still my wife. You think I'd let you starve? But if Olympia stays here, her whole life is over!”
“When did you get so selfish? You can't even spare her one way out?”
Later, Olympia took my name, my slot, and went back to the city. She rose through the ranks without looking back.
……
The flames in the charcoal pit licked greedily at those few thin sheets of paper.
My city-transfer papers. And the recommendation form stamped with the Village Brigade's official seal.
“No!”
I lunged for the pit like a woman possessed, reaching bare-handed into the coals, not caring that the fire scorched my skin.
His hand clamped around my wrist, iron-tight, locking me in place.
“Isabella Henson, are you done with this tantrum?!”
Luther Gilbert's brows were knotted so tight they could have snapped. His eyes held nothing but disappointment and blame, as if I were the one being unreasonable.
“That was my life! Luther Gilbert, give it back to me!”
I screamed until my throat tore, tears flooding down my face, watching helplessly as those pages with their bright red stamps curled and blackened in the flames, then crumbled to ash.
In that moment I heard something shatter inside me, a sound more piercing than the north wind howling outside.
The firelight carved Luther Gilbert's face into something hard and cold.
He let go of me, brushed nonexistent dust from his hands, and spoke in a tone so matter-of-fact it chilled me to the bone.
“Don't be so dramatic about 'your life.' You're my wife. As long as I'm running this brigade, you'll have food on the table. You stay here, we stay together. Isn't that a good thing?”
I collapsed to the floor and stared at the basin of ash, shaking all over.
Not just from the cold. From a despair so deep it reached my bones.
In my last life, it had been exactly like this.
The day before my transfer papers came through, Olympia Swanson had come running in tears, sobbing that the village ruffian Reginald Ryder had his eye on her and was going to force her into marriage.
If she couldn't get back to the city, she'd be ruined.
And so my good husband, the beloved Secretary Gilbert whom everyone at the Settlement praised as noble and selfless, had righteously burned my file.
He used his authority at the Village Brigade to swap my name for Olympia's behind closed doors.
In my previous life, I fell gravely ill over what he'd done and never recovered enough to leave the countryside.
Meanwhile, Olympia went back to the city, got into college, landed a government position, and married the son of a senior official.
A few years later, Luther made it back to the city too.
But I'd been broken by years of hard labor. My body gave out completely, and I bled away the last of my strength on that freezing brick bed.
Before I died, I heard that Olympia had sighed at a class reunion：
“Thank God Luther had the guts to do what he did back then. Otherwise, where would I be today?”
I also heard that Luther had drunk too much at that same reunion, eyes red, saying he was sorry about what happened to me, but he didn't regret saving a life.
Didn't regret it!
Saving a life!
Was my life not a life?
“Isabella, please don't blame Luther.”
A timid voice drifted in from the doorway.
Olympia Swanson stood there in an oversized military coat that swallowed her frame. It was Luther's coat.
She hunched her shoulders, her small pale face glistening with tears, the picture of fragile helplessness.
“This is all my fault. I was born unlucky. If this is going to make you resent Luther, then I……then I'll just go marry Reginald Ryder. The worst that can happen is I die!”
第2章
As she spoke, she lunged toward the door.
“Olympia!” Luther grabbed her arm, gripping tight, like he was afraid something precious might shatter.
When he turned to look at me, his eyes went cold.
“Look at her, then look at yourself! Isabella, when did you become so selfish and heartless? If Olympia stays here, her whole life is ruined! You're healthy, you're strong, you pull full work-points on the brigade. What's one more year? I'll fight to get you another transfer slot next year, I promise. Isn't that enough?”
Healthy.
I looked down at my hands, covered in chilblains, and laughed. It came out raw and ugly.
For that transfer slot, I had worked like a mule for six months straight.
Dead of winter, repairing the river levee. To prove my dedication, I was the first to jump into the frozen water to drive pilings.
Even on my period I didn't dare rest. I hauled sacks weighing over a hundred pounds through the rain, hiking more than ten miles of mountain road.
The day I got back, I started bleeding. It was a fully formed boy.
I swallowed every drop of blood and tears alone so Luther wouldn't lose focus, so nothing would hurt his chances at the model secretary award. The next morning I was back in the fields.
And where was he?
He was on Olympia's roof, patching her leaks. He was at her door, handing her a fresh bowl of hot ginger tea.
And now he was telling me I was healthy.
“Luther,” I braced my hand against the ground and pushed myself to my feet, staring at him with hollow eyes.
“If you care about her that much, why don't you give her your transfer slot?”
Luther froze for a second, then flushed with anger：
“My slot was assigned by the organization! I'm the party secretary. If I leave, who runs things here? Besides, I'm a man. My career……”
“Your career matters, and I'm just a stepping stone?”
I cut him off. My voice was so hoarse it sounded like I'd swallowed charcoal.
Luther took a deep breath. He seemed to decide that reasoning with me was pointless, and put on his official face：
“This is already done. The papers are burned, the name's been submitted. Throwing a fit won't change anything. Isabella, be sensible. Don't make a fool of yourself.”
Be sensible.
Those two words were nails hammered into the lid of my coffin.
“Fine.”
I looked at the basin where the ashes still trailed a thin ribbon of smoke, and said it quietly.
“I'll be sensible.”
Luther clearly hadn't expected me to give in so fast. Relief crossed his face, even a flicker of approval, the kind that said “I knew you'd understand.”
“There you go. I'll have your sister-in-law make dumplings tonight. Stop being upset.”
He turned to Olympia, his voice going soft：
“Olympia, it's all settled. Go on back and pack your things. The truck leaves first thing tomorrow morning.”
Olympia glanced at me, timid on the surface. A sliver of triumph flashed in her eyes, but her mouth still played sweet：
“Thank you, Luther. Thank you, Isabella. I'll repay you both someday, I promise.”
She turned and left, her steps light and quick, like a mouse that had just gotten into the oil.
Luther reached for my hand. I shifted away.
His hand hung in the air. Displeasure tightened his jaw：
“Still sulking?”
I didn't look at him. I walked into the back room and dug through the bottom of the storage chest on the bed platform until I found a battered little wooden box.
“I'm not sulking.”
I said it calmly.
Because there was nothing left to sulk about. Not for someone already dead inside.
This time around, since he had burned my way out, I would burn the only bridge left between us.
That evening, Luther did make dumplings.
Cabbage and pork filling, barely any pork, mostly cabbage stalks.
Even so, in an era when oil and salt were luxuries, it passed for a holiday meal.
第3章
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.
第4章
I did wash them. I scrubbed those blood-soaked trousers clean in a basin of cold water.
The chill seeped from my fingertips into my chest and settled there. It never left.
“Luther,” I said his name, and my own voice sounded foreign to me.
“You always thought I was the strong one. That I could take it. That Olympia was the fragile one, the one who couldn't survive without you.”
“But I'm flesh and blood too. I'm human.”
“I lost my child. My body broke down. And now the one road I had left to get back to the city for treatment, you burned it with your own hands.”
Luther's chest heaved. Guilt, shock, and a flicker of cornered anger fought for control of his face.
After a long silence he crouched down, clutching his head in both hands, his voice muffled：
“I'm sorry……Isabella, I really didn't know. If I'd known……”
“If you'd known, would you have given me the transfer slot?” I asked quietly.
Luther said nothing.
A silence like death spread through the room.
A long time passed before he lifted his head. His eyes were red-rimmed, yet he was still scrambling to salvage things：
“Olympia's paperwork……has already been submitted. It's too late to change it now. Isabella, since the baby is already……we can have another one. I'll make it up to you. From now on I won't let you do any of the housework. I'll take care of you. Isn't that enough?”
I looked at this man, and the last ember inside me went dark.
Even now, after everything, his first thought was still to protect Olympia. I was still the one who could be sacrificed, the one who could be “compensated.”
He would never understand. Some things, once shattered, can't be pieced back together no matter the cost.
“Fine.”
I smiled. The smile never reached my eyes.
“I don't blame you.”
Because from this moment on, he was a dead man to me.
The next morning, the Settlement was buzzing.
Olympia was leaving for the city, and everyone pitched in to help carry her bags.
She wore Luther's old military overcoat. It was too big for her, which only made her look smaller, more pitiable.
A shy, excited flush colored her cheeks as she said goodbye to each person in turn.
“Where's Isabella?” someone asked.
“Probably can't bear to come out,” someone else murmured.
“I heard the transfer slot was supposed to be hers, but she gave it up for Olympia. Secretary Gilbert is truly selfless.”
“If you ask me, Isabella always seemed shrewd enough, but when it really counted, it was Secretary Gilbert who had the principles. A girl as frail as Olympia would've died out here.”
I stood behind the curtain, listening to every word.
This was Luther's brilliance.
He had swapped my transfer slot behind my back, then told everyone that we, husband and wife, had “nobly” volunteered it to someone more in need.
That way he got the reputation, Olympia got the transfer, and if I dared make a scene, I'd be the one with “low principles” and a “petty heart.”
The door curtain lifted, and Olympia walked in.
No one else was inside. Luther had gone to borrow the tractor.
The timid look vanished from Olympia's face the instant the curtain fell, replaced by the posture of someone who had already won.
She glanced around our bare little room, then let her gaze settle on my pale face.
“Isabella, thank you so much.”
She moved closer, her voice dropping low.
“Actually, Luther told me everything last night. He said you're strong, you can handle hardship. But me? I can't survive without him.”
I didn't respond. I kept sorting through the old books beside me.
When I refused to take the bait, a flicker of boredom crossed Olympia's face. She leaned in closer：
“Oh, and Luther said that to make it up to you, once you're feeling better, he'll slaughter that hen of his and stew it for you. See? He treats you so well.”
第5章
One old hen, traded for a transfer slot back to the city.
That was my price tag in Luther Gilbert's heart.
I lifted my head and stared at her, ice in my gaze：
“Olympia, whether you conned your way into that slot or stole it outright, you know the truth. All I'll say is this: once you're back in the city, I hope you sleep well every single night. I hope you never dream of the child I lost coming to collect what's owed.”
The color drained from Olympia's face. She stumbled back a step：
“You……what child are you talking about……”
“Luther didn't tell you?” The corner of my mouth curled up.
“The day I miscarried, he was up on your roof fixing your tiles, looking after your every need. My baby was killed because of you.”
“You're lying!” Olympia shrieked, her voice shaking.
“That was an accident! It had nothing to do with me!”
“Whether it's a lie, you know perfectly well.”
I closed the distance between us, my eyes cutting into her like a blade.
“You're taking a transfer slot soaked in blood back to the city, Olympia. You'll never wash that clean. Not in this lifetime.”
“Olympia, what's wrong?”
Luther's voice rang out from the doorway.
Olympia switched masks in an instant, throwing herself into Luther's arms the second he stepped inside, tears falling on command：
“Luther! Isabella said……she called me a murderer! She said I killed your baby……I didn't know……I swear I didn't know……”
Luther held her, his face dark as iron as he turned to me：
“Isabella! Haven't you done enough? That's all in the past. What's the point of scaring her?”
Looking at the two of them locked in each other's arms, all I felt was revulsion.
“Luther, take your hands off her.”
My voice was flat, unhurried.
“This is the Settlement. People are watching. You're a married man holding another woman in broad daylight, in front of everyone. Is this the moral standard you're so proud of?”
Luther flinched like he'd been scalded and shoved Olympia away.
Sure enough, a cluster of faces were already peeking in from outside the door.
He coughed awkwardly, straightened his clothes, and turned to Olympia：
“The truck's here. Let's go.”
Olympia shot me one last venomous look, wiped her tears, and walked out.
Luther paused at the threshold, glancing back at me with something unreadable in his eyes：
“Isabella, don't be so cruel. Try to build up some good karma.”
Cruel?
I watched his retreating back and laughed out loud.
Halfway through the laughter, a coppery sweetness flooded my mouth.
I yanked the handkerchief from my pocket, pressed it to my lips, and doubled over coughing.
When I pulled it away, the cloth was stained with a bright, ugly smear of red.
After Olympia left, Luther came home late.
He looked to be in a good mood. He tried to keep it tamped down, but the relief of a man who'd just shed a burden was impossible to hide.
“Got her on the truck?” I asked.
He nodded, pouring himself a glass of water without looking at me：
“She's gone. I can finally relax.”
He turned, his tone softening：
“Isabella, starting tomorrow, you don't have to go out to the fields anymore. I arranged a work-points bookkeeping position for you at brigade headquarters. It's easy. You can stay home and rest up.”
So this was his idea of “making it up to me.”
The old me would have been moved to tears.
Now, it just felt like a joke.
“No thanks.” I said.
Luther frowned：
“What's your problem now? Bookkeeping means no sun, no rain. People would kill for that assignment.”
“I said no thanks.”
I reached under my pillow, pulled out an envelope, and set it on the table.
Luther picked it up, confusion creasing his brow：
“What's this?”
He opened it, and the color in his face shifted on a dime.
Inside was a diagnosis from the provincial capital hospital and a referral letter for transfer to the city.
第6章
The date on the referral letter, however, was tomorrow's.
“You're leaving?” Luther's head snapped up.
“What are you going to the provincial capital for? Where did you get this letter?”
“I've felt something wrong with my body for a while now. Last month I asked Dr. Simmons to send a blood sample to the provincial capital for testing.”
I said it calmly.
“The results came back. A severe lung infection, and……a suspected tumor. They're recommending I check in for further examination.”
There was no tumor. Only a serious risk of tuberculosis and uterine damage from repeated miscarriages.
But I had deliberately asked Jeremy Simmons to write the diagnosis vague, to make it sound worse than it was.
Sure enough, Luther's hands began to tremble.
“A tu……tumor? That's impossible! You've always looked so healthy……”
“Luther, what you call healthy is me clenching my teeth and never saying it hurts.”
I stood and began gathering my small bundle of belongings.
“Dr. Simmons arranged a hospital for me there. This referral letter is a special approval he helped me apply for through the Commune. Filed under medical discharge.”
Luther panicked. He rushed over and grabbed my shoulders：
“Jeremy Simmons? That political dissident doctor they sent down here? How did you get mixed up with him? And……and if you leave, what am I supposed to do?”
“You?”
I looked at his panicked face.
“Aren't you the man of noble principles? You're the party secretary. The world keeps turning without anyone. But if I stay here, the only thing waiting for me is death.”
“No! I won't let you go!”
Luther crumpled the referral letter in his fist.
“If you're going, I'm going with you! I'll request leave right now!”
“You can't leave.”
I laid out the truth without mercy.
“It's the critical period for the winter irrigation project. Olympia just left and the Settlement is already restless. If you walk away now, what happens to your commendation? What happens to your career?”
Luther froze.
That was him.
When it came down to his own interests, even with his wife possibly dying, he still had to weigh the costs.
“Give me the letter.” I held out my hand.
Luther gripped the paper like his life depended on it, knuckles white.
A long moment passed. Then his hand went slack, as if every last ounce of strength had drained from his body.
“Isabella……do you really have to go?”
“I really have to go.”
“Then will you……come back?”
I tucked the referral letter away carefully and looked out the window at the ash-gray sky.
“We'll see what fate decides.”