When the wedding was postponed for the seventh time, news came that Ryan Floyd had been critically injured on a mission.
Eight months pregnant, I traveled over a thousand miles to his workplace. When I presented our marriage certificate, I was detained on the spot.
"Showing up with a fake certificate trying to sneak into a restricted zone? Spies really don't value their lives, do they?"
The words hit me like a bolt of lightning. But just as they were about to haul me away, I caught a glimpse of a familiar figure.
I clutched at her like a lifeline. "Joan, please, tell them! I'm Ryan's wife!"
The woman walked straight past me and handed a document to the man across the way.
The same man who had just been interrogating me with that cold, clipped tone broke into a warm smile.
"Ah, so you're Engineer Floyd's wife. My apologies for the trouble."
I stared at the scene unfolding before me, too stunned to speak.
A knock came at the door. Ryan Floyd appeared in a wheelchair, his gaze landing on me.
The man asked him, "Engineer Floyd, do you know this woman?"
He shook his head. "No. Doesn't ring a bell."
I was thrown into a dim holding cell, interrogated until I nearly broke. Not once did he come to see me.
The day they released me, I sold my wedding ring and went to the nearest branch of the Design Institute.
……
After I explained why I was there, the director glanced at my belly and spoke with hesitation.
"Architect Cooley, are you really sure you want to join the Western Heritage Survey Project?"
"This project is out in the Western Highlands. One wrong step and they'll never find your body."
"Not to mention, your baby will only be a month old by then. Can you really bear to leave?"
I let out a quiet laugh. "I have to be myself first before I can be my child's mother."
"No one has the right to hold another person back. Not even someone who shares your blood."
"Does your husband agree to this?"
"His work is dangerous enough. If you both end up sacrificing yourselves for the country, what happens to the child?"
Three years ago, when Ryan Floyd chose the path of bomb disposal, he had said the same kind of thing.
"In my line of work, every day could be the last. I'm terrified that in the end, I won't be able to give you the life you deserve."
"Catherine, let's get our marriage license. That way, no matter where we are, we'll always be each other's closest person."
I got the license with him, and the Floyd family finally agreed to let him go out west.
And I, the brilliant young architect at the Design Institute, stayed behind in Southport and became the Floyd family's most dutiful granddaughter-in-law.
My mother-in-law would eye my flat stomach and complain behind my back.
"She's nothing but a hen that can't lay eggs. No wonder Ryan keeps putting off the wedding."
During his first year's leave, we had a terrible fight.
"Ryan Floyd, do you love me or not?"
"Give me a straight answer. I won't cling to you."
My mother-in-law had even been arranging meetings with other women for him, openly and behind closed doors. The neighbors whispered that the youngest Floyd grandson's wife must be loose, since she'd been married half a year with nothing to show for it.
I was sick of the gossip.
"Stringing each other along is the most pointless thing in the world. I may come from nothing, Catherine Cooley, but I don't need a single penny from the Floyd family."
"If you think I'm some object you can summon and dismiss at will, then let me go now. It'll be better for both of us."
He caught me by the waist and pressed me against the wall. Warm tears slid down my neck.
His voice came out hoarse, cracking with a sob. "How could you think that? I love you. I truly do."
"How could I ever dismiss you? The truth is, I'm so afraid of breaking you that I barely dare to touch you."
"I'm terrified that one day I'll really die out there, and I won't know what to do about you."
"If I have any regrets, it's that I was reckless enough to drag you into this. I should never have tied you to a man on borrowed time."
I don't remember what he said after that. All I remember is the sound of his heartbeat as his warm chest drew close to mine.
