Page 45 of Shadowing You

“It’s a little big.”

“No.” He looked her up and down. She was his wife, after all. “It’s perfect.”

She dipped her head and smiled shyly. It faded when she looked at the food he’d spread across the table. “I assume you’re very hungry.”

“I’m hoping you are.”

Her raised eyebrows told him she wasn’t that hungry.

“Don’t worry about it.” He pulled out a chair for her. “Just eat what you can.”

He sat across from her, took her hands, and offered a blessing. Then, he tried very hard not to watch her and mentally calculate calories and grams of protein.

She managed half a bowl of congee, a whole egg tart, and two bites of a scallion pancake. She set her chopsticks down. “I’m sorry.”

“Why do you keep apologizing?” He hadn’t meant to snap and felt guilty when her eyes widened. “I’m sorry. And I should be sorry because I was rude. What are you sorry for?”

“For being so much trouble.”

“You’re not…” He took a breath. “I’m glad I’m here with you. I’m glad we’re together. This isn’t easy, but I wouldn’t be anyplace else in the world.”

Ethan hoped he could love her well enough that she would remember her own worth.

She didn’t eat anything else, so he hurried through the rest of his meal and, when he’d finished, stood and gestured to the living room.

“Will you tell me about Lu Feng?”

She followed him and perched on the sofa. “It’s a long story.”

“We have nowhere else to be.”

She drew in a breath and exhaled slowly. “He was a doctor at the hospital where I worked, admired by the staff and the village. He was the kind who worked late and saw patients who had no money. He seemed like a good man.”

“Okay.”

“When a woman came in who needed care…” Mei Lin frowned. “You understand that in the villages, lives are hard. The women have homes and families, and they work in the fields or factories. Their husbands… Some husbands were not helpful—working far away or expecting to be waited on at home. Some were not kind. When a woman came to the hospital, we would fix her, but we couldn’t keep her until she was fully healed. We would send her home with instructions to rest.”

“Of course. What else could you do?”

“But they didn’t always rest, you see? Sometimes, we would see the same women, over and over. When that happened, Dr. Lu would say, ‘This one needs time to heal. This one cannot go back yet.’ And he would arrange for her to go to a…” She paused, searching for the word. “A place for therapy, or just to recover.”

“Like rehab?”

“Yes, like that. The center was in the city. She would go and rest and get strong before going home.”

“Who paid for it?”

“Dr. Lu said a charity he worked with covered the price.”

“It sounds like he was helping them.”

“Yes.” Her voice was quiet. “I thought he was like you, a little. The kind of doctor I knew you would be—the kind who really cared.”

Ethan hoped he’d lived up to his wife’s expectations. He’d certainly tried to. “And then what happened?”

She closed her eyes. “There was a woman, Ài Le. She was young, maybe twenty-two, with a quick smile and one of those laughs that makes you laugh with her.” Mei Lin opened her eyes again. “You know what I mean?”

“Infectious.”