Old Dreams Drowned in the River, No One Beside Me This Life

My only living family was dying, and the housekeeper wouldn't let me out the door.

Any outing must be reported twenty-four hours in advance and can only happen once approved. Those are the Harding house rules.

You're just a bar hostess someone keeps as a mistress. Remember your place.

Three days later, when I finally received permission to leave, the only family I had left in this world was a handful of ashes.

Grief and rage tore through me, and the seven-month-old baby in my womb left me too.

Dragging the ruined body of a woman who had just lost a late-term pregnancy, I boarded a helicopter bound for a distant island.

Before I switched off my phone, a message came in from Rolf Harding:

"Out more than two hours and you still dare turn off your location? You know what happens. I'm calling right now to have your brother's medication stopped."

"If you're not home admitting your mistake within the hour, don't ever come back. And the child in your belly, I won't claim it either."

Coldly, I let the screen go dark.

I handed the phone to one of the classified staff on board to destroy.

A week earlier.

The doctor said my brother had taken a sharp turn for the worse, and his treatment plan needed to be reworked immediately.

I tried to leave, and Mrs. Dickerson stopped me cold.

Staring at the carved wooden doors just a few steps away, I begged her.

"Mrs. Dickerson, this came out of nowhere. Chad is in critical condition and I can't reach Rolf. Please, just let me get to the hospital first. I'll take on every consequence myself."

She didn't budge from the doorway.

"Without Mr. Harding's permission, I'm not letting you out."

I sobbed and pleaded, small and desperate.

"Mrs. Dickerson, please, I'll just go to the hospital and come straight back."

"If you don't trust me, come with me. I swear I won't leave your sight for a single second."

She shook me off, impatient.

"Miss Pruitt, remember what you are. You're just a karaoke bar hostess. Mr. Harding bringing you into this house is more good fortune than your ancestors ever earned."

"Don't think that carrying a Harding child gets you a seat at the table. This family will never let someone like you through the door."

With that, she picked up her radio and told the guards to lock the front and back gates.

"No one leaves today without my word."

The old Harding estate sat on a hillside by the lake outside Ashford.

Without a car, this far along in my pregnancy, there was no way I could walk out.

And three years ago, I had slipped off to the hospital to see my brother in secret, without reporting it first.

To punish me, Rolf had every one of Chad's treatments and medications stopped for a full week.

It triggered severe complications. Chad barely pulled through.

I kept calling Rolf.

An hour later, the call finally went through.

But it was a woman's voice that answered.

"Miss Pruitt, Mr. Harding and I are entertaining guests right now. He says to stop harassing him."

I wiped my nose and forced my voice to come out clear.

"Assistant Dickerson, please, put Mr. Harding on. Or can you approve this for me?"

"Chad's condition has changed, it's serious, the doctor needs a family member's signature for the new treatment. I have to get to the hospital right now."

"Please, show a little mercy, a life is on the line, I"

I was crying too hard to finish, my heart in shreds.

The voice on the other end answered like an AI service line, cold and mechanical:

"Mr. Harding set this rule himself. Any outing must be reported twenty-four hours in advance, and you can only leave once he personally agrees."

"You didn't report in advance. And Mr. Harding just said, whatever it is, it waits until after his event."

The call cut off without mercy.

My legs gave out and I slid down onto the cold marble floor.

I called the doctor again.

"Dr. Swanson, I really can't get out. Can I authorize the new plan over the phone?"

Just as I feared, he refused.

"A life is at stake. Without the family member's own signature, we can't take on that kind of responsibility on a verbal phone authorization alone."

It was already the small hours when Rolf came home.

I had been waiting in the living room the whole time.

When the driver walked him in, drunk and unsteady, I rushed forward with everything I had and begged him to let me go to the hospital.

"Leonora, you get more thoughtless by the day. Carrying a belly that big, up all night instead of sleeping, and now you want to go out in the middle of the night?"

When he heard Chad's condition had turned, Rolf pulled out his phone and called the man in charge at the hospital.

It was, after all, a private hospital owned by Harding Group.

The other end agreed at once to draw up a whole new treatment plan.

"One call. That's all it takes. And you had to phone me dozens of times over it? Go to bed."

The strength drained out of my body all at once.

A thing Rolf could settle with a single phone call.

And every last one of them had dragged me through more than ten hours over it.

I wiped my tears dry and asked again.

"Rolf, can I go see Chad tomorrow?"

He ignored me and called for Mrs. Dickerson, asking how I had behaved these past few days.

She reported how much I had eaten, how long I had slept, right down to the number of times I had used the bathroom.

Rolf was very displeased with how little I had eaten.

All these days I had been sick with worry over Chad, and in the last stretch of pregnancy the cold, greasy platters of meat and rich food were more than I could get down.

"You're carrying my child, and you can't eat because of someone else? If you can't see the bigger picture, then I don't see any reason for you to go to the hospital at all."

"When you've got an appetite and can eat again, come and report to me!"

"Mrs. Dickerson, take Miss Pruitt back to her room to rest. Watch her until she's asleep."

Rolf staggered up the stairs to the master bedroom, held up by Assistant Dickerson and the driver.

Mrs. Dickerson threw me a grudging look.

"Miss Pruitt, this way, please!"

Stumbling back into the bedroom, I heard movement in the walk-in closet.

Assistant Dickerson was trying on my clothes and jewelry, showing off her curves in front of the mirror.

"Mr. Harding has an important reception tomorrow. He says your belly's too big and too ugly now, so he wants me to go with him."

"Besides, you used to pour drinks at a KTV, and Mr. Harding is worried you might run into an old client."

She wore the grin of a winner.

I waved a weak hand and told her to try on whatever she liked.

Mrs. Dickerson leaned in and started picking out gowns for her daughter.

"This one's lovely, it really suits you. Elegant, refined"

"Which one doesn't look good on me?"

"Yes, yes, my girl looks good in anything. If a bar hostess can climb her way into a house like this, then my daughter, a brand-name university graduate, is a hundred times better than her!"

"Mom, there you go again. She's just a caged bird Mr. Harding keeps, a belly that big and still no title to her name. As if I'd ever compare myself to her!"

The two of them stood there running me down to my face, and I couldn't have cared less.

That sordid past of mine was true, after all.

Back then, with no way out and my brother Chad's crushing medical bills to pay, I had gone to a KTV to pour drinks.

The very first time I stepped into a private room, I met Rolf.

The first glass of my life had barely gone down when Rolf seized my wrist and led me away.

For the seven years after that, I was the bird Rolf kept in a cage.

I lived quietly in the old estate, kept to every rule he laid down.

The housekeeper watched my every move; I had to file for approval to go out, and someone shadowed me the whole time I was gone.

What I traded my freedom for was this: Rolf paying every one of my brother's medical bills for seven years.

All of it was true.

Mrs. Dickerson and her daughter weren't wrong.

I really was a kept bar hostess.

I closed my eyes, the tears sliding down into my hair, and rested my hand on the high curve of my belly.

But all I could see was Chad lying in that hospital bed with an oxygen mask over his face.

For three days straight, I forced myself to eat.

Even when my stomach heaved, I swallowed everything down and choked back the nausea.

Every noon and every night, I lay obediently in bed.

Even when my heart clawed with impatience and sleep wouldn't come, I closed my eyes and pretended.

Finally, three days later, Rolf Harding came back.

When he heard Mrs. Dickerson's report on how I'd behaved, he was very pleased.

"Go see Chad this afternoon. Remember, you get two hours. You know what happens if you're late."

I nodded hard and promised to be back on time.

I barely made it to the hour I could leave, and under Mrs. Dickerson's watchful escort, I finally walked out the doors of the old estate.

While we waited for the elevator at the hospital, Mrs. Dickerson got a call from her daughter, Assistant Dickerson.

"Mom, the gown I'm wearing to the reception has a matching wrap. I left it at the Harding house. Bring it to me."

Mrs. Dickerson lowered her voice and refused.

"I can't. I'm watching Leonora at the hospital. I can't leave."

Assistant Dickerson couldn't have cared less.

"Her belly's out to here, like she's carrying a watermelon. She can barely walk. And that vegetable of a brother is lying in a hospital bed, only alive because of Mr. Harding's money. Where's a gold-digging bar girl going to run off to?"

"Go get my wrap. Tonight's reception matters. Mr. Harding's elders will be there, and I need to make a good impression if I'm going to marry into money."

Mrs. Dickerson snarled a few warnings at me, then had the driver take her back.

I pushed open the door to the hospital room alone, and found nothing but an empty room.

My heart skipped a few beats.

I stumbled to the nurses' station, where they gave me the news.

My brother, Chad Pruitt, had taken a turn for the worse two nights ago and stopped breathing.

In the nurse's grumbling, I heard it: Chad had had a chance.

But Rolf Harding had chosen to stop the treatment.

I had no heart to press it just then. The truth was I couldn't believe Chad was gone.

When I heard Chad had already been taken to the crematorium, I ignored the cramping in my belly and hailed a cab straight there.

When I saw Chad again, all that was left of him was a handful of ash.

I couldn't believe any of it.

My twin brother, the only person I had in the world, after seven years in a coma, had left me all the same.

For me, he'd been willing to give up his whole future.

Years ago, our parents' business had failed and buried them in debt, and then a single accident took both their lives.

It left just my brother and me, leaning on each other, studying and paying off the debt at the same time.

In the end the creditors made a scene at the university, and it caused a lot of trouble.

It was Chad who offered to drop out.

"Don't cry, sis. I'll work and pay off the debt, and I'll cover your living expenses too. You just focus on your studies. We'll split the work, and we'll get through this!"

I fought him hard on it back then.

My grades were good, but Chad had always been just a step ahead of me.

I wanted to leave the chance to study to him.

"No way. You're a girl. Without a degree there's only so much you can do out there. I'm a guy. Even without a degree I've got a strong back, so I've got way more options than you!"

And just like that, not long after he'd started, Chad walked away from the university.

Who could have known that a car accident afterward would leave him in a deep coma.

That one time he lay down, it turned into seven years.

I fought down the emotions I couldn't control and asked to see the cremation form and its signature.

I wanted to know who had handled Chad's final arrangements.

Just then, a middle-aged man walked over.

"I signed the cremation form."

I looked up. It was Lewis Donaldson, my mentor.

Only then did I learn that two days ago, Professor Donaldson had finally tracked down where Chad was, all in his search for me.

But he'd only arrived in time for Chad to be pronounced dead after the resuscitation failed.

Since he couldn't reach me or Rolf Harding, Professor Donaldson had handled the arrangements as next of kin.

"I've been looking for you for four years. How did you end up in Ashford?"

I held Chad's urn, a thousand things caught in my throat, and couldn't get out a single word.

Beyond the corridor windows, wind and rain raged.

Professor Donaldson's low voice was full of regret.

"You didn't show up that fall for the start of term. I got everyone I could to search for you."

"I even had your graduate spot held over for two more years. But there was never any word from you"

Hearing that, a wave of dizziness swept over me.

In the daze, my throat went so dry it felt like it might split, and all I got out was one sentence.

"Back then, I got in?"

And then I passed out.

I woke the next day.

The baby inside me was gone.

The doctor at the city hospital scolded me.

"How could you be so careless? The heartbeat's been gone at least two days..."

My brother and my baby, taken from me almost in the same breath.

In this world, I was alone now.

A nurse handed me a letter. Professor Donaldson had left it.

His time off was limited. He had to head straight back to the research base.

He'd covered my medical bills, then had no choice but to leave early.

Reading his letter, my world came apart again.

Back then, Rolf had actually hidden my graduate-admission result from me.

Just then his message came through on my phone.

"You went over the two hours you're allowed, and you dared leave your location off. You know what that means. I'm telling them to stop your brother's meds right now."

"You even stayed out all night. If you're not home to apologize within the hour, you can forget about ever seeing Chad again."

His cold face rose up in front of me.

Once, Rolf had been the only light in my life.

When I had nowhere left to turn, it was his warm hand that pulled me back from the edge of the abyss.

To me, he was the invincible hero who dropped out of the sky in the movies.

Back then he was all I saw, all I wanted.

I went home with him meekly, let him arrange everything.

Even if I had to report in before I could go out. Even if I had to read the housekeeper's moods.

I took it all gladly, wanting only to see him every day.

Countless nights, I dreamed of walking into the church beside him in a white wedding gown.

When I woke, I was always smiling.

Even though I knew that, as what I was, I would probably never get to wear his bride's gown.

But in the end, it was those same hands of Rolf's that pushed me down into a lightless well.

All these years, it was with his indulgence that Mrs. Dickerson and her daughter, Assistant Dickerson, kept tormenting me.

When Rolf was home, I got fresh, balanced meals.

When he wasn't, I had to wait until the housekeeper and every last one of the staff had eaten before I could pick at the cold leftovers.

Day after day, Mrs. Dickerson spread the story, and every worker at the old Harding estate knew my past pouring drinks at a bar and looked down their noses at me.

Every time I went to visit Chad at the hospital, I had to file a request twenty-four hours in advance.

But eight times out of ten it came back denied.

That was Assistant Dickerson's "doing."

She either sat on the request or made things up, and I ended up confined to the house.

Rolf turned a blind eye to all of it.

He even quietly condoned what the two Dickerson women did.

But Professor Donaldson found out at the hospital that when my brother was critical, he needed an organ transplant.

At the time, a suitable match had come up.

Rolf refused it.

He didn't even discuss it with me.

Years ago, he hid my graduate-admission result and gave me no chance to choose.

Now, he gave up on saving my brother, and still gave me no chance to choose.

My future, my only family, my baby. I had lost them all.

There was no reason left for me to stay at the Harding house and swallow it all.

Looking at the last line of the letter:

"Leonora, you are my best student. If you change your mind, you can reach me at this number. 060785986."

I knew this was my last chance to change my own fate by my own hand.

This time, I didn't hesitate at all.

I borrowed a nurse's phone and dialed the number.