Five Years a Widow in a Military Marriage, Then Her Late Husband Returns and She Calls It Off

The north wind of 1976 whipped snowflakes against the dormitory windows of the Red Star Brick Factory.

Su Qinghe wrapped her feverish young son tightly in her arms. Her fingertips brushed the faded “Family of a Martyr” certificate on the wall, proof that her husband, Shen Yuzhi, had died on the border five years earlier.

She had gone from a pretty normal-school student to a widow bearing the family’s burdens alone. She supported his elderly mother, raised their young son, and lived a life like a hemp rope rubbed raw with calluses.

Just as she was finally prepared to accept the decent man introduced by the factory leadership and give her child a complete family, the man who should have been lying in his grave appeared at the brick factory gates in a crisp military uniform.

Shen Yuzhi was alive, carrying the smell of gunpowder and an inexplicable past. Su Qinghe looked at him, then at the timid boy beside her, and five years of hurt and exhaustion erupted. “Shen Yuzhi, I’ve waited long enough during these five years you were dead. This marriage is over!”