Smoke and Silence

1

Sophie Sullivan never imagined she’d one day go on a date with a man who wasn’t her husband. The very thought made her feel disgusted with herself.

Maybe what she was really chasing... was a sense of being seen.

His name was Leo Rivera—a fresh college graduate, tall, fit, and unfairly good-looking.

The moment Sophie found herself captivated by his striking face, she was startled by her own shallowness.

Leo stared at her with burning eyes, voice low and sincere.
"Sophie, I love your writing. I've read every single book you've published. I feel like I understand the deepest parts of you. You're incredibly gifted."

Then, hesitantly, he reached for her hand.

Sophie paused, then gently pulled away.

They had just left the restaurant and were heading toward the movie theater when Mark Grant stormed in with a few guys—tattoos snaking up their arms—and without a word, started beating Leo to a pulp.

Leo stumbled off, bloody and humiliated. Honestly, he had it coming.

Sophie Sullivan was Mark Grant’s wife.

Later, after a long shower, Sophie stepped out of the bathroom. Mark was on the couch, smoking in the dark. He hadn’t turned on a light, just sat there quietly, the glowing tip of his cigarette pulsing like a warning light. Smoke curled slowly upward in the silence.

He spoke with a touch of contempt.
"All clean now?"

"What’s that supposed to mean?" she asked, already feeling numb.

Mark crushed his cigarette and let out a dry laugh.
"Just asking. Why are you so defensive? Maybe it’s because you feel dirty."

Without another word, Sophie turned and walked away.
Mark’s voice followed her, tired now.
"Sophie... we need to talk."

She sat across from him. Mark ran a hand through his hair, agitated.
"Nothing to say?"

Sophie stared out the window. The stars were hidden behind neon lights. The asphalt street stretched out like a black snake, cars crawling like wounded animals beneath them.

"Was it about money?" he asked.

Mark let out a hollow chuckle.
"Can’t be. If you were that kind of woman, you wouldn’t have married me. And I’m not exactly broke these days."

Sophie stood up and walked away. As she closed the bedroom door, she heard him sigh—almost helplessly:
"Did you ever wonder how we ended up like this?"

They had fallen in love as college freshmen, just two kids full of dreams.

The details of how it all began were blurry now, too far gone to clearly remember. But they had lived all the little clichés together—watching movies, counting stars, riding bikes, cheering at basketball games, exchanging matching rings, decorating a Christmas tree... every sentimental moment young love could invent.

Now, after ten years of marriage, much of it had faded. But sometimes, when she did remember, she felt strangely grateful. Because back then, the love had been real—whether they were laughing or crying.

Two moments still stirred something in her heart.

The first was one winter break. They were so attached they refused to part until the last possible day. Mark had walked her to the train station. As she entered the terminal, she glanced back—and there he was, still standing at the gate, craning his neck to see her. His face was flushed from the cold, red and raw. She had turned away quickly, but the tears came anyway.

The second was during their junior year. Sophie had become obsessed with a particular pair of headphones—three, maybe four hundred dollars. A luxury for a student. She’d stopped dead in front of the store window, staring longingly.

Mark hadn’t said a word. But when he got his first paycheck from an internship during senior year, he bought them for her.
She didn’t even care about headphones anymore. But he had remembered.
He never said much, but he always remembered what mattered to her.

After graduation, life pulled them to different cities. Their train ticket stubs filled an entire notebook. When Sophie looked at it now, she wasn’t sure what to feel. A little warmth. A little distance. A little ache.
But if she tried to recall the details, most of them had already crumbled to dust.

---

2

Sophie Sullivan had loved telling stories for as long as she could remember. Maybe it was because of the way her mother used to read her One Thousand and One Nights every evening when she was a child.

Those were magical nights—soft lamplight, a warm bed, her mother’s gentle voice. Sophie would clutch a hot water bottle and let her mind drift through worlds made of silk and stars. Stories wove themselves like enchanted webs across her dreams, glittering and colorful.

It was the most beautiful time of her life.

She started writing her own stories when she was barely a teenager. She wanted to spin her own shimmering webs, to share her dreams and joys with the world. Back then, she was always smiling. Maybe even still kind.

In college, she majored in civil engineering—not out of passion, but because her mother said it was a smart choice. “The country’s developing fast,” she’d told Sophie. “Infrastructure’s the future. It pays.”

After graduation, Sophie found a job in the same city where Mark Grant lived. Unsurprisingly, it was also in civil engineering.

Even talking about that job now made Sophie laugh bitterly. It was grueling work, the kind that few women actually enjoyed—constant travel, muddy job sites, technical drawings, relentless overtime... Sure, the salary was decent for her age, but Sophie knew it wasn’t for her. Deep down, she always knew.

If she stayed in that industry for ten, twenty years, her future was clear: some mid-level project manager or a site supervisor. It had nothing—absolutely nothing—to do with the life she had dreamed of.

She wanted to be an editor. A writer. She’d been quietly writing for years. The worlds she created were real to her—vivid, starry, intoxicating. She couldn’t stop. She didn’t want to stop.

But switching careers meant starting from scratch. Half the salary, if that.

When she finally told Mark Grant she wanted to become an editor, he froze for a second, then chuckled dryly.
"Come on, Sophie. Rent alone is nearly three grand a month. You've got a stable government job. Solid benefits. Just stick it out—don't start drama now."

Drama?

Sophie gave a hollow laugh.
"I travel nonstop. I’m on construction sites day and night. I’m exhausted, Mark. I don’t even feel like a woman anymore. Can’t I just—live for myself, just once in my life?"

Mark sighed and walked to the window. Snow blew in through the crack as he opened it. Down on the street, vendors were pushing carts through the slush, their faces bright red from the cold. He pointed.
"Everyone’s tired, Sophie. You think it’s just you? Look at them—selling street food in the snow. You think they’re not struggling? You think I’m not?"

Sophie lowered her head, silent.

Then Mark wrapped his arms around her and spun her in a circle.
"It’s okay," he whispered. "We’ll figure it out. I’ll quit soon and start my own business. Once it takes off, you can do whatever you want. We’ll travel—go anywhere you like. Just hang on a little longer."

Sophie smiled and threw her arms around his neck.
"Okay."

But starting a business? It was never that easy.

Mark had nothing in the beginning—no contacts, no cash. He worked himself to the bone, made rookie mistakes, got swindled more than once. The setbacks were endless. It was brutal.

Sophie worried constantly. She was frugal by nature, and over the years had saved a good amount of money. She gave it all to Mark to patch up the holes, but it still wasn’t enough. So she picked up part-time gigs—tutoring, ghostwriting.

The online novel she had been serializing? She had to let it die.

Three years passed like that.

Those were the golden years for web fiction. The book she abandoned had great numbers. If she’d kept going, who knows? Some of her peers from back then stuck it out—and now they were making names for themselves.

When Mark and Sophie finally got married, it was right after his business had collapsed. He was in a dark place, depressed and defeated. Sophie had to fight her parents to marry him—they couldn't understand why she’d tie herself to a broke man with no future.

But Sophie had believed in him.
"It’s okay," she had said. "Everyone fails. You’re still young. You’ll bounce back. Look at Jeff Bezos—he tanked hard at first. Compared to him, you’re doing great."

She had meant every word.

---

3

At work, Sophie Sullivan was blindsided—framed by her department manager who lacked the guts to own up to his own mistakes. He pinned everything on her, and what’s worse, once her colleagues found out she’d been writing during off-hours, jealousy flared.

Just like that, she was fired. No explanation that made sense.

She couldn’t understand it.

At the time, Mark Grant’s business had just gotten off the ground and was already facing serious struggles. The pressure was intense, and his mood was dark. When Sophie came home in tears and told him what happened, he didn’t console her—he snapped.

“You got fired. Doesn’t that mean you weren’t good enough? And why weren’t you good enough? Maybe because you kept messing around with that writing of yours instead of focusing on your real job. You went to a top university, Sophie. You should know better.”

Messing around?

Her head buzzed.

She’d heard that kind of talk before—just never from him.

Her parents had said it too:
“You can’t live like this. Women should keep things simple. A stable job in a government office? That’s gold.”

Her friends were the same:
“Not everything you love can pay the bills. Just because you enjoy something doesn’t make it a talent. Lower your expectations. Find your place. Be normal. Be realistic. We all have to settle eventually.”

She had grown numb to those voices. But hearing it from Mark? It shook her.

She stared at him, silent.
You used to talk about your dreams, she thought.
You wanted to be rich, to be your own boss, to never work for someone else. When you quit your job, I never called you irresponsible.

Shortly after losing her job, Sophie found out she was pregnant.

So she stayed home.

Everything she had—food, clothes, healthcare—came from Mark. Not that she ever spent much. Still, he made sure to point it out.

“All you do is add to my stress,” he muttered one day.
“But whatever. Since you’re at home, make yourself useful. Cook. Clean. Life goes on.”

So Sophie did. She tried. She’d grown up fairly pampered, not exactly trained in domestic work. She made mistakes. That didn’t go unnoticed.

Her mother-in-law was less than impressed.

“This girl,” she hissed to a neighbor, “is supposedly a college graduate, and she can’t even cook a bowl of soup? No job, no skills, just sits around all day waiting for my son to feed her. Girls like that? Useless.”

Of course Mark heard. And of course, he repeated it.

“You can’t do anything right. We went to the same college, Sophie, and I run a business. You say you’re a writer—what have you even done with that? Where’s your success?”

Those words hit hard. Her chest tightened with shame.

She thought of all the months—years—Mark’s startup went without making a single dime. The debt. The losses. The setbacks. She had stood by him the entire time. Hadn’t judged him once.

Sophie was proud. Deeply so. She wasn’t the type to whine, but the more others tried to push her down, the more fiercely she wanted to rise. And the harder she pushed back, the worse things seemed to get.

That day, she had finally pulled out her old manuscripts—years of handwritten drafts—ready to begin editing. She was hunched over the table, deep in focus, and forgot about the porridge simmering on the stove.

By the time Mark and his mother got home, it had boiled over and burned.

The shriek from her mother-in-law broke the spell.

Before Sophie could even react, the woman stormed into the kitchen, slapped her hard across the face, and in one swift motion, grabbed the stack of manuscripts and tossed them onto the lit burner.

The flames jumped instantly.

Sophie lunged forward, trying to save them. In the chaos, she shoved the old woman aside, sending her stumbling. Mark saw it happen. He snapped.

He grabbed Sophie by the arm and flung her across the room.

He probably didn’t think he used much force.

But it was enough. She hit the ground, hard.

“A writer, huh?” he sneered.

“Everything you wear, everything you use—I paid for it.

And now you can’t even make a simple meal? And you dare raise your hand to my mother?”

---

4

Sophie Sullivan didn’t say a word. Her mind went blank, thunderous with panic.
The manuscript—gone.

It wasn’t digital. She hadn’t typed it up yet.
Gone meant gone.

She was still in shock when the pain in her abdomen began to throb, deep and sharp, but distant somehow. Then, slowly, a warm trickle of blood spread beneath her.

By the time Mark Grant realized what was happening, Sophie’s face had gone ghostly pale from the pain.

“Oh God...”

He scrambled to call an ambulance. But it was too late.
They lost the baby.

A dilation and curettage followed.

Sophie lay on the cold operating table, legs spread under a harsh light, feeling more like meat than a human being. The pain wasn’t unbearable—there were drugs for that—but as the instrument scraped inside her, over and over, thin layer by layer, she could feel something being torn out of her.

Something she couldn’t name.

She felt hollow, emptied out. Like all that was left of her was a pair of vacant eyes.

The baby... the baby...

Outside the operating room, her mother-in-law paced anxiously, muttering to anyone who would listen:
“Now that the baby’s gone, she’ll need at least a year to recover. God knows when she’ll be able to get pregnant again. She’s missed the best window.”

What are we supposed to do now?

Sophie lay on the table, staring blankly into the overhead light.

It took a long time for her mind to return, like dust settling after a collapse.

“A writer, huh?”

“Everything you own—every piece of clothing, every piece of jewelry—I bought it for you.”

“You’ve gotten so lazy. You can’t even cook porridge anymore. And now you dare lay a hand on my mother?”

Maybe he was just angry, Sophie thought. Maybe he didn’t mean it. She had, after all, pushed his mother. No one likes seeing their mom hurt.

But her mind wandered.

She’d been five months along. The baby had been moving, tiny flutters that made her heart bloom. She had been so full of hope. So full of love. Life had felt like it was finally beginning again.

And just like that—it was gone.

He shouldn’t have pushed her.
He shouldn’t have.

Her baby, the one she never got to meet, would have loved her. She knew that.
But now… they’d never get the chance.

What if I had died, too?
What would I even be, then?

The question circled in her head.
Eventually, it answered itself in silence:
Then I’d be nothing. And maybe that’s okay.

When the doctor asked if she wanted to see the baby, Sophie shook her head.

No. She didn’t want to. She couldn’t.

Someone helped her back out into the hallway. Mark was waiting there. She looked at him but felt nothing. Something inside her had been taken. Gone. She was light. Empty.

She used to think he was the best man in the world. She had loved him with something close to worship. He had once been everything—the sun, the warmth, the center of it all.

Now, she looked at him like a stranger.

He still looked the same. Still handsome. Still young. No wrinkles. No wear.

And yet, he felt so… far away.

He reached out to steady her, and it made her flinch. She hesitated, then gently pulled away.

“Let’s go home,” he murmured.

She followed him.

Her body was weak. Every step was slow.

The street was crowded. Mark walked ahead in his black jacket, the back of his head fuzzy and round, kind of cute. He walked with a familiar bounce in his step—boyish, charming.

Then, in the blink of an eye, he was gone.

Sophie stopped in the crowd. She couldn’t find him.
She stood still, waiting, hoping he’d turn around.

He didn’t.

And in that moment, she broke.
Tears spilled over as she stood there, surrounded by strangers.

How could he be so ordinary?
So painfully ordinary, after everything?

She hailed a cab and went home. The apartment was a mess.

She cleaned the windows until they shone. Mopped the floor until her reflection looked back. Then she cooked a new pot of porridge, slowly and methodically, and ate it one spoonful at a time.

---

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