Chapter 9
Edward Quan ·
“The money is finally transferred. A new life starts tomorrow.”
The next day, my brother waited three hours outside the Civil Affairs Bureau.
His wife never came.
She had taken the children elsewhere, leaving him only divorce papers.
The school-catchment home was in her name.
So was the new house.
She had used most of the 3.8 million to buy property and repay her birth family’s debts.
Unable to find her, the first thing he did was storm into the care home.
Not to collect Mom.
To vent his anger.
He rushed into her room and seized her collar.
“It’s all your fault!”
“If you weren’t paralyzed, why would Xiaoya despise this family?”
The aides hurried to pull him away.
Mom shrank in her wheelchair. His nails had left a bleeding scratch on her face.
She didn’t resist or curse him.
She only stared blankly at the son she had loved all her life.
His words grew crueler.
“Why did you get sick now?”
“If you could still cook and watch the children, would Xiaoya have left?”
“You gave me money, but couldn’t keep the houses. What use are you?”
Slowly, Mom lifted the hand she could still move.
Perhaps she wanted to stroke his head and soothe him, as she had when he was little.
He knocked it away.
Before leaving, he demanded a refund of the remaining care-home funds.
The director showed him the arrears notice.
There was no refund. He owed over sixty thousand yuan.
He didn’t even look.
“Whoever brought her here can pay.”
“I have no money. Ask my sister.”
The next day, Mom sought legal aid herself for the first time.
She wanted to revoke the gifts to him.
After hearing the facts, the lawyer explained that the gifts had long been completed and the houses registered. Recovering everything would be very difficult.
But he had signed an agreement with care arrangements attached. Since he refused to fulfill it, she could demand payment and pursue the corresponding rights as the circumstances allowed.
On the hearing day, Mom attended in her wheelchair.
When the judge asked about the gifts, she didn’t cover for him.
“I gave my son both houses, eight hundred thousand, and the shop.”
Asked about abandonment, she admitted he had left her outside my door.
He sprang up.
“Mom, have you gone mad?”
She recoiled.
Instinctively, she looked at him with the habitual yielding of many years.
But this time, she didn’t change her story.
“Qingwei, I gave you everything.”
Tears fell as she looked at him.
“Why won’t you give me even a bed?”
He gritted his teeth.
After all the pressure of debts, divorce, and litigation, everything he had kept inside finally spilled out.
“Because you’re biased!”
The courtroom fell quiet.
Mom froze too.
He pointed at her.
“You knew my sister married well, yet still gave me everything.”
“You taught me from childhood that her things were mine too.”
“You made me used to holding out my hand and getting money. Now you can’t pay, and you want to become my burden.”
He grew louder.
“I became this way because you spoiled me!”
She suddenly shook all over.
The son she had cherished finally told her himself.
Favoritism hadn’t bought devotion.
It had only raised someone who would never be satisfied.
The court ordered him to pay the arrears and continue bearing primary responsibility for her care under the agreement.
The money his wife had transferred away would require separate proceedings.
After the hearing, he stopped me in the corridor.
Suddenly, he knelt and begged for help.
“Sis, I’m really out of options.”
“Pay my debts first. I’ll change.”
I walked around him.
When pleading failed, he sprang up. His desperate eyes turned resentful.
“If you had paid from the start, how would I have ended up like this?”
I stopped.
“You took the houses.”
“You bought the car.”
“You abandoned Mom.”
“No one signed your name for you.”
I turned and left.
Behind me, Mom suddenly called.
She looked at her kneeling son, then at me.
For decades, every choice had favored him.
This time, she finally didn’t ask me to yield.
“Continue enforcement,” she told the lawyer.
“If he won’t pay, pursue it to the end.”
09
After Mom sued, no enforceable assets remained in his name.
He had lost his job.
The restaurant debts kept falling due.
To force her to withdraw the case, he stormed into the care home and hauled her from the wheelchair.
When an aide tried to stop him, he shoved the aide to the floor.
He took Mom’s medicine and oxygen concentrator, then threw a withdrawal form before her.
“Fingerprint it!”
She refused.