Chapter 3

For a long time, I was held separately. Apart from Lawyer Chen, I could see no one.

Then they took me to a large hospital for an assessment.

I knew my symptoms intimately.

Persecutory delusions. Emotional disturbance. Abnormal behavior. Loss of control...

There was no doubt.

I was a patient.

One day, though, Chen told me the authorities believed we might have acted out of deliberate revenge.

Our cases would therefore take a long time.

My husband's too.

Even his comparatively minor traffic case would be drawn out.

The purpose was to keep us from going anywhere.

They wanted to maintain order.

I understood.

It was actually encouraging. They knew that unless they restricted us, we'd keep disrupting their order.

What about the last family?

That boy's name was Yang Huiqiong.

He'd been under fourteen at the time. Now he was only a little past it.

His family had moved to a neighboring province, eight hundred kilometers from our county.

Chen also brought a message from Mr. Jiang.

We were to stay calm and be patient. He'd contacted Yang's family. Everything was arranged.

I wasn't satisfied.

Mr. Jiang was an educated, gentle man. Perhaps he thought leaving them afraid for the rest of their lives was enough.

I didn't.

At the very least, they had to feel our pain.

When I got out, I would have a proper talk with him.

Before that day came, something happened to Mr. Jiang.

A traffic accident.

He'd pushed a distracted young woman out of the road and been dragged beneath a car himself.

Chen brought me the news.

I couldn't stop crying.

In the end, he was still himself.

Helping avenge En'en hadn't turned him into someone vicious and cruel, like me or my husband.

Chen said his funeral had been grand. Nearly a hundred former students had come from all over the country.

Several had recently been contacted by him.

Talking at the funeral, they'd discovered he had been making arrangements.

Chen didn't tell me what for.

But he said, “Teacher Jiang had a very clear heart. He understood everything. He must have known that pushing that girl away would cost him his life. And you, your husband, what you both wanted to do—he understood that too.”

I nodded desperately.

It felt as though I'd lost a father all over again.

What followed, however, seemed to fall outside his predictions.

My case went through repeated hearings.

Chen argued forcefully and logically that my mental state had been extremely unstable when I committed the acts.

Seeing the people who'd abused my daughter and caused her death had made me lose control, he said.

I hadn't understood I was killing anyone. I'd believed they were going to hurt me as they'd hurt her.

I'd been suffering from severe persecutory delusions.

He almost had me believing it.

The case lasted more than five months.

I spent more than five months in custody.

My husband's was decided first.

They were so strict that even Chen couldn't find a way around it.

He received an immediate prison sentence: the maximum, three years.

I was utterly alone.

Fortunately, I was found not criminally responsible.

My relatives were to supervise me closely and arrange treatment.

I had very few relatives left.

Mr. Jiang had anticipated that too.

The village committee took responsibility for my supervision.

Before my release, Chen warned me:

“There's one thing you must understand. If you travel hundreds of kilometers to another province and commit another crime, no judge will accept that you were having an episode.”

That didn't matter much.

Once I'd achieved my aim, my life would be over anyway.

Prison or execution meant nothing.

I'd go to En'en myself.

Worse was the condition attached to the ruling.

I had to report to a designated hospital every week.

If I failed to comply, the authorities could force me into inpatient treatment.

With help from Mr. Jiang and my husband, it had taken half a month just to gain access to Liu's house.

One week wasn't enough.

I might be brought back and confined again before I even got near the last family.

Besides, Chen had told me that Mr. Jiang had made sure Yang's family heard exactly how the other three boys had died.

They'd be frightened, alert, and extremely careful.

Everything would be harder.

“There's more. Quite a lot has happened these past few months. I think you should know.”

What he told me next made me think the world itself might be sick.

My case had lasted over five months.

This had begun three months earlier.

Perhaps it was fear.

After more than two months of terror, Yang's family had gone to television reporters.

They told a “true story” so unfamiliar that even I barely recognized it.

According to them, Yang had been led astray by other village children and joined in hurting my daughter.

Afterward, he'd been deeply remorseful and left that painful place at once.

My daughter had died because my husband and I neglected her care.

Then we'd poured our resentment onto innocent children.

I, the mother, had gone completely mad and killed a child in broad daylight.

My husband had become a maniac too, crashing his car into another family and killing them.

And although no killer had been identified, a third family of three had been savagely murdered.

Yang's parents said they were afraid.

Terribly afraid.

They'd received anonymous messages describing every detail of the victims' deaths.

The messages said a lunatic like me would soon be released and come after their precious son.

The television station had actually portrayed them as victims.

The program was a hit.