Chapter 7

When Dad took it, both his arms tensed.

As though he still expected my weight in them.

But the box wasn't that heavy.

He looked down and suddenly stopped.

When I was in kindergarten, he'd pick me up and sit me on his arm.

I'd said I still wanted him to carry me when I grew up.

He'd said of course he would.

In this eighth year of my life, he hadn't carried me like that once.

A small bunch of sunflowers stood before my grave.

Mom brought Huang.

He'd been washed clean. The three yellow stitches on his left ear were still there.

Grandma smoothed his ear and set him beside my photograph.

"An'an, Little Bear will stay with you."

Mom reached to take him back.

She hugged him once.

Then put him down.

Dad stood beside her, his head bowed.

"I was wrong."

He waited.

Then said it again.

"I was so wrong."

Before, whenever he said that, I'd take his hand.

Sometimes I'd speak up for him and ask Mom not to be angry anymore.

Now Grandma caught his sleeve.

"Don't wait for her to comfort you again."

His shoulders began to shake.

Mom crouched before my picture.

She took out the two star hair clips.

One stayed in the box.

She tried to fasten the other to my photograph.

The frame was too hard.

She tried twice.

Both times, it slipped.

In the end, she laid it beside the sunflowers.

"I bought them for you."

She was crying.

"I didn't lie."

I looked at that tiny patch of yellow.

I'd really loved it once.

So much that even after we'd walked far away in the mall, I'd kept turning back.

But later, a hair clip hadn't been what I wanted anymore.

Mom knelt on the ground, saying sorry over and over.

Grandma didn't ask her to get up.

Didn't say I would certainly forgive her either.

On the way home, Dad drove very slowly.

We passed the children's hospital.

The light turned red.

Mom suddenly looked through the window toward the entrance.

Someone was lifting a child from a car.

The child cried.

The grown-up held them a little tighter and hurried inside.

The light turned green.

The car behind us honked.

Dad still didn't move.

Mom covered her eyes.

I sat in the back.

The child safety seat beside me was empty.

Before, whenever we were almost home, I'd ask, "Mommy, are we there yet?"

That day, I didn't.

Chapter 10

10

A few months later, my aunt sat in the defendant's seat.

No makeup.

Her hair was tied tightly back. Her face wasn't as fair as it looked in the videos.

She said she hadn't meant to hurt me.

"I just didn't know how to look after a child."

"She wasn't even mine. Her parents both said not to spoil her, so I…"

Dad sat in the gallery, his hands on his knees.

At that, he looked up.

My aunt looked toward him too.

Just as she always had when she'd called him "Brother" in front of Mom, sounding so wronged.

This time, he didn't defend her.

The prosecution presented the childcare arrangements, payment records, and photographs of the door.

What she called "discipline" had meant locking away a child who was very ill.

What she claimed she "didn't know" didn't match the medical advice she'd received.

Or the cries for help she'd heard.

She changed her story.

She'd been so busy and tired, she'd got confused.

Then a video began playing.

The original footage recovered from her phone.

She'd saved the long recordings to edit later.

One was eleven minutes long.

Only nineteen seconds had been posted.

In those nineteen seconds, she held shrimp to my mouth.

"Thank you, Auntie."

I smiled brightly.

I knew she liked that smile.

In the footage left out afterward, she pushed the plate away.

"All right. Spit it into the tissue."

I didn't dare move.

She stared at me.

"Didn't you hear?"

I spat out the shrimp.

She took the tissue away and leaned close to her phone to check the picture.

Beside her, I asked quietly, "Can I eat now?"

The video stopped there.

Mom bowed her head.

Tears fell onto the backs of her hands.

My aunt said the shrimp hadn't been cooked through. She couldn't let a child eat it.

No one was accusing her of causing my death because of one bite of shrimp.

There was more evidence.

The cropped medical advice.

The canceled appointment.

The lock on my bedroom door.

The phone she'd taken.

The times she'd left and returned to the complex.

And the unanswered voice messages asking for help.

I begged Mom to let me see the doctor first.

She could scold me when we got back.

Mom curled in on herself.

As though every time she heard it were the first.

My aunt began to cry.

"I really thought she was asleep by then."

"She wasn't making any noise. How was I supposed to know…"

The prosecutor asked why, if she'd thought I was asleep, she'd told my parents I was awake, breaking cups, and throwing tantrums.

Her mouth fell open.

After a long time, she forced out one sentence.

"I was afraid they'd blame me when they came back."