Chapter 2

Lin Wanqiu walked over. On the WeChat screen, a message had arrived from a contact saved as Xu Qingya.

“Jianguo, how did it go? Has she agreed to resign?”

Wanqiu’s finger hovered over the screen. She fought the urge to open their conversation.

She couldn’t let him know she suspected anything.

She turned and went into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and began making dinner on autopilot. Her phone vibrated in her pocket.

“I’m going out for some air,” Zhou Jianguo had written. “Don’t wait for me for dinner.”

She didn’t reply.

By the time she had fed Zhou Ning, bathed him, and settled him to sleep, it was nine. Jianguo still wasn’t home.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, Wanqiu opened her banking app. She remembered transferring the proceeds from the apartment she had owned before marriage to Jianguo. She had labeled the transfer “house down payment.”

After a long search, she found it in her July 2016 transaction history.

Three hundred thousand yuan.

She took a screenshot and saved it.

Then she opened her photo gallery and scrolled back. Screenshots of conversations from 2017, a household expense ledger from 2018, statements from Jianguo’s payroll account… In her previous life, she had kept none of it. This time, she would make sure every payment was accounted for.

Jianguo came home at one in the morning, smelling of alcohol.

Wanqiu pretended to be asleep. In the dark, she listened as he undressed and lay down.

The next morning, she got up earlier than usual. After dropping Ningning off at kindergarten, she went straight to the bank instead of the office and had every transaction since her marriage printed out.

The young teller glanced at the thick stack of paper.

“What do you need all these for?”

“Backup copies.” Wanqiu smiled. “Just in case.”

For the next week, things seemed peaceful. Jianguo didn’t bring up her resignation again, and Wanqiu didn’t press him. But she noticed how often he stayed up late looking at his phone. A few times, she pretended to turn over in her sleep and caught sight of his conversation with Xu Qingya on the screen.

On September 15, just as she had expected, he announced a company retreat.

“It’s three days. Take good care of Ningning while I’m away,” he said as he packed. “My mother will come over tomorrow to help.”

“Where are you going?” Wanqiu asked casually.

“A resort in Huzhou.” He didn’t look up. “The company arranged everything.”

She stood in the doorway and watched him wheel his suitcase away. As soon as the elevator doors closed, she took out her phone and opened a location-sharing app.

Three days earlier, she had secretly installed it on Jianguo’s phone. He thought it was an ordinary weather app. In fact, it uploaded his location in real time in the background.

At seven that evening, it placed him at a couples’ hotel on the east side of the city.

Wanqiu stared at the red dot, her fingers slowly tightening around her phone.

He had stayed at this hotel in her previous life, too. Paying in cash had left her with no way to trace it. This time, she would make sure there was evidence of everything.

Early the next morning, her mother-in-law, Wang Xiufen, arrived with a large bag of groceries.

“Wanqiu, with Jianguo away, you must have your hands full. I’ll look after Ningning for a few days,” she said, heading into the kitchen. “And there’s something I want to talk to you about.”

Wanqiu’s stomach tightened. In her previous life, these were the days when her mother-in-law had repeatedly urged her to quit, to “put the family first.” A woman’s place was at home, supporting her husband and raising their child.

Sure enough, over lunch, Xiufen laid down her chopsticks and sighed.

“Wanqiu, you and Jianguo have been married nearly seven years now, haven’t you?”

“Yes. Seven years.”

“You’ve worked hard all this time. But a woman should still put her family first. You’re at work every day, and I’m the one taking care of Ningning. He’s hardly close to you.”

Wanqiu lowered her head and kept eating.

“Jianguo earns a good salary now,” Xiufen went on. “You could stay home with the child and live perfectly well. Besides, a woman going out to work all the time—what will people think?”

“Mom.” Wanqiu looked up. “I earn eight thousand a month. Jianguo earns twelve thousand. If I stop working, who’s going to pay the mortgage?”

“We can pay it off gradually.” Xiufen waved the concern aside. “Anyway, the house is in Jianguo’s name. Why are you worrying about it?”

Wanqiu’s chopsticks stopped halfway to her mouth.

“Mom, I put three hundred thousand yuan into the down payment.”