Chapter 6

All I said was that my father was sixty-one this year. After he retired, he’d wanted to turn the first floor into a little shop. He said sitting by the door and watching people pass was better than sitting around at home.

He never got the chance to fix the place up.

The shelving unit he’d bought was still stacked in the corner, its plastic wrap unopened. Before he left that day, he’d said he would pick up some sugar-roasted chestnuts for me from the stall at the end of the alley on his way back.

He never came home.

The courtroom fell silent for a long time.

On the day of sentencing, the court found that the father and son had acted together and deliberately killed a person. Both had actively participated; their motives were vile, their methods cruel, and their crimes grave.

Liu Detai and Liu Zhiyuan were both sentenced to death.

When he heard the verdict, Liu Detai collapsed into his chair, as if every bit of strength had been drained from him.

He never spoke again about how hard it had been to raise his son. Instead, he kept repeating that he didn’t want to die, that he was old, that his health was poor.

Liu Zhiyuan cried out for his father, then turned to look at me, as if he still expected me to say something.

I didn’t look at him.

Their appeals were rejected.

The death sentences were approved and eventually carried out.

When the notice arrived, I was cleaning the glasses my father had left behind.

They were the pair he wore all the time, old and worn. The lenses had fine scratches around the edges, and some of the paint had chipped off the frames. I wiped them over and over until the lenses were clear. Only then did I realize my hands had been shaking the whole time.

I put them back in their case and closed the lid.

Someone at the end of the alley was selling drinks. The call carried in through the window, as ordinary as it had been all these years.

I stood there for a long time before realizing I’d been holding my breath.

This time, at last, I could slowly let it out.

10

My father’s ashes were laid to rest beside my mother’s.

The funeral was simple. Uncle Zhang, Auntie Wang, and a few old neighbors who used to bring their watches to my father came.

An old man leaning on a cane laid down a bouquet, then took out a twenty-yuan note.

“Last year, he replaced my watch battery and told me I could pay him next time.”

I didn’t take the money. I helped him sit down to one side.

When I was finally alone, I wiped the thin film of dust from the gravestone. The photo we chose had been taken at his sixtieth birthday. He wore a paper crown at a crooked angle, a bit of cream at the corner of his mouth, and a shy smile.

That was my father.

“The house is still here,” I told the photograph. “I’m still upstairs. The window seam you patched didn’t leak this year.”

The wind picked up. I held the flower wrapping down.

“You don’t have to worry anymore, Dad.”

After that, I crouched in front of the gravestone and cried for a long time.

Later, I finished the inheritance paperwork.

The old two-story building was officially registered in my name. Part of the savings we recovered was returned through the proper procedures.

The clerk at the counter slid the documents over and asked me to check the name.

It had once read Xu Jianping.

Now it read Xu Ning.

I owned the building, but I could never again stand at the foot of the stairs and call for Dad when a pipe started leaking.

The first time I changed a light bulb by myself, my hands shook so badly I dropped and broke the old one. As I crouched to sweep up the pieces, I realized I’d still been waiting to hear his voice from downstairs: “Leave it. I’ll take care of it.”

Little by little, I learned how to fix a faucet, where the main switch was, and that I needed to bring in the doormat before a heavy rain.

I cleaned my father’s tool kit and put it in the cabinet on the first floor. I contacted the owners of his old watches one by one and took each to the repairman he knew.

After the last watch was picked up, I repainted the little street-front shop.

White walls. Wooden shelves. A warm yellow lamp.

I quit the job that kept sending me on business trips and opened a small convenience store downstairs.

I called it Ningning’s Little Shop.

Uncle Zhang helped me haul in the first delivery. After unloading the boxes, he stood outside the door and smoked.

“Your father used to say that if you opened a shop one day, he’d handle the supplies and you’d handle the cash.”

I nodded and arranged the bottles of water on the shelf.

I kept that old chair with the wool socks on its legs behind the counter.

Captain Chen came by later and bought two bottles of water. He asked how business was going.

“I make a little spending money each day. Enough to get by.”

I gave him his change and added, “And upstairs is home. Very convenient.”

We never spoke about that night again.

While sorting through the cabinets before the New Year, I found my father’s old ledger. A yellowed note was tucked into the last page.

It was the rent IOU I’d written for him when I first moved in eight years ago.

Two thousand a month. I’d pay him back after I got a raise.

In red ink, he’d changed the line underneath:

“My precious daughter lives here. She owes nothing.”

He had still signed it, “The Great Landlord, Xu Jianping.”

I smoothed the paper flat, slipped it into a clear plastic sleeve, and placed it beneath the glass top of the counter.

When a customer asks what it is, I tell them it’s something my landlord left behind.

By then, I can manage a small smile.

It’s just that, after I finish the day’s work and go upstairs, I still sometimes take out one extra pair of chopsticks. I serve the rice before remembering the other side of the table is empty.

When I closed the shop today, it was raining.