Chapter 7
Edward Quan ·
“It was his sister driving, not my husband. If you want compensation, go to her. Leave us out of it.”
Below it, Mr. Fang wrote: “After the first impact, the driver ran over my father a second time. He is still in intensive care. The driver’s wife hasn’t even apologized. Instead, she blamed her husband’s sister and told us to demand compensation from an innocent person.”
Posted at two in the afternoon. By eight that evening, it was trending locally.
I saw it while grocery shopping.
Ms. Zhang held out her phone from behind the register.
“Is this your family?”
I glanced at it without answering.
“Your sister-in-law really is something.”
I carried my groceries home.
The phone vibrated all the way.
Messages from my eldest aunt, my older cousin, Auntie Wang from next door back in the village. I had all their numbers saved. Some hadn’t contacted me in a year.
Everyone asked the same thing.
“Is what they’re saying online true?”
I answered none of them.
At home, I put down the groceries. The phone rang again.
My mother.
I let it ring.
Eight times. It stopped.
Ten seconds later, it started again.
I answered.
She exploded before anything else.
“Did you give that recording to those people? Did you put it online?”
“No.”
“Who else could it be? Who else would have a recording of your sister-in-law—”
“Mr. Fang recorded it himself. She called him. He recorded the call. What does that have to do with me?”
Her breathing rasped like a bellows.
“Do you know your brother’s been taken into criminal detention? They’re all cursing him online! People have gone to your sister-in-law’s shop and blocked the entrance—”
“Mom. He ran over a living person a second time.”
The line fell silent.
“Did you hear me? He hit them, stopped for three seconds, reversed, then drove over them again. All within seven seconds. This isn’t drunk driving. It’s intentional homicide.”
“You’re talking nonsense—”
“The dashcam recorded it. The police have reopened the case. You still didn’t know?”
No answer.
I could hear her breathing. Heavy, broken, with a wheeze.
“In those seven seconds, your son made a choice. Reverse. Drive over them. His choice. I didn’t do this to him.”
“Shut your mouth.”
“No. Every word I’ve said, from the beginning, has been true. The fake license. The planted evidence. The false statement. You did all of it. And even now, you’re still trying to blame me?”
“Zhao Yanqing!” she shrieked. “I’m your mother!”
“Yes. You’re the mother who used my photograph to get a fake license. The mother who tried to send me to prison to save her son. The mother who grabbed my trouser leg at the station and tried to force me to confess.”
I spoke one sentence at a time. Quietly. Clearly.
“You were never my mother. You were only Zhao Yanwen’s. You’ve only ever had one child.”
She began to cry.
Not wailing. Stifled sobs.
“All these years raising you, for nothing…”
“You never raised me. I started taking summer jobs at sixteen. Went out to earn a living at eighteen. Half of everything I made went to you. The money you’ve taken from me over the years could buy two houses in the county town. What exactly did you spend raising me?”
The crying stopped abruptly.
My sister-in-law’s voice replaced hers. She had snatched the phone.
“Are you really going to watch your own brother die? If he’s convicted, what happens to my baby? Your brother’s child won’t even have a father at birth. Put your hand on your heart and ask yourself—”
“Zhou Xue.”
“That call you made to Mr. Fang this morning? The recording’s online. Go and listen to it when you have a moment.”
No sound.
Then a piercing scream.
The call ended.
I put the phone on the table.
Picked up the remote and turned on the television. Any channel would do.
I raised the volume.
Enough to drown those people out.
The fifth day.
Zhou Xue posted a long statement online.
The title was “A Pregnant Woman’s Plea: I Just Want to Keep My Family Together.”
Over three thousand characters about marrying into the Zhao family, getting pregnant, and how hard everything had been. Her husband had suffered a momentary lapse of judgment, she wrote. The baby inside her was innocent.
At the end: “My husband’s own sister, Zhao Yanqing, chose to stand by when our family needed her most. She even kicked us while we were down.”