Chapter 5

“His wife is a very good actress.”

It turned out people would say those words wherever they went.

They had no idea what we went through that week.

They didn’t know how the door was kicked in.

They didn’t know how the three men pounded on the bathroom door and laughed at my sister for half an hour.

They didn’t know how Mother’s knees were crushed against broken porcelain when she knelt.

All they knew was that three people were dead.

The dead were too silent, leaving the living room to invent whatever stories they pleased.

In the detention center’s interrogation room, Jiang Chuyue sat for an entire day.

She didn’t cry or make a scene.

She only repeated the same sentence again and again.

“I only wanted to take back what belonged to me.”

The police asked her what she meant by things that belonged to her.

She looked up.

“When my mother got together with him, she was only nineteen.”

“He once told her he would marry her.”

“Then he married a Su daughter instead.”

“My mother raised me alone. She never married anyone else, even until she died.”

“Everything the Su family had should have belonged to me.”

The officer was silent for a moment.

“What about Mrs. Su?”

“What did she do wrong?”

Jiang Chuyue’s fingers moved.

“She didn’t do anything wrong.”

“But she was standing in that position. That alone was wrong.”

I stood in the corner of the interrogation room and listened.

It was the first time I had heard her say so much.

It was also the first time I learned that, in her eyes, my mother was an obstacle that had to be removed.

In another interrogation room, my older brother sat on a chair.

His head was lowered the whole time.

Father was being questioned in a different room.

When they asked about the jade bracelet, he was silent for a long time.

“It was my mother’s legacy.”

“She said it would be passed down to the next mistress of the Su family.”

The officer asked why he hadn’t given it to Mrs. Su.

Father’s lips moved.

“I wanted to save it for Chuyue’s mother.”

“She waited for me her whole life.”

“I had to leave her something.”

The officer lowered his head to take notes and did not reply.

I stood at the door and suddenly wanted to laugh.

He had left something for his first love.

He had left his wife to three creditors.

All four of them had thrown the knife.

And the man standing by the door had been invited into the house by their own hands.

Chapter 8

On the seventh-day memorial, my brother was the only one left in the mourning hall.

He knelt on a prayer cushion, holding my sister’s coat.

The incense had burned down to its base. He had forgotten to replace it.

I floated outside the door.

The sky was clear and blue.

Two people sat on the steps.

Mother sat on the highest step.

She had changed into clean clothes, and her hair was neatly combed.

A glow rested in her lap.

It was very small, very soft, and now and then it moved slightly.

My sister stood beside her.

She looked beautiful.

She wore a red dress, her hair loose around her shoulders.

The bruises on her face were gone.

The rope mark on her wrist had disappeared too.

“Big Sister.”

When she saw me, she smiled first.

“Look at me. Am I pretty?”

I said she was.

She lowered her eyes to look at her dress.

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

“I have money now.”

“Thirty million.”

“Let’s go somewhere far away.”

I looked at her, unable to move.

Then I told her the debt had been fake.

There had been no failed gamble, no bankruptcy, no jump into the river, no oil tanker.

It had all been a performance they put on for us from beginning to end.

My sister was silent for a long time.

So long that the incense had burned all the way down.

Then she asked whether the people at the Tang Pavilion had all been watching a performance too.

I said yes.

She told me that while she was kneeling, she had been counting the people in the room.

When she reached thirty, she stopped.

“I kept telling myself to endure two more days.”

“Two more days, and maybe you and Mom wouldn’t have to suffer quite so much.”

“When I transferred the thirty million, I even thought I’d done a pretty good job.”

She lifted her face. Her eyes were very bright.

Then she said one thing.

“So I knelt for nothing.”

Her voice was soft.

As if she were talking about someone else.

Mother lifted her head.

“It wasn’t for nothing.”

“Your sister didn’t love you for nothing, and you didn’t protect her for nothing.”

My sister turned around and stood with her back to us for a while.

When she turned back, her eyes were red, but she was smiling.

“Fine.”

“Then I didn’t lose out.”

Mother stood and brought the glow in her lap toward me.

“Hold him for a little while.”

“He’s been fussy all morning.”

I reached out and accepted him.

The glow was warm.

Through that warmth, I could feel a steady heartbeat.

It was my child.

He had never even gotten a name.

Mother stepped down and went into the mourning hall.

She stood in front of Father and looked at him for a long time.

Father had been lowering his head.

Suddenly, he looked up.

As if he had sensed something.

“Is that you?”

Mother reached out as if to smooth his disheveled hair.

Her hand rose halfway, then fell back.

“I really did love you once.”

Her voice was very gentle.

“That’s why, until the very end, I was still waiting for you to come save me.”