Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Jiang Yao and I had been pushed together by our families.

It was the same stale story as countless others.

Marriage. A home. A child. Then one day after another, all exactly alike.

I had always believed there was no love between us.

In seven years of marriage, we never once argued or even raised our voices. She was a woman with an extraordinary capacity to accommodate others.

My parents, our relatives, the neighbors, even my difficult friends—she handled every one of them with ease.

She never fawned or ingratiated herself. Even when she was using my credit card, she carried herself with the same quiet self-possession, neither humble nor overbearing.

It was dull. Lifeless.

It made me feel as if my presence or absence meant nothing in her world.

People worked hard so they could one day live the life of their dreams.

Surely that included the woman lying beside them.

Otherwise, what separated a man from a dead fish?

Then I met Lin Wei at a business dinner.

She was the liaison sent by a contractor. Halfway through the meal, I went to the restroom for a breath of air and heard someone speaking on the phone inside a stall.

“Ms. Wu, we’re almost finished. I’ll pick up Niuniu as soon as I can. Please don’t worry.”

The stall door opened a second later.

Lin Wei stood there, flustered.

“Something wrong?”

She shook her head at once.

“No, no. I’ll find someone else to get him. We should go back and finish.”

I checked the time. It was almost nine.

“Why don’t we call it a night? Your child is more important.”

Lin Wei lowered her head.

“Thank you, Mr. Zhou.”

By the time I drove out of the underground garage, rain had started to fall. She had no umbrella and stood miserably at the curb, trying to hail a cab.

I slowly lowered my window.

“Get in. I’ll take you.”

I soon learned that she was a widowed single mother. Her son was only four, a year younger than my daughter, Youyou.

She carried the entire family on her own.

There always came a moment when a man compared an outsider to his wife without even meaning to.

Jiang Yao had married me straight out of university. She had never worked a day in her life and could not possibly understand how cruel the world outside could be.

There was a television drama called *The First Half of My Life*. No one who watched it could understand why the husband would abandon his beautiful wife to have an affair with an older divorced woman.

But I could.

At work, a person’s appearance often faded into the background while competence earned respect.

Home, on the other hand, magnified every flaw. Endless petty chores buried whatever brilliance a person might once have possessed.

So Lin Wei came into my life like a torch, setting my world alight.

From then on, I dressed with care every morning and looked forward to seeing her.

I hid it well from Jiang Yao. Every now and then, I even brought her some little surprise.

Yes.

That was what women liked to call a guilty conscience.