Chapter 14

As I was leaving, He Yu suddenly ran after me, calling out from behind. She whispered, “Sister, I’m sorry.”

I paused for a moment, pretending not to hear her. I walked away without looking back.

The weather was still beautiful today. The sky was bright and cloudless.

I passed a dessert shop and picked out a chocolate cake.

Then I drove to the cemetery.

Someone was standing in front of my brother’s grave.

It was my mother.

She was waiting for me.

But I only stood under the nearby tree in the cemetery for a while and did not go up to the grave.

When my brother had just died, my mother hated me intensely.

She wouldn’t allow me to attend my brother’s funeral. With reddened eyes, she questioned me, “Why wasn’t it you who died?”

I didn’t know how to answer.

I truly wished it had been me who died.

But I survived.

There was nothing I could do. For a long time, I secretly went to see her.

She always spoke to me with harsh, venomous words – I could hardly imagine those ugly curses came from my mother’s mouth.

But back then, I was still filled with guilt.

Until the matter of the recording came out, and I left the He family to find my mother.

It was raining heavily that day. I stood for a long time in front of that low building before my mother finally opened the door.

I put the voice recorder to her ear and played it, my voice trembling: “Mom, I have evidence now. I can sue her. I will make them all pay.”

My mother’s expression flickered with panic for a moment. Then, as if making up her mind, she grabbed the voice recorder from my hand and smashed it hard on the ground.

The recorder shattered into pieces.

I felt as if my heart shattered with it.

I didn’t even have the strength to pick up the broken recorder right away. I only asked her, “Why? Mom?”

My mother’s face wavered in the dim light of the streetlamp at the doorway.

She said, “Enough. Have you not done enough by causing your brother’s death? Will you only be satisfied when everyone in our family is destroyed because of you?”

So I couldn’t say another word. Instead, I slowly crouched down and picked up the pieces of the shattered recorder, one by one.

I left, humiliated.