Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Xiaoman was born before dawn on a windless morning.

The light outside the delivery room stayed on for six hours. I paced from one end of the corridor to the other, my palms slick with sweat. When the nurse came out to tell me they were safe, the first thing I asked about was the mother. Only then did I ask about the baby.

Nanzhi was wheeled out, her face so pale she looked almost translucent. When she saw me, her eyes curved faintly.

“Liang Yanzhou,” she said, “Xiaoman is really here.”

I lowered my head to look at the wrinkled little infant in the swaddle. She was impossibly tiny, her fingers curled as if she were clutching an invisible seed.

In that moment, I thought our lives would be lit up all over again.

But after giving birth, Nanzhi dimmed much faster than I had imagined.

She would suddenly start trembling while feeding the baby. She would ask over and over if Xiaoman hated her. She would wash the baby bottles a dozen times, until the backs of her hands cracked and bled. When Xiaoman cried, she cried before the baby did. When Xiaoman slept, she didn’t dare close her eyes, afraid that if she fell asleep, she would wake to find the whole world had gone wrong.

The maternity matron reminded me, “Mr. Liang, your wife isn’t being difficult. This looks like postpartum depression.”

I said, “I know. I’ll make arrangements.”

Those two words-make arrangements-would later become the words I hated most.

I arranged for the maternity matron to care for her twenty-four hours a day. I arranged for my mother-in-law to come and stay with her. I arranged for a therapist to visit every week. I arranged for a driver to take her to follow-up appointments.

I arranged for everyone.

The only person I didn’t arrange to stay was myself.

One late night, Xiaoman was crying terribly. Nanzhi sat on the living room floor with the baby in her arms, her hair a mess, two buttons on her pajamas done up wrong. When she saw me come home, she looked at me as if I were her lifeline.

“Yanzhou, I’m scared,” she said.

That day, I had just been lectured by investors for three hours straight. My head was still buzzing.

“There are so many people at home. What are you still scared of?” I yanked off my coat with too much force. “Nanzhi, can you stop always imagining the worst?”

Holding Xiaoman, she went completely rigid.

Even now, I still remember the look in her eyes.

It wasn’t anger.

It was a door shutting from the inside.

The next morning, I saw the note she had left on the dining table.

There was no accusation on it, only one very small line: I know you’re exhausted, but I didn’t break on purpose.

I crumpled the note in my palm, then smoothed it out again, wanting to go to the bedroom and apologize to her. But just then, my phone rang. My assistant said the investors had arrived at the company early and everyone was waiting for me.

I stood in the bedroom doorway and saw Nanzhi sitting on the edge of the bed with her back to me. Xiaoman was asleep in her arms.

“I’ll talk to you when I get back tonight,” I said.

She didn’t turn around. She only gave a soft hum.

That night, I didn’t come home.

The investors arranged a last-minute dinner, and I drank until the early hours of the morning. By the time I got home, Nanzhi was already asleep. She had stuck the note on the refrigerator. One corner of the paper had curled up, like a tiny wound about to peel away.

I saw it when I passed by.

But I didn’t stop.

Some mistakes don’t happen with a crash.

Sometimes, they are simply you passing by someone’s pain again and again, while telling yourself you’ll deal with it tomorrow.