Chapter 3

I stumbled into a warm embrace. When I looked up, it was Auntie Zhao.

She held a lamp in her left hand and a bundle of fabric in her right, as though she had just closed her shop and was heading home.

Finding me alone, she looked puzzled. “What are you doing running around by yourself so late? Where’s your mother?”

“My mother…” I faltered.

“Oh! Someone really is running away with a lover!”

“Whose wife is it? Did anyone get a good look?”

Before I could explain, lights came on all along the lane. A few women eager for gossip threw on their clothes and came outside, chattering.

By the time I turned around, the carriage had vanished.

Only a handkerchief embroidered with orchids lay on the ground.

“How could I get a good look with her inside a carriage? But that handkerchief looks like the one Li Xiuzhu bought three days ago. See that orchid? I embroidered it myself.”

Mistress Song sounded certain.

She sold embroidery for a living. Naturally, she recognized both her own work and the person who had bought it.

No one doubted her. Several contemptuous looks passed between them.

By the time those looks reached me, they had turned to pity.

Auntie Zhao sighed, took my hand, and brought me home.

Before long, Wang came home too.

The room looked as though burglars had ransacked it. I sat by the heated bed, sick with apprehension.

As soon as he came in, I panicked and scrambled to my feet.

“I… I…”

I stammered for ages without getting any further.

The room was as quiet as a graveyard.

Wang was as calm as ever. He went to the table, poured himself a bowl of tea, and drank.

I had no idea where to begin.

Tonight’s uproar had been impossible to miss. Quite apart from whatever Auntie Zhao must have told him when she went to fetch him, the gossips at the entrance to the lane would be enough to make my life miserable.

If I did not tell him the truth now, I really would have no place in this house.

“I was wrong.” I dropped willingly to my knees.

Wang glanced at me. His meaning was clear: “What did you do wrong?”

“I knew this afternoon that Mother was going to run away with Chen Qinghe. I should have told you. Then none of this…”

None of this would have happened.

Wang shook his head gently. I did not quite understand what he meant, and my panic grew.

“But I know what Mother did was wrong. She shouldn’t have run away with someone else or stolen your money. So I kept it all here.”

I held out the bundle as though presenting a treasure. Inside were all my mother’s jewelry, gold, and silver.

She had never imagined I would turn against her at the last moment. That was why I still had everything.

What mattered most in life was money and family.

Wang had no children of his own, and now my mother had run away with another man. If he could not keep the person, at least he could keep the money.

I looked at him hopefully, trying to please him. I had thought he would be delighted, but his gaze did not shift at all.

He calmly finished his bowl of coarse tea, then pulled me to my feet.

“Millet or noodle soup?” he signed.

The chickens called twice in the courtyard. A sliver of red sunlight slipped through a gap in the window.

Only then did I realize that, after all the commotion, dawn had come.

“…Noodle soup.”

Wang nodded and went into the kitchen. Soon he had made a pot of soup with flat pieces of dough.

Usually I took everything for granted, but today I was especially uneasy.

I stirred my bowl for a long time without eating much. The more I stirred, the fuller it seemed.

Wang frowned and tapped the edge of my bowl twice with his chopsticks.

“Eat.”

I hastily lowered my head and started shoveling food into my mouth. After two mouthfuls, I uncovered a poached egg at the bottom.

I could not have named the feeling. Something tightened inside me, then swelled.

A small, sudden joy rose in me.

See? Even without my mother here,

Wang would still be good to me.

I happily finished my soup.

He cleared away the bowls and chopsticks, waved to me, and made to go out.

I knew he was worried about the work waiting at his shop, so I obediently acknowledged him and tidied the boxes and baskets scattered across the floor.

Only then did I lie down to catch up on sleep.

I decided I would stop calling him Wang the Mute. From now on, I would call him Dad.

That was how it ought to be.

I planned it all in silence. What I had not expected was that, once Wang left, he would be gone for three days.