chapter 4
The remark sounded strange to Bai Yuetang.
Before she could make sense of it, however, Li Shaoheng’s answer seized all her attention.
“Brother-in-law lost a common stone and gained flawless jade in its place. Naturally, you cannot understand how I feel after losing my flawless jade.”
Bai Yuetang feared their illicit feelings might be exposed, yet being desired and fought over by two outstanding men also filled her with secret sweetness and pride. Her heart hammered. Color flooded her cheeks, and she had no idea how to compose herself.
Mother was the alert one. Claiming she had private words to share, she took Bai Yuetang back to her room.
The moment Bai Yuetang entered, she saw the oil lamp burning perpetually before the household shrine. Her face went white, as though someone had thrown icy water over her.
“Are you blaming me, Mother?”
Mother hurried to explain.
“How could I blame you?
“If anyone is to blame… it is only that she was born unlucky.”
True enough.
It was actually my elder sister who was Bai Yuetang’s age.
But my sister was my parents’ first child, and they could not bear to part with her. After turning it over and over, they sent me instead.
Had my fate been even slightly kinder, I should have been the first one to crawl from Mother’s womb.
“When your father sent her away, he told me that since ancient times, men repaying great debts had sacrificed their own sons, as Cheng Ying once did. This was righteousness. We had done nothing wrong. We should think of her as having gone nobly to her death.”
Mother added a little oil to the lamp.
“I only feared she might die unwilling, refuse Meng Po’s soup, and linger instead of crossing the Bridge of Helplessness. She might become a wandering ghost and return to harm us. So I lit this lamp to guide her toward the road to the underworld.”
They said no one knew a child better than her mother. Though I had lived at Mother’s knee for only eight years, she had seen my nature clearly.
Even as a child, I was the one who always kept score.
Why did my elder sister receive new clothes while I did not?
Why was my younger brother’s New Year money several times greater than mine?
Why did the family go on spring outings without me?
Whenever I asked, Father would curse Mother for failing to discipline her daughter.
“Whose daughter is as petty and unruly as this one?”
Mother would punish me by making me stand at attention.
“Must parents ask a child’s permission for everything they do? The natural order has been turned upside down!”
But why would I submit?
The one time I rebelled most fiercely, I climbed onto the roof before the whole household and threatened to throw myself down so everyone would know how badly they treated me.
That was the only time they yielded.
Soon afterward, they switched me away.
Mr. Bai, at least, had shown me something resembling a father’s love.
But his heart still belonged to his own daughter.
I envied Bai Yuetang deeply.
She relaxed after hearing Mother’s explanation.
“You worry too much, Mother. She willingly sacrificed so much for the Li family while she was alive. Why would she trouble us after death? Yuanxi was kindhearted. She would never become a vengeful ghost.”
I nodded.
The vengeful ghost walking beneath the broad light of day was her gentlemanly husband.
The Li family’s virtuous son-in-law.
Fu Qingchuan, whom they had schemed into marrying her.
The frontier magistrates cared for money, not justice. They took the imperial salary while squeezing the people for every scrap of fat. For two children to build a business there should have been impossible.
Yet everyone who came to make trouble for us somehow ended up dead.
The constable who kicked over our stall fell into a river while drunk.
The thug who stole our silver was beaten to death on a dark road.
The merchant who spread rumors about our shop lost everything in a fire.
And I merely washed the blood from Fu Qingchuan’s hands, again and again.
It was deep into the night when the banquet ended. Bai Yuetang stayed behind with Mother.
Fu Qingchuan walked home alone.
His shadow lay black across the flagstones.
He stopped, looked up at the moon, and gave a cold smile.