But in Xu Huiqing’s heart, time had long since passed, so long that her parents were already old and frail, so long that she had long since become their support, rather than them still being hers.
She was long accustomed to making decisions on her own.
The day after Xu Huiqing left, Fifth Sister Zhao dragged Fifth Brother-in-law Zhao back to the Zhao house. With mixed feelings of complexity and relief, she asked Eldest Sister Zhao, “Did she really leave?”
Eldest Sister Zhao had never imagined that last night her husband had smashed the lock on their parents’ room door, and today Fifth Sister Zhao would show up. She was nervous to death.
She wasn’t afraid of Second Sister Zhao, Third Sister Zhao, or Fourth Sister Zhao. She was only afraid of this Fifth Sister Zhao, the one who had taken the Zhao family’s son.
Her mouth said: “Would she have the face to stay? Look what she’s done to our family! She’s the one who got Dad killed! I haven’t even settled accounts with her yet!”
But inside, she was terrified that Fifth Sister Zhao would go to the back courtyard and rummage through Old Zhao and Old Lady Zhao’s room.
The Zhao family ran an electronics shop, with a considerable monthly cash flow. In this era, local bankbooks couldn’t be used to withdraw money in other cities, so when Old Zhao went out to restock, he always carried cash. The family habitually kept large amounts of cash at home; the bankbook, on the other hand, didn’t have much money on it.
Besides the stack of money Xu Huiqing had taken, there was also some loose change in the drawer for daily use. From this loose change, Xu Huiqing had only taken the large bills of fifty and one hundred. From the tens and twenties, she had taken only a small portion.
But even that small portion was a huge sum of money to Eldest Brother-in-law Zhao, who usually never had more than a few dozen to a hundred yuan on him. When he saw so much money in the drawer, his eyes lit up. He had scooped up all the money from the drawer and gone off to gamble.
When Fifth Sister Zhao heard that Xu Huiqing was gone, she felt relieved. Now she had the mind to inspect the Zhao house. That’s when she saw the smashed lock on Old Zhao and Old Lady Zhao’s room door.
She immediately pulled Eldest Sister Zhao over and asked, “What’s with the broken lock on Mom and Dad’s room door?”
Eldest Sister Zhao’s gaze darted away, and she tried to push the blame onto Xu Huiqing. “How would I know? The lock was like this when I came over. It must have been Xu Huiqing! Before leaving, wouldn’t she have cleaned out all the money from the house?”
But Fifth Sister Zhao wasn’t so easily fooled: “Do I look like an idiot? The lock on Mom and Dad’s room was perfectly fine when I left. She didn’t smash the lock for all those days, and you were here watching the house yesterday. You expect me to believe you let her smash the lock on Mom and Dad’s room right under your nose?”
Eldest Sister Zhao shrank back as she was yelled at: “How would I know?”
Fifth Sister Zhao pointed at Eldest Sister Zhao’s nose and said, “You’d better not have taken anything. If I find out you stole anything from this house, just wait until Zongbao gets out and deals with you!”
Having been raised since childhood with the family’s repressive education of “little brother comes first,” Eldest Sister Zhao reflexively panicked. She directly whipped out Old Zhao’s bankbook and thrust it at Fifth Sister Zhao: “Who took Mom and Dad’s money? The old man kept it all in the bankbook!”
Fifth Sister Zhao didn’t believe it: “What about the household cash? With the family selling televisions, I don’t believe there’s no cash in the house!”
Eldest Sister Zhao didn’t know how much cash the Zhao family had either. Judging others by her own standards, someone who usually never had more than a few dozen yuan on her, she assumed the Zhao family’s cash was really just what was in that drawer. Her eyes immediately darted away: “I don’t know! Don’t ask me! I wasn’t the one who pried open the door!”
“Yesterday, only you and your husband were here. If you didn’t pry it, then your husband did!”
Exposed by Fifth Sister Zhao and feeling guilty, Eldest Sister Zhao put her hands on her hips and said with false bravado, “At worst, you can take some of the remaining money from the TV sales too. I just won’t tell Zongbao about it!”
Fifth Sister Zhao sneered coldly: “You won’t tell Zongbao? I’ll tell him myself! Otherwise, when Zongbao gets out, he’ll think I took it!”
Exactly how much property the Zhao family had, the Zhao sisters didn’t know. But they believed their brother Zhao Zongbao definitely knew.
Zhao Zongbao… he actually didn’t know!
He only knew something was buried under the cypress tree in the courtyard. Besides what was buried under the tree, the old man also had a wooden box. Before the Zhao family bought the storefront, they had sold off quite a few things. The few remaining items weren’t buried under the tree. Instead, as the Revolutionary Committee collapsed and time passed, with fewer and fewer people knowing about the past, Old Zhao had simply kept them in the house. That was the box Xu Huiqing had taken.
As for exactly how much money the family had, Zhao Zongbao knew it certainly wasn’t a small amount. After all, there were so many televisions sitting right there. Every restocking trip required carrying cash for payment. Just the televisions and radios alone were worth twenty or thirty thousand, not to mention what they’d earned over the years.
The problem was, he and Father Zhao were imprisoned separately. Before his death, Father Zhao hadn’t been able to see Zhao Zongbao’s face, and not trusting his daughters, he hadn’t told them exactly how much money the family had. He had taken the truth of the Zhao family’s exact wealth with him to the execution ground.
Mother Zhao knew a bit, but her knowledge was also limited. She knew there was a bankbook, knew there was cash, knew where these things were. But Old Zhao never let her handle this money. She had never even touched it and didn’t know the specific amounts.
Old Zhao thought that once Old Lady Zhao got out, she would surely tell Zhao Zongbao about these things.
Old Zhao, Old Lady Zhao, and Zhao Zongbao never once imagined that the Zhao sisters would dare take the Zhao family’s money, would dare take what belonged to Zhao Zongbao.
At this moment, Zhao Zongbao was still in prison, waiting for Xu Huiqing to come. He never expected that after waiting and waiting, instead of Xu Huiqing, Fifth Sister Zhao came to tell him that Eldest Sister Zhao and Eldest Brother-in-law Zhao had pried open their parents’ door!
When she arrived at the train station in the Neighboring City, Xu Huiqing felt a bit lost. Standing in the station’s ticket hall, she didn’t know where to go for a moment.
In her previous life, Zhao Zongbao had developed his businesses right in the local area. First, he opened dance halls, discos, and roller skating rinks. Later, when internet cafes became popular, he opened those too.
Because of the wealth the Zhao family had accumulated during those chaotic years, their capital naturally put them a step ahead of others. Plus, Father Zhao and Zhao Zongbao were ruthless and underhanded. Father and son, one in the entertainment industry, the other in electronics distribution, expanded from the township level to Wu City County and the Neighboring City. Later, they even got into real estate development with others. Although they always operated in what others called small, backwater places, they developed into something like local tyrants.
Apart from traveling and visiting Xiaoxi in the city where she attended university, Xu Huiqing had never left the Neighboring City in her entire previous life. She had never stayed in a developed, major city.
Naturally, she couldn’t stay in the Neighboring City, the place she was most familiar with from her past life. The Neighboring City was too close to Water Wharf Town, so close it was as if she hadn’t really left the Zhao family at all, and the Zhao family could find her at any time.
She needed to go somewhere beyond the Zhao family’s reach.
She stood before the departure board listing trains to various cities.
The board only showed trains heading south, none to more distant places. To go farther, she would first need to take a train to a larger city and transfer.
Her first thought, actually, was to go to Z City.
One of her classmates had gone to develop her career in the Pearl River Delta cities. She remembered hearing her mention that just in recent years, the shops under the Sea Garden at Gongbei Port in Z City, after a fire, couldn’t be sold even for fifty thousand each. Later, during the boom period, a single shop was worth five million.
But she couldn’t remember exactly which year it was. She only recalled it should be around the turn of the century.
Soon, though, she came back to her senses. She wasn’t even sure if she had fifty thousand yuan in her bag.
She hadn’t taken everything buried behind the Martyrs’ Tomb. She had only taken two silver dollars, one ancient coin, and the cash. For one thing, this era was full of pickpockets. Traveling alone with a child, her first priority was safety. If she put all her eggs in one basket and an accident happened on the road, her plan to quickly buy a house first and then transfer their household registration would fall through.
As for taking the cash, she was worried rain might seep into the bundle and soak all the paper money. Besides, if she didn’t use the cash soon, it would depreciate severely in another year or two.
As for the silver dollars and ancient coin, she first needed to determine their value before making further plans.
This money was enough for her to temporarily settle down in a city.
However, she quickly dismissed the idea of going to a Pearl River Delta city.
Her impression of the outside world was that housing prices in places like Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou were sky-high. In the eighties and nineties, the City of Rams and Roc City were said to have gold everywhere, where making money was as easy as picking it up off the ground. But along with that came countless dangers.
Let alone a young woman with a three-year-old child, even at forty, Xu Huiqing wouldn’t dare venture alone to Roc City or the City of Rams to make a living in this chaotic era.
She shifted Xiaoxi to her other arm and continued looking up at the departure board.
Someone saw her alone with a child and came over to tug at her: “Little sister, where are you going? Are you alone? Your husband isn’t with you? Have you bought a ticket yet? If not, come with me. I have tickets!” As he spoke, he reached out to grab her arm.
Xu Huiqing stumbled backward, pulling away. Not daring to speak to the stranger, she directly carried Xiaoxi and grabbed her woven bag, running toward the railway staff. The person tugging at her saw her heading for the railway workers and quickly fled as well.
With no particular destination, she simply chose H City—neither very close nor very far. Whatever the place was like, she decided to just go there first.
The green train chugged along with a rhythmic “clackety-clack.” Trees along the tracks rapidly receded outside the window.
Xiaoxi slept soundly in her arms. Xu Huiqing sat alone, gazing out the window.
In the end, she still hadn’t chosen to take Zhao Bei with her.
Whether from an emotional perspective or a practical one, she couldn’t take him right now.
Perhaps the bonds between people are fated. Between her and Zhao Bei, the bond was simply shallow.
She knew, actually, that as a boy, he wouldn’t suffer in the Zhao family. Given the Zhao family’s extreme son preference, Zhao Bei’s male gender would naturally give him every advantage in that household. It was just that this life was different from the last. Old Zhao had been executed, Old Lady Zhao was in prison. Without them protecting him, she didn’t know exactly how Zhao Bei would grow up. Would it still be like the previous life, indoctrinated by the Zhao family from childhood: “Your mother only likes your sister, not you!”
“Your mother only wants your sister, not you!”
“Your mother doesn’t want you, so you shouldn’t want her either!”
“Bad Mama! Hit Mama!”
This life, with her not by his side, presumably no one would teach him to ‘hit Mama’ anymore, right?