Yu Bingliang was utterly shocked, his gaze alternately resting on Huang Xue Mei and then on Lu Lei.
"What are you talking about?" Yu Bingliang asked Lu Lei, "Leilei, did your Aunt Huang ever go to Zhongnan County?"
Huang Xue Mei was somewhat panicked; she thought her son had grown up and she was no longer afraid of this man, but in the end she found she still was.
The thing she had done...
She always considered herself guiltless, except for just one guilty act.
"Do you really want to hear?" Lu Lei said with a cold laugh.
Huang Xue Mei opened her mouth, wanting to stop her but found she couldn’t make a sound.
"Leilei, you tell me." In Yu Bingliang’s mind, Huang Xue Mei and Lu Xiao should not have known of each other’s existence.
In Huang Xue Mei’s eyes, he would be a successful Major General husband, a reliable head of the family; in Lu Xiao’s eyes, he was a good husband who was always traveling on business for his wife and child, rarely home, but gentle and caring.
That was the only way he had imagined that would not hurt either woman. Huang Xue Mei had already borne him a son; he could neither divorce her nor did he want to. As for Lu Xiao... he had fallen for her at first sight, not without struggle and hesitation, but he still managed to get his in-laws to marry her to him. She was the woman he loved, even if she had been cold and indifferent to him over the years, he couldn’t let her go.
But he never understood how his actions had suddenly been exposed.
There was such a distance, the two women and the people around them had no connections.
"I don’t know how Mom found out about Aunt Huang, you’ll have to ask her yourself," Lu Lei said with malicious intent, glancing at Huang Xue Mei, then continued to Yu Bingliang, "What I know are just superficial details gathered from inquiries with the local elders."
"I’m only asking you," she said firmly to Yu Bingliang, "do you know how Mom got those overlapping scars on her wrists? Do you know how she got her bronchial issue? Do you know where the scar on her forehead that she covers with her bangs came from? Do you know where her constant headaches come from? And the stomach cramps, painful menstruation, rheumatism, did you ever consider how she got those ailments?"
Not just Yu Bingliang, even Huang Xue Mei looked shocked, her gaze faintly filled with fear and dread.
Lu Lei suddenly wanted to laugh, seeing these two people—it was they who had ruined her mother’s life, causing her to suffer in pain every day.
"Those scars, they came from Mom cutting her wrists over and again; because it happened so many times, the wounds overlapped, and they’re too numerous to count, but at least more than twenty times."
"Mom’s bronchial issue came from the sequelae of jumping into the river repeatedly."
"The scar on her forehead, she got it by hitting a stove while pretending to be insane."
"The reason she always had headaches was because she was dragged out for a public denunciation before she had fully recovered from childbirth, resulting in sequelae from the exposure."
"The stomach cramps came from repeated fasting, her painful menstruation and rheumatism from years of suffering."
Lu Lei’s every sentence was heavier than the last, and Yu Bingliang, along with Huang Xue Mei’s faces, grew paler with each word.
"That’s impossible, why would Ah Xiao try to kill herself, why would she pretend to be insane?" Yu Bingliang said, bewildered.
"If she didn’t try to kill herself and pretend to be insane, do you think we three, mother and daughters, could still appear before you?" Lu Lei sneered, "Could we just wait for the Red Guards to come humiliate us, let us be ’rightfully’ denounced to death?"
"Even so, Mom nearly lost her life several times."
Huang Xue Mei trembled, seeming to realize just what her previous exposure had caused.
Yu Bingliang, unable to hold back tears, asked hoarsely, "It’s impossible, Ah Xiao never told me any of this. Why didn’t she tell me?"
"Tell you, what good would telling you do?" Lu Lei said mockingly, "Back then you weren’t there to save Mom, now what good are your pretty words?"
Back then, to avoid being implicated in the Cultural Revolution, this man was rarely seen for years.
Yu Bingliang went stiff upon hearing this, wanting to speak but finding he didn’t know what to say.
Lu Lei appraised him, somewhat understanding why her mother had never grilled this man with her grievances.
First, because of her pride; she was always strong-willed, how could she willingly expose her own misery to him; second... because this man was simply unreliable.