“At the end of June, she seemed to have received a telegram not long after she was out of postpartum confinement,” Mayor Zhai said softly. “Because I heard her say that her husband had died, I didn’t want to ask too much about the specifics. She didn’t want to say anything anyway. So when she said she was leaving, I agreed.”
Xie Xuning nodded.
He turned around and asked Grandmother.
“Mom, did Linlang ever come back after leaving at the end of June?”
“She didn’t return.”
Grandmother’s voice was particularly hoarse. She had never thought that in a small and peaceful town, so many people had vicious thoughts.
At the end of June in 1988, after Ye Linlang received a telegram, she packed up her things and left Jiameng Town.
After that, she never came back.
“Later, Lu Jijun said once that he wanted to pick up Tianxin. I refused. I didn’t let her go with him. That day, he took me and Tianxin to the city and bought clothes for Tianxin.”
More than 10 years had passed by, yet every time she spoke about it, a wound in her heart seemed to be reopened.
The old wound hadn’t healed yet, and now there were new ones.
“Later, the townspeople said that Linlang was gone and asked me to claim the corpse. I took Tianxin with me at the time, thinking that if that was really Linlang, no matter what, I had to let Tianxin see her mother for the last time. If I had known… If I had known that you would come, I wouldn’t have let those people talk nonsense, and I wouldn’t have left…”
The mistakes those people committed intentionally or unintentionally caused the three of them to lose precious time together.
“Alright, Grandmother, it’s okay. There has been no news about my mother. I think that no news is the best news. She must be living in a certain corner of the world. Maybe, one day, she will come back.”
Ye Tianxin comforted her grandmother, but she couldn’t comfort Xie Xuning.
She knew that Xie Xuning was ambivalent.
But what could she say?
“Mom, Tianxin, I’ll go out and make a phone call.”
Xie Xuning couldn’t help it. He had to ask Qie Wang again.
“Alright.”
Xie Xuning walked to the yard. He stood under the old pear tree and stretched out his hand to touch its hanging branch. There were pears among the green leaves above his head, symbolizing the joy of harvest.
Xie Xuning clutched his chest while gasping for breath. A sensation of pain, like a tide, almost overwhelmed him.
His Linlang, his good Linlang, why were their fates star-crossed?
Could he and Linlang meet again in this lifetime?
“Qie Wang, I’m in Jiameng Town now.”
Xie Xuning’s voice had a rare calmness to it.
Qie Wang sensed that something was wrong from Xie Xuning’s voice.
“When are you coming back?”
“Linlang isn’t dead. She must be alive.”
Qie Wang sighed and said, “Xuning, I am going to do a DNA test for you again. This time, I am going to do it myself. As soon as you get back, we’ll do it again.”
“No, there’s no need to do it,” Xie Xuning refused.
Ye Tianxin was his daughter. She must be his daughter.
His intuition wasn’t wrong about this.
As for the DNA test, he didn’t want to do it anymore. He didn’t want to know.
From the day she was born, Ye Tianxin was his daughter.
“Xie Xuning, don’t be stubborn. You are from the Xie family. Just because you don’t want a DNA test, it doesn’t mean that others won’t push for it.”