After finishing up all the arrangements for Mom’s funeral, coming back to this house, nothing seemed to have changed on the surface, and yet everything had.
By the windowsill, books were stacked neatly against the wall by the desk. A thin thread of wind drifted in through the half-open window. On the desk lay One Hundred Years of Solitude, its opening pages spread flat, the edges worn soft from constant re-reading. The wind caught at the pages, making a faint, rustling sound.
The unfinished chapters ahead would never again meet the person who used to turn them.
The book remained. She did not.
I sat in the kitchen, eating Mom’s cookies one after another, my eyes dry and aching. I’ve always liked sweet things—Mom said she’d put in extra sugar this time—but why couldn’t I taste anything at all?
There was no flavor of any kind, only the salt of my own tears. So I kept shoving them into my mouth, one after another, until my stomach, which hadn’t eaten in so long, began to cramp and twist violently, nausea rising in waves.
“Stop eating. Listen to me.” Zhou Haiyan’s voice was thick, damp with tears held back.
I couldn’t hear anything he was saying, and kept stuffing my mouth full, piece after piece.
Until he couldn’t stand to watch it anymore—he took the cookies away from me directly, dragged me forcibly into the bathroom, and forced my jaw open to make me throw up.
I struggled and cried out. “Let go of me, if I finish the cookies Mom will come back. She’ll come back and make me new ones.
“She promised me. She promised we’d go to the beach together.”
If only I’d known, I never would have said I loved her. If I’d saved that love, told her little by little over time instead, would she have not left so resolutely?
“Tang Heqing! She’s not coming back! Mom is really gone.”
He gripped my shoulders hard, his voice tight, stating the brutal truth plainly.
I stared at him, stunned, and saw Zhou Haiyan’s lips pressed tight, his face pale, the pain in his eyes no less than my own.
Of course. She had been Zhou Haiyan’s mother first, long before she became mine.
Of course this hurt him too—he just wasn’t the type to say it.
I slowly lowered my head and said quietly, “I’m sorry. I understand now.”
His eyes reddened, but he held back his tears, gently wrapping his arms around my shoulders, burying his face against the side of my neck, his shoulders trembling, a spreading warmth and dampness soaking through the fabric little by little, as if it were burning through me entirely.
He said, “Don’t be afraid. You still have me.”
Some roads in life can only be walked while crying the whole way.
After I’d eaten half a bowl of porridge, Zhou Haiyan pushed me toward my bedroom. “Get some proper rest. You haven’t slept in far too long.”
I grabbed his hand and wouldn’t let go, so he had no choice but to lie down beside me.
For a long while, all I could hear was the sound of our breathing.
He touched my hair. “Can’t sleep?”
I stared blankly up at the ceiling, tears streaming down without end, as if they’d never stop. “I’m afraid to sleep.”
I was afraid that when I woke up again, even the last person left beside me would be gone too.
He said nothing, silently reaching out to gently brush the corner of my eye, his thumb wiping the tear tracks away, little by little.
I said, “Zhou Haiyan, you’re all I have left.”
He said, “I know. I’m not going anywhere.”
Moonlight spilled in through the window; outside was the empty courtyard, the cold, quiet alley, the clock on the wall ticking steadily on, punctuated now and then by a dog’s bark, all of it wrapped in a hazy fog of loneliness too thick to see through.