Fake Divorce Turns into Murder Case (7)

Chapter 59

From the moment Yang Laowu began talking about giving their daughter to that family in town, a sharp, piercing ringing started in her ears. She could no longer hear the words that followed.

That was the child she had carried for ten months, the child she had nearly died in pain to bring into this world.

No matter how much time passed, she would always remember the feeling of peace that settled over her the first time she saw her baby face-to-face after it left her womb.

She had felt it when her first daughter was born.

She felt it again when her second daughter was born.

It was a sense of stability. In this world, there were now two people closest to her. They called her “Mama,” and she was the mother of these two little ones.

Even when they spoke of a fake divorce and a fake marriage before, according to Yang Laowu, they were still supposed to stay in this house. They weren’t actually going to split the family.

Now, he was suddenly telling her that these two children were to be given away?

“So from now on, the two of them will belong to that family? They won’t be our children anymore?”

“They’ll be going there to enjoy a better life,” Yang Laowu said, fearing Huixiang wouldn’t understand.

“Listen to me finish. These two kids are my children too. As their father, I certainly wouldn’t harm them.” He began to explain.

“You remember that distillery in town, right? Their family brews liquor. We used to go to them to buy alcohol. They aren’t short on money. Usually, they come to the countryside to collect corn. Corn isn’t worth much, but they brew it into liquor, and liquor sells for good money. Even the leftover mash is sold to the pig farms. Just think about how much money they make.”

“That family only has one son, and he’s a simpleton. Once our daughters go over there, they’ll be like their own children. When that simpleton dies, the distillery will belong to our daughters.”

Huixiang didn’t want to think about these things. Her mind was a mess. She didn’t want to give her daughters to strangers, she didn’t want to be separated from them, and she didn’t want any fake divorce or fake marriage. She just wanted to live a stable life and raise her children!

“Would such a good thing really fall into our laps? Oh, so their whole family is stupid and their money is burning a hole in their pockets, so they want to give it to our daughters?”

“It’s not that easy. They have to come and check on the two kids first. I expect they’re afraid our kids might not be bright.”

“That family is a bit strange. They only have that one son. When he was little, he fell into a vat of liquor. I heard he drank a lot of it, and he turned into a simpleton after that.”

Because these matters were so important, his eyes kept darting toward the nearby hillside while he spoke. There was a path there, the one people took to reach their house.

Now, a woman was standing on that path, waving at him. She was in her fifties and carrying a large bag of things.

She was the simpleton’s mother. She had come alone, without bringing her son.

“She’s here. Don’t start a fight today. Go and call the eldest girl back.” The little one was still sleeping. She was too young; if she saw a stranger and started crying, it wouldn’t look good.

Huixiang kept a stony face and didn’t move to call her daughter. she wanted to lash out, to scream and throw a fit like a madwoman, to fight Yang Laowu.

But an outsider had arrived.

The woman approached them with a respectable smile.

“You must be Huixiang, right?” The woman took her hand and said, “Look at your face, why do you look so haggard? Haven’t you been sleeping well? I saw you before when I came up to collect corn. Do you remember? I told Yang Laowu back then that he was a lucky man to marry such a hardworking wife.”

This woman talked a lot, acting like an old friend.

Dazed, Huixiang was pulled to the side.

The woman looked at the earthen house. Seeing no children, she asked Yang Laowu, “Where is your daughter? I brought her some snacks, the kind elementary schoolers in town like to eat.”

“She…” Yang Laowu instinctively wanted to say the child was wild and disobedient, but he caught himself immediately. This wasn’t a normal chat between neighbors. Instead, he said, “The girl found out last night that she’s going to the town’s elementary school. She went out with some people this morning to pick medicinal herbs. She said living in town costs a lot, so she wanted to earn some money herself. You see how sensible this child is? Knowing how to earn money at such a young age.”

“Go and call her back.”

Yang Laowu originally wanted Huixiang to go, but since the woman had phrased it that way, he couldn’t object. He had to go out himself.

Once he left, only Huixiang and the person who wanted her daughter remained in the room.

“You can just call me Auntie Zhang. I know you’re young, so you must have some objections in your heart.” This Eldest Aunt was a businessperson, after all; she was far more shrewd than Yang Laowu imagined.

Huixiang was already a mother of two, yet she felt like a child being manipulated by others, much like she had been at her parents’ home.

“You surely know about my family’s situation. Looking at you, I can tell you’re unwilling. This auntie has been through a lot too, and I know what you’re thinking. You’re certainly loath to part with your own children.” Seeing that Yang Laowu hadn’t returned yet, she said to Huixiang, “My old man and I are at this age now. We’ve always wanted to find someone hardworking and sensible to inherit our family’s distillery.”

Huixiang thought to herself: before the villagers kill a chicken, they scatter cornmeal¹. And this was the town; the town was full of distilleries.

“You’ll marry in with the two kids. Once you’ve married in, the children will come with you. As long as the marriage certificate is real, that’s all that matters.”

As Huixiang listened, she understood.

The woman meant for her to stay with Yang Laowu for now under the guise of a fake divorce. Once Yang Laowu was coaxed into the divorce and handed over the children, she would take the children and go directly to be the simpleton’s wife.

But what about Yang Laowu? This woman was a businessperson, not a teenager. Could she not know that Yang Laowu would surely cause a scene?

The offer sounded so good—great family conditions and a distillery. With such conditions, even if her son was a simpleton, while it might be hard to find a young maiden, it would certainly be easy to find a widowed woman from a village who had children. Huixiang understood these things all too well.

Why wouldn’t they find someone who didn’t come with a headache like Yang Laowu? Why go through all this? What were they after? Were they after her, even while she was dragging along a time bomb like Yang Laowu?

Just then, Yang Laowu returned with his eldest daughter, who carried a half-filled basket of medicinal herbs on her back.

Auntie Zhang stood up quickly and grabbed a bag from beside her. “Is this Xingxing? Come here, let your Great Auntie have a look at you.”

The eldest daughter, Xingxing, had already heard the situation from her father on the way back. Yang Laowu had said many wonderful things, but Xingxing only understood one sentence: she was going to someone else’s house.

Xingxing was young, but lately her father had been constantly nagging about having a son. Since she was a child, she had seen other girls in the village who were “excess births.”

Lately, there were many such girls. Originally, they could live in their own homes, but once the birth control inspections started, they were sent away to relatives’ houses. There were also some whose families lived in other villages who had been sent here.

As soon as she looked at the woman, she knew she was about to be sent away too.

She tried to hold it in, tried not to cry, but when the woman reached out to pat her head, she burst into tears and turned to look at Huixiang.

“Mama… I don’t want to go to someone else’s house…”

Huixiang pulled her into an embrace instantly. Her husband was still smiling, saying the child was young and didn’t know any better. Auntie Zhang didn’t get angry either, saying, “Don’t cry, don’t cry, I brought some snacks.”

Huixiang wanted a divorce, a real one, but what would she do after the divorce? Two daughters… she had no land and no house. How would she raise them?

She felt as if everything was pressing down on her head, making it hard to breathe.

How could life be so bitter?

Auntie Zhang was a businesswoman after all and could see the current state of things. She left the snacks she had brought and said, “I just stopped by on my way today. I have to go collect corn in a bit, so I can’t stay long.”

With that, she took her leave.

As soon as she left, Yang Laowu told his eldest daughter to go cry in the inner room while he continued to try and reason with Huixiang.

“Look at them. Their family is so rich, they aren’t looking to gain anything from us. Not only are they not taking our money, they said they’d give us a two thousand yuan red envelope² when the time comes. You’re being so short-sighted, you’re hurting the two children right now.”

Huixiang didn’t want to argue, but in that moment, she couldn’t help pointing out: “With conditions that good, why would it fall to us?”

“You don’t understand these things. You have a wooden head! You’re so stupid I don’t even want to talk to you. You don’t realize they’re only offering this opportunity out of respect for me.” Challenged by Huixiang, Yang Laowu suddenly lost the mood to continue talking.

The two had been husband and wife for nearly ten years and ate from the same pot every day, but in reality, they had grown up in completely opposite environments and possessed completely opposite personalities.

Yang Laowu felt this was a wonderful thing.

As for why such a good thing wouldn’t go to someone else? Why did it fall to him?

Yang Laowu simply felt it was only natural for good things to come his way. He was the youngest in his family, and the folk saying that “parents love the youngest child” wasn’t just talk. From childhood to adulthood, he always got the best of everything in his household.

Huixiang, on the other hand, never felt that anything good would ever fall to her. The last time she had fallen for that kind of talk was when the matchmaker came to propose the marriage.

They said he was honest, hardworking, and good to his family.

She tossed and turned, thinking it over. The more she thought, the more terrifying it seemed. The distillery in town was even more frightening.

Because the handful of cornmeal the other party was offering was far too large. If they weren’t about to slaughter the chicken, it should have been eaten long ago.

The fact that it was still there meant there was definitely a problem. She wasn’t a child who had grown up in a normal family; she was very sensitive to such things.

She turned around and looked at the sleeping Yang Laowu. He could still sleep. She really wanted to take a kitchen knife and slit his throat just like he did to the chickens…

She couldn’t do that. The police were in town, and the police were very powerful. She couldn’t go to prison; she still had two children.

She thought about it over and over, and every path seemed like a dead end. Finally, she realized that the plan Yang Laowu had mentioned at the very beginning-the fake marriage to his third brother-was actually the better choice among these options.

The next day, just as Yang Laowu was about to bring up the distillery again, Huixiang spoke: “I won’t go to the town. Go talk to your third brother-“

“Third brother? Have you gone crazy? The distillery has such good conditions.”

Huixiang only felt that he wanted to sell his wife and children for a good price. He would sell them off, take the benefits, and never stop to think about how the people who paid for them would ensure they didn’t lose money on the investment.

“I’ll divorce you first, and I’ll keep the kids. Then I’ll have a fake marriage with your third brother to get the kids’ Hukou registered under his name. Then I’ll divorce him and remarry you. When we have another child, it will be under our own names, and the two daughters can stay raised by our side.”

Huixiang had already made up her mind on how to handle it.

Translator’s Notes