Fake Divorce Turns into Murder Case (12)

Chapter 64

Yang Laosan needed a channel to learn about sleeping pills. After all, this was a medication that even barefoot doctors wouldn’t typically stock.

The town’s pharmacies and health clinics didn’t sell sleeping pills more than a few times a year.

Where exactly did Yang Laosan hear about them?

When Yun Song conducted her follow-up visits, she asked other villagers about the sleeping pills in addition to inquiring about the Yang family.

“One more thing, do you know what sleeping pills are?”

Almost everyone shook their heads. “What’s that?”

Yun Song explained, “It’s a medicine to help people fall asleep. Some people take it when they can’t sleep.”

“There’s actually a medicine for that in this world? You have to take medicine just because you can’t sleep?” Everyone found it quite astonishing.

For the villagers, sleeping was a natural occurrence. Especially after a full day of farm work in the mountains, there were only times when they were so tired they couldn’t keep their eyes open; there was never a time when they couldn’t sleep.

No one else in the village knew about sleeping pills. Although the barefoot doctor knew of them, he had never mentioned them to anyone in his daily life.

That was strange. Chang Fang had said that Yang Laosan walked directly into the pharmacy and asked for sleeping pills by name. Where had he heard about them?

That night, Yun Song did not return to the town school to sleep. Instead, she stayed overnight at Old Lady Zhang’s house in the village.

The elderly couple welcomed Yun Song warmly and prepared their daughter’s room for her. Yun Song didn’t want to go to bed too early, so she sat and chatted with them.

To be more precise, she listened to the two elders talk about the past. They spoke of their two children, saying their eldest son had gone to the city for work and describing how hard their daughter in Yulan Town worked. They mentioned their eldest grandson was very ambitious and had excellent grades; in two years, they planned to have him come to Tonglin Town for junior high school.

“Yulan Town has a junior high, but it can’t compare to the one here in Tonglin Town. This year, eight students from Tonglin’s junior high got into Pingcheng No. 1 High School, while Yulan only had one. I heard students can board at the school here. If he comes, we’ll be closer to him and can bring him food whenever we want. We just don’t know if the boarding conditions are any good.”

Listening to them, Yun Song could imagine how the two elders were constantly looking into schools for their daughter’s sake, hoping for a better future for their grandchild.

Since Yun Song lived in the junior high dormitory herself, she knew the situation well. She said, “The dormitory conditions at Tonglin Junior High are decent. Most students live on campus. Usually, they steam their own rice¹, and the school cafeteria provides side dishes. You can get a vegetable dish and a soup for about fifty cents. Meat dishes are a bit more expensive. The teachers usually eat at the cafeteria too.”

Hearing this, the old couple grew even happier, already planning to go to Yulan Town to tell their daughter the news.

The three of them chatted about school until their foot-soaking water turned cold. Only then did they quickly tidy up and prepare for bed.

Before entering her room, Yun Song suddenly remembered she hadn’t asked the couple about the sleeping pills. She spoke up: “By the way, do either of you know about sleeping pills?”

“Officer, are you having trouble sleeping?” the old woman asked naturally.

“You know about sleeping pills?” Even though the name was self-explanatory, someone who had never heard of them wouldn’t immediately associate them with sleep.

“Sure we do. It’s the medicine you take when you can’t sleep.”

“How did you find out about them?”

“When my son and daughter-in-law came to stay during the New Year, my daughter-in-law had to take sleeping pills to fall asleep. That medicine is quite scary. Once she was out, I couldn’t wake her no matter how much I called. It wasn’t until the next day that she told me it was because of that medicine.”

“Did you mention this to anyone else?”

“Why would I tell anyone about… that?”

The old man recalled the event. “When you two were talking about it under the eaves back then, I think Yang Laosan happened to be passing by the pigsty carrying a load of firewood.”

Yun Song surmised that he must have overheard them and learned about the drug then.

Huixiang’s face appeared in Yun Song’s mind again.

When she had interacted with Huixiang, she could still sense that the woman was hiding something. Huixiang was carrying too much weight on her shoulders; she looked as if she were on the verge of suffocating.

Yun Song thought she needed to find a way to give Huixiang some room to breathe. Perhaps the breakthrough for this case lay with her.

After Huixiang parted ways with the police, she stood in place for a long time. She didn’t know if the police suspected her of anything. Maybe they didn’t, or maybe they did.

The thought kept circling in her mind, to the point that she forgot she was supposed to go cut sweet potato vines.

“Huixiang!”

She turned around. Her eldest sister-in-law was coming down the slope.

In the past, both the eldest and second sisters-in-law had called her “Fifth Brother’s Wife.” After the whole mess with the fake divorce and fake marriage, both had tacitly started calling her by her name.

“What are you thinking about? The wind is so strong, aren’t you afraid of catching a cold?”

Huixiang replied, “It’s nothing. I was just wondering if it’s going to rain.”

The sister-in-law said, “Yeah, looking at the sky, it’s likely to rain. If it rains, the funeral will be hard to manage.”

Only then did Huixiang remember there was still Yang Laosan’s funeral to handle. She had originally thought that if it was going to rain, she needed to go retrieve the dried radish strips hanging on the trees on the back mountain.

In Tonglin Town, people liked to cut radishes with decorative patterns and hang them on trees to dry.

As the sister-in-law spoke, she walked closer. She saw that Huixiang’s eyes were red and her eyelids were swollen; she had clearly been crying.

Looking at Huixiang’s increasingly thin face, the sister-in-law knew that although the family hadn’t said it outright, they still blamed Huixiang for not producing a son. Now that Yang Laosan was dead, Huixiang’s life in the Yang family was likely to become even more difficult.

The sister-in-law wanted to say something, but she didn’t know what.

Huixiang hadn’t intended to chat with her anyway. After their brief exchange, Huixiang headed toward the sweet potato field.

Her family’s sweet potato plot was on the hillside. The vines grew thick and long, covering the ground in a dense layer. She took her sickle and began to cut them.

The plot below belonged to someone else. Usually, when she worked in the upper field, she didn’t like to talk to anyone even if there were people in the lower field.

She had lived this way in her own village as well. Once she came into contact with people, her mind would spiral out of control, constantly imagining how they were judging her.

Back when she was a young girl in her own village, it was like this, and now that she had a family of her own, it was happening all over again…

Huixiang crouched down, her mind drifting to the past as she cut sweet potato vines.

What was she going to do now?

Yang Laosan was dead. The Yang family hadn’t said anything yet, but Huixiang knew it was only because the police were still there. She had asked around and learned that the officers were staying in the village for the time being. Even if the Yang family were fools, they wouldn’t try anything against her right now.

But what about after the police left?

Yang Laowu had always wanted a son. Now that Laosan was dead, their previous plan had fallen through.

Would Yang Laowu just let it go?

Huixiang knew his temperament well. He wouldn’t let it go. He would keep looking for someone, looking for another person to enter a fake marriage so they could bear him a son.

And then… the thing she feared most surfaced in her mind. The police were investigating how Yang Laosan had died.

She had already spoken with the police, and she was terrified. She felt as though they would figure it out very soon.

What would happen once they found out?

The more she thought, the more frightened she became.

Inside her thin, gaunt body, these worries tugged at her one after another, making her nerves throb with pain.

She couldn’t think about it anymore. Cut the vines. Just cut the vines. She forced herself to stop thinking and focused on swinging the sickle, stroke after stroke.

Soon, the sweet potato vines were piled up. She finished her work and carried them on her back toward home.

At the front door, her eldest daughter had the younger one strapped to her back. She must have tied the sling herself; it wasn’t spread out properly, just wrapped simply around them.

The younger daughter was crying on her sister’s back. The eldest daughter acted like a little adult, bouncing slightly to soothe her sister.

“Don’t be hungry, don’t be hungry. Mommy will be back in a bit.”

“Be a good girl, little sister. Be a good girl.”

Huixiang stood still. On her back were layers of sweet potato vines; in her heart were Yang Laosan’s death and the son Yang Laowu wanted so badly.

But at this moment, as she looked at her two daughters, those things didn’t seem quite so terrifying.

Standing there, she felt as if she could see the entire lives of her two daughters laid out before her.

A father who only cared about having a son, and a mother who sighed from morning to night, unable to make a single decision for herself.

The two of them would grow up slowly, and then, because of their parents’ bad reputation, they wouldn’t be able to marry into good families. They would be forced to marry into some other town.

Because they would be far away, without friends or relatives, they would be alone and helpless, unable to stand up for themselves at all.

Their whole lives would be like that. She felt as if she were seeing her daughters’ futures, and the thought made it hard to breathe.

That night, Huixiang’s chest ached. She tossed and turned, unable to sleep, feeling as if a fire were burning in her heart.

Yang Laowu was beside her, speaking with his usual sarcasm. “My third brother is dead. Who are you putting on this act for? Why don’t you just die with him and be a couple in the underworld?”

Hearing this, the pain in Huixiang’s chest intensified.

Why didn’t Yang Laowu just die along with Yang Laosan?

But as she thought it over, she realized that even with Yang Laosan dead, it didn’t solve anything.

With him gone, what would happen to her and the two children? Would the Yang family give her the land and the house?

No, they wouldn’t.

So where would she go to raise two children? Back to her parents? They wouldn’t take her in either.

She stopped thinking about how to stay with the Yang family. Instead, her mind began to search for anywhere that might offer them a place to belong.

The next day, Yun Song came over to inform the Yang family that the autopsy was finished. They could soon reclaim Yang Laosan’s body and lay him to rest.

As soon as she arrived, she sensed something was wrong.

Huixiang was gone.

When Yang Laowu woke up early that morning, he didn’t see Huixiang and assumed she had gone to make breakfast.

There was no one in the kitchen.

The two daughters were gone as well. Only then did Yang Laowu go back into the room. One look told him everything: their clothes were gone.

Huixiang had run away?

How did she dare!

When Yun Song learned of the situation, she assumed Huixiang had returned to her parents’ home.

However, Old Lady Yuan from the Reservoir was very worried. “I saw Huixiang by the Reservoir at night before,” she said.

She didn’t spell it out, but her meaning was clear.

When Old Lady Yuan was young, it wasn’t unheard of for desperate women to take their children and throw themselves into the water.

Yun Song shook her head. “I heard from the Yang family that she took her clothes and shoes with her.”

It didn’t look like someone seeking death.

Translator’s Notes