After the rain had continued to pour for several more weeks, there finally came a time when the sky remained clear for several days in a row.
Xiaotu happily dragged Brother Orange Juice outside to finally be able to have some fun. After coming back to eat dinner and take a shower, she collapsed on the bed from exhaustion.
She didn’t know how long she’d slept, but some time later she woke up feeling thirsty. She got up to get some water to drink.
She hopped off the bed and glanced around the room.
Cheng Zhiyan wasn’t in the room, and the lamp on the night table was dimly lit. The water pitcher was completely empty; it didn’t have a single drop of water in it.
Xiaotu picked up her cup, rubbed her eyes, and pushed open the bedroom door to walk out.
The hallway outside the bedroom was pitch-dark, and the only source of light came from the dim wall lamp hanging in the hall.
Xiaotu could vaguely overhear the sound of a conversation happening downstairs. The voice she heard seemed to belong to her mother.
Her little bare feet started down the stairs, gleaming with a pinkish luster in the faint light. Because she was barefooted, she didn’t make a sound as she descended the stairs.
Yet halfway down the stairs, Xiaotu suddenly stopped dead in her tracks.
Through the stairway’s handrails, she could see that her mother appeared to be wiping away tears as she sat on the couch.
Cheng Zhiyan’s mother sat beside her with one arm tightly wrapped around her, and she appeared to be consoling her.
Cheng Zhiyan was sitting on her other side with a grave expression, one that she’d never seen on his face before.
For some inexplicable reason, Xiaotu didn’t continue going down the stairs. In her nightgown and with her cup in her hand, Xiaotu silently squatted down by the stairway’s handrail, and her large eyes quietly gazed at her mother downstairs.
“Zhou LIng, you must mourn and then move on…ah…this matter…” Zhou Yue sighed, as if she didn’t know what to say next.
“Yes…” Xiaotu’s mother wiped away the tears from her face as she nodded with great difficulty. “I know…I understand common sense…but whenever I think about how he’d promised that he would come back this summer, and now he’ll never return…my heart feels…”
She stopped speaking and kept sobbing. She couldn’t even speak anymore.
Cheng Zhiyan’s mother sighed heavily again.
“You tell me, how should I break the news to Xiaotu? How should I tell her that your father is dead. He won’t ever come back to play with you again, or take you to school, or tell you bedtime stories ever again…” Xiaotu’s mother was sobbing so hysterically she could hardly breathe. “She’s still so young, only four years old. I should be the only one to bear the burden of this kind of thing. Why does Xiaotu have to suffer from this kind of thing?”
“Don’t cry, don’t cry…” Zhou Yue couldn’t help shedding tears as well, and as she gently patted Zhou Ling on the shoulder, she said in a whisper, “Xiaotu is still so young, maybe you shouldn’t tell her this kind of thing at the moment. You maybe should wait and tell her after she grows a little older. Perhaps she’ll find it a bit easier to handle then…”
“This poor child…from the very first day of summer break she has been asking me every day when her father was going to return…” Zhou Ling snuffled and kept using up the tissues in her hand, one by one. “She’s been looking forward to her father sending her off on the first day of school when school starts in September…I…”
Xiaotu squatted silently on the stairs, her chubby little hands tightly clenched around the cup in her hands.
“Daddy died…? He won’t ever return?”