January 25, 1998 (December 27), this was her last day of setting up her stall; the 28th was the New Year, so she closed up shop on the 25th and spent the remaining days organizing her family’s New Year’s Eve dinner.
Excluding the ten thousand yuan she lent to ng Xiuying and her regular expenses, her savings had reached sixty thousand yuan. She still had five thousand yuan for turnover that she hadn’t deposited, and she had saved the rest of her money in the bank. She didn’t play the stock market, so she made no investnts.
Since ng Xiuying divorced Liu Xueliang, the Liu Family had moved out of the neighborhood. Liu Xueliang was sentenced to a year, Mrs. Liu was detained for a week before being released, and upon her release, her younger son’s whereabouts were unknown and her daughter-in-law had also divorced her son, leaving her essentially holess.
With no house in the city and no money to rent one, she eventually went back to her rural hotown.
Just before the New Year, she ca looking for her, wanting to get ng Xiuying’s contact information from her, but Gong Mingxia refused her with the pretext of "not knowing."
Then Mrs. Liu stood before her, lanting her poverty and how she couldn’t survive without any inco, neither of her sons were around, and it was all because she had instigated it. She demanded that Gong Mingxia compensate her with money. Gong Mingxia wouldn’t indulge her and simply asked her with a smile,
"Are you planning to keep making a scene here, or are you waiting for the police to co? I’ve already asked Aunt Wang downstairs to call the police for . This is disturbing the peace, and I can sue you for it."
ntioning another possible detention, the old lady got scared, cursed with a mouth full of expletives, and left.
Gong Mingxia naturally spared no effort to exaggerate the story when she related it to ng Xiuying and instructed her, "Make sure you never get in touch with Liu Xueliang."
ng Xiuying’s reply was quite interesting too, "In case that Liu Xueliang finds my parents after he gets out, they have already sold the old house and are now living with my brother and sister-in-law, helping with the grandson. So don’t worry, even if he gets out, he won’t know where my family is. Beijing is so big; he’d be lucky to find us. And when I write my books, I’ll make sure not to show my face—absolutely no face-reveals—to give this scum no chances to blackmail !"
Seeing how quickly ng Xiuying had grown in such a short ti made Gong Mingxia truly happy for her.
On The Eighth Day of the Lunar New Year, Gong Mingxia reopened for business, and Xiao Xiao’s training classes resud along with the school. So when she was not at ho, Xiao Xiao would go downstairs to play with Cao Yang. Cao Yang had a lot of howork and tasks to complete. Xiao Xiao would sit quietly by his side and draw, keeping him company, while the old lady lay on the sofa napping peacefully, watching the two children sit in the living room and study quietly, which was incredibly reassuring.
Cao Yang probably enjoyed this free and unencumbered atmosphere and had already promised the old lady he wouldn’t go to his mother’s anymore, opting to co back here on the weekends.
She could feel Cao Yang’s caution and sense of loss. His mother had given birth to a new child, and in that ho, he was superfluous. The paternal grandparents looked at him through tinted lenses; if it weren’t for his father regularly sending money to his mother, he would likely have been kicked out long ago.
Even with his mother, Cao Yang felt it wasn’t the sa as before. Instead of staying in that ho, which felt like sitting on pins and needles, he preferred to live comfortably with his grandma.
Cao Yang was very independent and adept at organizing his ti. After finishing his daily howork and tasks, he would take Xiao Xiao out to play. Sotis the old lady accompanied them, and other tis she would chat with her peers in the neighborhood. Now that the two families helped and supported each other, even the children had started calling her "Auntie."
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