“But because of what you said about my womb not trying hard enough.”
Liu Xiulan sat in her chair, her lips trembling.
Her mouth opened, then closed.
Closed, then opened again.
Finally, she gritted her teeth and forced out a sentence:
“Su Tang, don’t push your luck…”
“Bang!”
The sound didn’t come from me.
It was Chen Beicheng.
He slammed his hand hard against the table, making the dishes rattle.
“Mom! Do you have any shame left?”
This was the first time since they had gotten married that Chen Beicheng had shouted at his mother.
The entire family froze.
Liu Xiulan stared at him in shock.
So did I.
He stood there, his chest heaving violently.
“Su Tang has been married to me for three years. She’s endured so much humiliation, and it’s not as if I didn’t know.”
“With the smoked meat, Mom secretly took it away, and I didn’t stop you. That was my fault.”
“The three thousand yuan I hid from her every month was also my fault.”
“But Mom…”
He pointed at Liu Xiulan, his voice turning hoarse.
“You said her womb wasn’t trying hard enough?”
“Do you know how much medicine she took trying to get pregnant?”
“How many times she went to the hospital?”
“Do you know that once, after she had an ovulation-induction injection, she was in so much pain that she sat in the bathroom with her face deathly pale?”
“You don’t know anything!”
“All you know is your Nanxuan! Your grandchildren! Your smoked meat!”
“Have you ever, even once, truly treated her as your daughter-in-law?”
Chen Beicheng’s eyes reddened.
A man over six feet tall stood there, his nose bridge tense, his Adam’s apple moving up and down several times.
He didn’t cry.
But he was clearly struggling to hold it back.
The living room fell silent for a long time.
The two children stopped crying too.
The older one hid behind Chen Nanxuan.
The younger one was held in Zhang Ying’s arms, staring wide-eyed at everything without understanding what was happening.
Finally, Liu Xiulan’s lips stopped trembling.
Her whole body seemed to lose its strength as she leaned back against the chair.
After a long while, she finally spoke.
Her voice was so quiet that I could barely hear it.
“…I was wrong.”
Three words.
Hearing them come from her mouth, I knew how difficult they must have been for her to say.
But it still wasn’t enough.
“Wrong about what?”
My father-in-law, Chen Jianguo, pressed her further.
“I shouldn’t have kept it from Tangtang.”
“What else?”
Liu Xiulan closed her eyes.
For a long time.
“…I shouldn’t have said that.”
She opened her eyes and looked at me.
Her cloudy eyes held a trace of tears.
“Tangtang, what I said was wrong. I shouldn’t have said that to you.”
I stood there looking at her.
The knot that had been lodged in my chest for nearly a year finally loosened a little.
Just a little.
But loosening was enough.
“Okay.”
I nodded.
“Mom, let’s consider this matter over. But the rules don’t change. As for the shop, you’ll deal with it yourselves.”
I took Chen Beicheng’s hand.
His hand was ice-cold and still trembling.
I held it tightly.
## Chapter 7
On New Year’s Eve, the atmosphere was still awkward.
But it was better than the night before.
Liu Xiulan said nothing else, keeping a sour expression as she worked in the kitchen.
Chen Jianguo rarely took the initiative to wash the dishes, but that night, he did.
Chen Nanxuan and Zhang Ying stayed in their room and didn’t come out, saying that the children wanted to sleep.
I knew they were discussing what to do about the shop.
At midnight, Zhang Ying sent me a WeChat message.
“Sister-in-law, I’m sorry. I’ll take care of the shop as soon as possible.”
I replied with two words:
“Okay.”
On the morning of the first day of the Lunar New Year, Zhang Ying came to me with her phone and opened the shop management page for me to see.
All the products had been taken down.
A request had been submitted to delete the video account, which would take effect in seven days.
Her eyes were swollen and her lips were dry and cracked.
It was obvious she had cried all night.
“Sister-in-law, about the money from the shop… Do you want me to compensate you?”
I looked at her.
“Calculate the shop’s revenue from the past year or so yourself. I’m not taking all of it. Transfer forty percent of the net profit to me.”
“Forty percent…”
“My skills, my recipe, my ingredients, and my labor.”
“Even forty percent means I’m still taking a loss.”
“But for the sake of us being family, forty percent is enough.”
Zhang Ying thought about it, then nodded.
“Sister-in-law, I’ll transfer it to you within a month.”
“Okay.”
“There’s one more thing.”
She hesitated.
“Your smoked meat really is delicious. You’ve seen the reviews yourself. In the more than a year I’ve been running the shop, we’ve had a lot of returning customers.”
“After I close the shop, a lot of the old customers have been asking when they’ll be able to buy it again.”
“So?”
“So… if you want to sell it yourself in the future… I can hand over the old customer base to you. Consider it compensation.”
I didn’t answer immediately.
To be honest, I had thought about this before.
My grandmother’s craftsmanship was worth that much.
People were willing to pay 198 yuan per kilogram.
And after buying it, they came back for more.
The market had already proven it for me.
“I’ll think about it.”
“Okay, no rush. Whenever you want to do it, just tell me.”
After Zhang Ying left, I stood in the courtyard, lost in thought for a while.
The winter sunlight shone down, warm and gentle.
My father-in-law’s old quilt was spread out in the courtyard, carrying a faint smell of old cotton under the sunlight.
Chen Beicheng came over from behind and stood beside me.
“What are you thinking about?”
“My grandmother.”
“Huh?”
“If she knew her smoked meat could sell for 198 yuan per kilogram, she’d probably laugh so hard she’d crawl out of her grave.”
Chen Beicheng couldn’t help laughing.
“So what are you planning to do? Sell it yourself?”
“I haven’t figured it out yet, but I’m considering it.”
“I support you.”
“Your support isn’t worth anything.”
“…”
No comments for this chapter yet.