Chapter 86

That afternoon, around 2 or 3 p.m., after finishing all her chores, Su Ningna finally had a chance to sit on the sofa in the living room, scrolling through her phone and catching her breath. Although there were only two more children in the house, the chaotic past two days had left Su Ningna exhausted. So, while scrolling through her phone, she kept muttering to herself: "Please let school start soon, please let school start soon, please let school start soon..."

But even curled up in the comfortable sofa, Suninga couldn't feel completely at ease. Her nose was filled with the smell of floor cleaner, and her ears were filled with the squeaking of children coming from the backyard. All of this combined made her head spin and her heart race with anxiety. After the incident, Suninga often told everyone she met that at least a minute before the ambulance siren sounded in Central Park, she had a bad feeling that "something was going to happen."

Clearly, the sudden, piercing scream was the siren of an ambulance, not a police car or fire truck. Without even putting on her slippers, Suningna rushed barefoot into the yard, opened the gate, and peered out. She saw an ambulance heading towards Napa Valley Phase 3 across the artificial lake. The ambulance reflected the dazzling sunlight, and the siren grew louder and louder. Even after the ambulance had completely disappeared behind the green belt, the piercing siren continued to echo throughout Central Park.

Su Ningna gripped her phone tightly, her heart pounding. Only now did she remember to check the residents' group chat for any announcements. She found no announcements, and instead, every resident was asking "@CentralParkManager" what had happened, why an ambulance had rushed in at this hour, and several younger residents complaining that they had just managed to put their children to sleep when they were startled awake by the sirens… But no one from the manager's team offered any explanation. Receiving no response, the residents began speculating in the group chat whether something had happened to an elderly person or a child—perhaps an elderly person had a heart attack, or a child had fallen and injured themselves. One older resident even forwarded a post about "How to Prevent Cardiovascular and Cerebrovascular Diseases in the Elderly in Autumn"...

“Although I knew that there were many homeowners in Napa Valley near the lake during the day before school started, and most of them were elderly people who came to help take care of the children during the summer vacation,” Suningna recalled afterward, “so anything could happen to any of them, but my intuition told me that the person who had the accident was Xiaohuang. I immediately wanted to call her to ask about the situation, but I picked up the phone and put it down again, thinking that if it wasn’t her, wouldn’t I be implying that I didn’t want her to be okay? Besides, at that time, she was probably sleeping. She had sent her two children over because she wasn’t feeling well.”

So Su Ningna anxiously stared at the owners' group chat, wondering if any of the owners knew what had happened besides wild guesses, or if the housekeeper could come out and give a final explanation. After all, the housekeeper usually explained such emergencies. Even when Hu Zhizhi kidnapped his parents on the fifth day of the Lunar New Year and called the police, the housekeeper had explained it in the owners' group chat. This was an old announcement that Cheng Shi had found by searching keywords when Su Ningna talked about this at Cheng Shi's house last time. The four of them had even passed it around as a joke back then.

But this time, the housekeeper was completely silent, not showing up in the residents' group chat at all. Then, a series of urgent new message notifications started ringing in my WeChat.

It was Xie Yiling; she flooded the residents' group chat with countless voice messages, each lasting only a few seconds.

With trembling hands, Su Ningna swiped up the screen and tapped on the voice message Xie Yiling had sent. Xie Yiling's panicked, broken, and breathless voice came through the phone, a sound that pierced Su Ningna's ears.

"What happened to Napa Valley No. 5?"

I just happened to be passing by.

"I happened to be passing by and saw an ambulance parked at the entrance of the hospital."

"I parked at the gate; I wanted to go over and take a look."

"I don't know if they were doctors or nurses, but they were wearing white coats."

They won't let me pass.

There was no butler accompanying them.

"I'm so anxious!"

"Is it Xiao Huang or some other child?"

I just called Xiao Huang.

"No one is answering..."

"What have the housekeepers been doing?"

"Does anyone know what happened?"

I'm on my way to the property management office.

"This lousy property management company..."

"After listening to Mr. Xie's voice messages, I was almost scared to death, and the owners' group chat exploded," Su Ningna later explained. "I knew it definitely wasn't the children, because they had just come back from the lake. Mu Ge had taken those kids to the lake to catch dragonflies, and after they came back, they ate something before going to play in the backyard. Then I could only sit there helplessly, and then I called Lao Sun. I always call him whenever something happens; Lao Sun is a very capable person."