Su Jinli took the invitation, her fingertips touching the cool gold powder on the raised patterns, making her dizzy. She remembered Siyan squatting in the accounting office twenty years ago, using a chipped abacus to calculate twenty-three copper coins, the clatter of beads especially clear in the silent night. Now, that child had built a villa outside Beijing that was even more magnificent than the imperial palace.
"No, no," she threw the invitation on the rosewood table. The gilded patterns made a dull sound when they hit the table, causing the remaining tea in the teacup on the table to shake out of the rim. "Your father and I are used to living in this old house. What are we going to that valley for?" She said, her eyes sweeping over the crooked portrait drawn by her daughter when she was a child on the table. In the painting, she and Jiang Yan both had rabbit ears.
Jiang Yan picked up the invitation and ran his fingertips over the mother-of-pearl landscape on the cover. The reflection of the shell made the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes flicker. "Si Yan's filial piety is rare. Besides, the villa is close to Nian Li and the others, so this girl doesn't have to run to the city every few days." He had just finished speaking when Nian Li's voice came from the kitchen: "Mom! Are the spare ribs cooked?"
"It's great to go to the villa!" Nianli poked her head out from the kitchen with half a piece of pork ribs stuffed in her mouth. Oil splashed on the fox fur, forming transparent spots. "Mom, there is a big hot spring there. I can take Pan'er to go swimming!" Before she finished speaking, oil from the corner of her mouth dripped onto the invitation, spreading a small oil stain.
"Grandma! Grandpa!"
Suddenly, a childish cry echoed from outside the courtyard gate. Three-year-old Jiang Pan'er rushed in on her short legs. The red silk from her pigtail brushed against the icicles on the door frame, shattering into sparkling droplets. The maidservant following behind her was panting, her hair still matted with grass debris. She dropped her small bundle, and out rolled half a frozen cornmeal cake, teeth marks still on it.
Pan'er threw herself into Su Jinli's arms, her little face red from the cold rubbing against the corner of her brocade skirt, and the white breath she exhaled condensed into frost on the hem of her skirt: "Grandma, my mother said there is no rice at home, so she asked me to get some..." Ice crystals hung on her eyelashes, falling off when she blinked.
Su Jinli picked up her granddaughter and touched her cold little hand in her sleeve. She frowned with heartache: "Your mother is talking nonsense again. She just sent ten stone of rice yesterday." As she spoke, she took off her fox fur coat and wrapped it around Pan'er. The fur brushed against the child's chapped face.
Pan'er tilted her head, and the red silk brushed across Su Jinli's chin, making her want to laugh: "Then...then I'm here to get the sweet and sour pork ribs made by grandma!" As she spoke, her little finger pointed towards the kitchen, with snowflakes still on the tip of her nose.
Jiang Yan laughed so hard he coughed, the abacus beads in his sleeve clattering against each other—it was the sandalwood abacus Si Yan had given him as a child. But Nian Li snatched her daughter away, her fox fur sleeve nearly sweeping the teacup off the table. "Pan'er, be good, come with me and watch Grandpa kill rabbits!"
"I want to see it too!" Pan'er clapped her hands excitedly, and the red silk swayed into two flames in the twilight, sweeping across the snow grains on Jiang Yan's book.
Su Jinli felt a sudden warmth in her eyes as she watched the bustling family. She recalled fifty years ago, lying on her deathbed in the cold courtyard of the prime minister's residence, unable to even drink a sip of hot soup, staring at the icy snowflakes on the window lattice, waiting to die. The snow then was as heavy as it was today, yet it brought only a biting chill. Now, her husband was by her side, her children were around her, and even her granddaughter would walk through the snow to "eat for free." The aroma of simmering pork ribs in the kitchen, mixed with the scent of snow, filled the courtyard.
"Alright, alright," she clapped her hands, the pearls on her hairpin clattering and shaking off a few snowflakes. "Everyone, go wash your hands and eat! Chen Yue, clean the rabbit and stew it! Pan'er, grandma left you some freshly steamed osmanthus cake!"
"Great!" Pan'er jumped in Nianli's arms, kicking Shen Yue's waist with her little boots, and knocking off the gourd hanging from his waist. Jiang Yan walked to Su Jinli, gently put his arm around her waist, and whispered in her ear: "Jinli, thank you."
"What are you thanking me for?" She looked up at him, only to find that the white hair on his temples was shining like broken silver in the light of the lanterns in the corridor, just like the sugar threads on the sugar painting stalls back then.
"Thank you for letting me live this life," he paused, his voice as light as falling snowflakes, brushing against her earlobe, "even sweeter than that candy painting you and I fought over back then."
Su Jinli's cheeks flushed, and she tried to push him away, but he held her tighter. Outside, the wind and snow grew stronger, causing the lantern light to flicker, but inside the house, it was warm as spring. She leaned against Jiang Yan's arms, listening to the children's laughter in the kitchen, Chen Yue's pig-slaughtering screams, and Pan'er's baby voice as she clapped her hands and asked for sweet-scented osmanthus cake. Suddenly, she felt that her retirement life was far more enjoyable than when she was the prime minister's wife. The ten gold mountains of retirement money were not as good as the warmth of her husband's embrace at this moment, and the aroma of sweet and sour pork ribs mixed with the smell of snow wafting through the yard.
The copper bells on the eaves trembled softly in the wind and snow, startling another snowflake that landed right in Jiang Yan's hair, blending into his white hair. Su Jinli watched and suddenly smiled. She raised her hand to brush the snow away for him, her fingertips tracing the smile lines at the corners of his eyes, where fifty years of time were hidden, and years sweeter than sugar paintings.
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