"I spent half the night digging the dirt outside the wall," Zhao Chengshu said with a wry smile, "trying to bury the gold bracelet I bought for you. As soon as I finished digging the hole, I heard you crying in the house. Every time you cried, I shoveled more dirt into the hole until the bracelet was buried completely."
Chen Chunhua thought of the crooked tree in the Wang family's yard, and the time she unearthed a piece of rusted metal while digging for wild vegetables. Buried beneath it, it turned out, was Zhao Chengshu's true love, the future she had thought would never come.
"Then the Ye family recruited a housekeeper, and I thought it would be good to be closer to you," he continued. "The first time I saw Qingliu, he had just learned to walk and staggered into my arms. That child's eyes looked so much like yours..."
"For the past twenty years, every day while I was polishing the silver, I kept thinking, if I hadn't gone to the city, if I could have protected you..."
He didn't finish, but Chen Chunhua already understood. Ye Qingliu's gray-blue eyes always reminded her of the lake at the village entrance, and Zhao Chengshu probably saw in that child his own unfulfilled dream.
"Stop talking!" Chen Chunhua stood up suddenly, the wooden chair scraping against the floor. "What's the point of saying this now? I've been tortured by the Wang family for so many years, and you're the housekeeper of the Ye family, dressed neatly and respected!"
Her voice was filled with deep hatred, but when she saw him cowering, she suddenly remembered the look in A-Mao's eyes when she kicked him. The resentment of those years receded like a tide, leaving only a heart full of exhaustion.
"I'm sorry." Zhao Chengshu also stood up, his back straight, as if facing the master's scolding, "I know it's too late to say this now. But seeing how good you are to Qingliu, just like you were to me back then..."
"Don't talk about Qingliu!" She interrupted him, her voice filled with warning, "He is the young master of the Ye family, and I am the nanny. Don't let your imagination run wild."
Zhao Chengshu was stunned for a moment, then smiled bitterly: "I know. I just feel that the way you look at him is very similar to the way I looked at you back then."
"He relies on you a lot." Chen Chunhua said softly, her fingertips unconsciously stroking the rose pendant on her bracelet, "Now he relies on me even more."
Zhao Chengshu looked at the silver chain on her wrist and suddenly remembered his son when he was little. The child always liked to pull at his white gloves, and he always pushed them away impatiently.
"I'm sorry for you, and I'm sorry for him." Zhao Chengshu whispered, "But Qingliu is a good kid, he will treat you well."
Chen Chunhua remembered the fruit candies Ye Qingliu had stuffed in her pockets during the day, and how seriously he had bandaged her burns.
The boy who was as cold as ice in the board meeting would smile with his tiger teeth in front of her and secretly hide her favorite yam cake on the top shelf of the refrigerator.
"He made me feel like a human being," Chen Chunhua said, her voice filled with relief. "In the Wang family, I was even worse than an animal. It was him, and Jinyue, who showed me that there were people who cared about my feelings."
Zhao Chengshu nodded, the moonlight illuminating the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. He suddenly pulled a small paper bag from his pocket and placed it on the stone table. "This is the candy I didn't give away back then. It's peach flavored."
Chen Chunhua opened the paper package to find a faded piece of fruit candy, its wrapper clinging to tiny fuzzy edges. She recalled how, when she was nineteen, Zhao Chengshu had returned from the city, stuffed a handful of fruit candy into her mouth, and said, "City candies are sweeter than village candies."
At that time, she hid the candy under her pillow and only ate one piece a day until it was soaked by rain.
"Take one," Zhao Chengshu said. "It's still sweet."
Chen Chunhua peeled off the candy wrapper and put it in her mouth. Twenty years of time melted on her tongue, first bitter, then lightly sweet, much like the youth they had missed.
She looked at the white hair at Zhao Chengshu's temples, and suddenly felt that the resentment in her heart faded a lot.
“Thank you for telling me this,” she whispered. “But we can’t go back.”
Zhao Chengshu stood up and bowed slightly: "I know. As long as you are living well now, that's enough."
Chen Chunhua watched his white gloves swaying in the moonlight, and suddenly remembered what Ye Qingliu had said: "Uncle Zhao's hands are for polishing silverware, not for farming."
She took out the burn ointment hidden in her apron pocket, with a note from Ye Qingliu on it: "Aunt Chen, remember to apply it three times a day."
She thought of the boy secretly observing her in the kitchen, and a smile appeared on her lips. Some warmth, although it came a little late, finally came.
Back in her room, Chen Chunhua sat on the edge of the bed, looking at the fireflies in the glass jar. She took out a piece of letter paper and wrote: "Thank you for visiting my youth."
Then I folded the letter into a small boat and put it in the jar. The nightingale was still singing outside the window, and the May night breeze brought the scent of roses, which was very similar to the fragrance of laundry detergent on Ye Qingliu's body.
That night, she dreamed that she was standing under a locust tree at the entrance of the village. Zhao Chengshu was walking towards her in a white shirt, holding a letter. Ye Qingliu was standing in the distance, smiling and waving at her, holding a box of fruit candy.
The sun was so warm and the wind was so gentle that she finally dared to reach out and touch the warmth that she had thought was lost forever.
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