"Alright, everyone stop drinking. Quickly help the son-in-law back and make him something to sober up."
Tian Qiaozhu slammed her hand on the table, looking at how drunk her son-in-law had become; the rest of them had to go to work tomorrow.
"Is that all the alcohol you can drink?" Song Hai's speech became slurred and unclear. Tian Qiaozhu couldn't stand it and slapped him.
All she does is drink, drink, drink. A bottle of wine costs more than a dollar. She only takes it out when her son-in-law comes over, and they finish it all in one go.
"Mom, then we'll head back right away."
"Yes, yes, we have to go to work tomorrow!"
The two sisters-in-law quickly slipped away; they didn't want to stay and clean up. They had finally gotten a good meal at their stingy mother-in-law's house today, thanks to their sister-in-law.
The two women called to their husbands, took their children, and left.
"They were terrified I'd ask them to clean up, so they ran away faster than rabbits."
Tian Qiaozhu gritted her teeth in resentment. These two daughters-in-law were really unwilling to suffer the slightest loss. They would pick out and eat the meat on the table first, but they would disappear as soon as it was time to do the work.
"Mom, go and rest, I'll take care of it."
"I don't need you."
In the end, Tian Qiaozhu and Song Qing cleaned up, while Song Hai had already taken his pipe downstairs for a smoke.
As soon as he got older, he became obsessed with the tobacco grown in the countryside. The cigarettes sold at the supply and marketing cooperative were so cheap that they cost several cents a pack, so Tian Qiaozhu couldn't bear to buy them for him. Dried tobacco leaves didn't cost much at all.
"Dad's smoking again?"
"Don't worry about it, it won't kill you. That stuff won't cost more than a few cents a month."
Song Qing sighed. Her parents had always been like this. She knew her mother had suffered a lot over the years and didn't want anything to happen to her.
"An'an will sleep with me tonight. You take good care of your son-in-law."
An'an was very happy to agree. She had been cared for by her grandmother, Tian Qiaozhu, when she was little, and they had a very close relationship.
The sister-in-law, holding the hands of her two children, kept grumbling and complaining to the man along the way.
“Your younger sister wouldn’t sell her job to my brother, but she has now sold it. I just don’t know how much of the money will go to Mom.”
Her mother-in-law has never treated her like family. She never gives her anything good, and she won't even sell this job to her younger brother. Now she's too ashamed to go back to her parents' home.
"This is my younger sister's money. She can do whatever she wants with it." Song Cheng was a little dizzy from drinking and just wanted to go home and lie down as soon as possible, holding his eldest son's hand.
"Her money? How has Mom treated her all these years? Doesn't she even want to give Mom a single penny of this money?"
"That's between the mother and daughter, why are you interfering? Besides, if I sold my job, how much would you give my mom?"
Song Cheng felt that his wife was drunk even though she hadn't drunk any alcohol. She wasn't standing up for her mother at all; she was clearly after that money. As long as her mother was alive, the money would be safely in her younger sister's hands.
Seeing that his wife's expression had soured, he immediately softened his tone.
"Alright, never mind that. Didn't the little sister just give you back the fabric?"
Cousin Song Qing sent her more fabric. Feeling she had enough clothes, she divided it into three pieces, giving one to each of her two sisters-in-law and taking the other back to Lu Ronghui.
"The pattern of that fabric doesn't suit me, and besides, isn't your cousin my cousin too?" Although she said that, her sister-in-law's expression visibly improved.
Therefore, the eldest sister-in-law's dissatisfaction with her mother-in-law was only kept in her heart, after all, her younger sister-in-law was a capable person who often brought them things.
————
Downstairs in the dimly lit flowerbed, Song Hai smoked his water pipe and stared blankly into the night.
Although he may seem unreliable to outsiders, he has a keen sense of things. Back then, he was able to sense the seriousness of the situation and immediately found his daughter a job so she could stay in the city.
How could he not see that the atmosphere between his daughter and son-in-law was different from before?
When the Chen family had their accident, it wasn't the worst time. There were just some rumors, and everyone was still going about their lives normally. But Song Hai inexplicably felt that something was wrong.
He flipped through the newspaper and felt that the situation might be much more serious than he had imagined, and might last for a long time.
He made his daughter break up with the Chen family's son, originally intending to introduce her to some other young men, but Song Qing was unwilling at that time.
A month later, the Chen family's situation was quickly settled, and almost overnight, the house was deserted.
Before that, Song Hai had his eye on the Lu family. He had some connection with the Lu family before and had done Lu Weiguo a favor. However, those were all old stories. Lu Weiguo would never allow his son to marry Song Qing.
He Shuyue disagreed even more, so the matter was put on hold.
Just days before leaving the Chen family, he, who was originally Chen Fangyang's subordinate, had secretly overheard some rumors.
He knew that Chen Fangyang's wife, Lin Yueyu, seemed to have a problematic family background, and it was said that she had a connection with the Lin family in Yucheng.
The Lin family had committed numerous evils in the past. In the 1920s, they betrayed their country and became lackeys of the Japanese. Later, they joined the Kuomintang and helped them plunder a great deal of the people's wealth.
After the Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan, almost all of the Lin family's direct descendants went there, while other family members scattered in different places, and Lin Yueyu stayed in the country.
It is said that she was originally just a relative of the Lin family, and her relationship with the direct line was already beyond the fifth degree of kinship. Her father died early and her family moved to Xin'an. Logically speaking, almost no one knew about her relationship with the Lin family.
Someone took the letter to report that the Lin family members had secretly contacted them from abroad, and no one dared to think about their intentions.
Chen Fangyang's situation was already complicated, and his wife was almost certainly a member of the Lin family. The director of the Revolutionary Committee in charge of investigating them even jokingly referred to Lin Yueyu as the daughter of a capitalist.
Song Hai had only met the director occasionally. That evening, he ran into him and Bai's wife, Chen Hongxia, on his way home from get off work.
The director praised Chen Hongxia for her good work, saying that with her letters and accusations, the Chen family would never be able to recover, and he could also get promoted because of this.
“I told you that as long as you identify me, I will definitely not treat you unfairly.”
"Does Lin Yueyu know? Will she report me?"
Lin Yueyu is Lin Yingyu's distant cousin. They had only met a few times when they were young. Lin Yingyu's relationship with the Lin family is much closer than Lin Yueyu's.
After she got into trouble and became Chen Hongxia, she ran into Lin Yueyu again, but Lin Yueyu didn't seem to recognize her.
She was afraid she would let something slip, so she almost never had any contact with the Chen family.
But in this world, besides Bai Xiangdong, only the Revolutionary Committee Director in front of him knows that her surname is Lin.
She gave him a lot of things back then, but she never expected that this man would come looking for her again after many years, after taking the money.
“I won’t report you, since I know about what you’ve been doing, but you have to help me. If I do this well, I’ll definitely be able to get promoted.”
Chen Hongxia had no choice but to agree to his request; those letters were originally from her family who had tried to contact her from many different places.
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