Xu Yaonian was a respected geological expert.
I was just a rural woman who had graduated from high school.
In our forty years of marriage, Xu Yaonian was unhappy with it for thirty-five.
After he died suddenly, I finally had control of the remote and time that belonged solely to me.
Every day, I watched the soap operas Xu Yaonian had called meaningless.
I ate plenty of the street food he’d dismissed as nothing but junk.
On my sixty-fifth birthday,
I ordered myself a durian mille crepe cake and celebrated the first birthday that was entirely my own.
Just as I was about to make a wish, my daughter, whom I hadn’t heard from in ages, called:
“Mom, today is Dad’s sixty-seventh death anniversary. Don’t forget to fry some of his favorite little yellow croakers for him. Oh, and Aunt Shu and I already visited the cemetery, so you don’t need to go again. We wouldn’t want Dad to be unhappy down there too…”
After the call ended, I sat stunned for a long time in the utterly silent room.
At last, I lit the candles and made the only wish I would ever make in this life, with solemn sincerity:
“If I could live my life over, I wouldn’t want anything to do with Xu Yaonian.”
When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day Xu Yaonian first arrived in our village.
