In the fifth year since I remarried and became a butcher’s wife, my youngest son, A-He, offended a nobleman from the capital over an old handkerchief.
I shielded him behind me and knelt on the ground to plead with the nobleman.
The carriage curtain didn’t move. From inside came a child’s cold sneer:
“You’re pleading for him? Who are you to him?”
I answered humbly that I was his mother.
The carriage fell deathly silent. The nobleman laughed in fury:
“You don’t even recognize your own son, yet you’re eager to play mother to someone else’s bastard…”
I couldn’t make out what he said. I only lowered my head further:
“Your Lordship, please understand. I have only one son in this life, and he is A-He.”
As soon as I finished speaking, the carriage door was flung open.
The nobleman jumped down and rushed toward me, his voice thick with tears:
“Then look at me!”
“Look carefully. Who am I?”
I raised my head and met Jiang Huanci’s reddened eyes.
It suddenly came back to me: this was also the fifth year since he and his father had personally cast me aside.
