No Way Home at the End of the Highway

For Lunar New Year, my wife took our daughter and me to her parents’ home to celebrate. When she pulled over on the expressway’s emergency lane, I thought Lin Yu needed to use the restroom. “Yanyan’s asleep. Don’t wake her.” I tucked my daughter’s little blanket around her. Lin Yu didn’t turn around. She tapped the steering wheel with her fingers. “Shen Mingqian, get out with Yanyan.” I froze. “What?” Su Wen spoke up from the back seat at just the right moment. “Sis Yu, forget it. We can squeeze in.” His son, Kangkang, immediately started crying. “I don’t want to! I don’t want to sit with that sick kid! She was coughing just now!” Lin Yu turned around, her eyes colder than I had ever seen them. “Did you hear him? Get out.” “Lin Jie is already on his way. He’ll be here in half an hour.” “You can wait here.” It was the twenty-eighth day of the twelfth lunar month. The expressway. Five degrees below zero. Holding my three-year-old daughter, I watched her start the car again. The taillights grew smaller in the snowstorm. Until they disappeared. I took out my phone and called my mother, the richest woman in the country. “Mom, I’ve made up my mind. I’m bringing my child home.” “I’m going to bankrupt the Lin family and make Lin Yu kneel before me and kowtow!”