Lin Jingqiu is forty-six years old and has lived in the old street in the south of the city for twenty years.
She is the administrator of a community library. She organizes books, wipes bookshelves, and returns books returned by readers every day. She rarely talks and hardly goes out. She is like an old book that has been forgotten in a corner, the cover is dusty but the inner pages are intact.
Her daughter Lin Xiaowan is her only reader. For twenty years, she told her daughter everything—even though she never said a word about the things that really mattered.
For example: Who is Xiaowan's father? For example: why she never returns to her parents' home. For example: Where did the scar on her left wrist come from?
The old street is going to be demolished. The developers were pressing harder, and the neighbors were signing in. She was the only one who still guarded the leaky old house.
My daughter said: Mom, let's move away and start over somewhere else.
Lin Jingqiu shook her head. It's not that she refuses to leave, she's just not ready to throw away this last thing.
Until that person comes back.
The man who had kept her silent for most of her life was standing at the alley waiting for her with twenty years of answers.
This time, she could no longer remain silent.
