In the sixth year of my marriage, I went on a family-reunion show.
They didn’t find my biological parents, but the big screen first displayed an old wanted-for-questioning photo from ten years ago.
The woman in the photo had the exact same face as me.
Everyone in the audience wanted to know if it was me.
Only my husband rushed onto the stage and shut off the screen, blurting out:
“She’s not an arsonist.”
But at that point...
The woman’s name hadn’t even appeared on the screen.
I didn’t go home with him.
I asked the production team to seal away all the original footage and asked him just one thing:
“How long have you been looking for her?”
Because seven years ago, when we first met, he had stared at my face and asked:
“Is your surname Xu?”
As it turned out, from the very beginning, our marriage had hidden another woman’s name.
I want a divorce.
And I’ll find out for myself who the woman in the photo really is.
But the further I dug, the more I realized this wasn’t a story about “an amnesiac woman who was framed.”
The woman in the photo might not have committed arson.
But she may really have taken those children away.
She may really have helped give them new names.
She may even have saved some people and hurt others.
And back then, my husband didn’t approach me simply because he had “mistaken me for someone else.”
Everyone wants to decide for me which parts of the truth I should see and which are best left untouched.
This time, I won’t listen to anyone.
If the person in the photo really is me...
I’ll own what I must.
I’ll make amends for what I owe.
But no one gets to turn off that screen for me again.
No one gets to decide that I shouldn’t know who I am.
[Marriage suspense | Identity mystery | Morally gray heroine | He pursues her, but they don’t reconcile]
The female protagonist is not a pure white victim, and the male protagonist cannot be whitewashed by just saying "It's good for you". I like this book's treatment of "choices" and "boundaries" the most: saving someone does not mean that you can make decisions for others, and loving someone does not mean that the marriage must continue. The suspense lines are getting deeper and deeper, and the couple lines are also very exciting.