In the winter of 1986, Shen Qiutang had a photograph developed at a county-town photo studio, a photograph that should never have existed.
The woman in it was her mother, who had been missing for seven whole years.
Everyone said her mother had run off with a man from out of town seven years ago.
Her father had hated her for seven years.
Her grandmother had burned all her belongings.
Everyone in the county knew that the women of the Shen family had abandoned their husbands and children and eloped with someone else.
But the date on the back of the photograph was only three days ago.
What chilled Shen Qiutang to the bone was this:
The man standing beside her mother in the photograph was her father.
The very man who had repeatedly told her that he had not seen her mother once in the past seven years.
That night, her father disappeared.
Under his bed, Shen Qiutang found a locked metal box.
There was no money inside, no jewelry.
Only dozens of photographs of her mother.
The oldest had been taken fifteen years ago. The newest was from just one month earlier.
At the very bottom of the box lay a message her father had left her:
"Qiutang, if you see these photographs, don't go looking for her."
"And whatever you do, don't let her know that you're still alive."
For the first time, Shen Qiutang realized that perhaps her mother was not the only one who had disappeared seven years ago.
She began searching for her father.
But in the county hospital's long-sealed archives, she saw a document bearing her own name:
A death certificate.
Name: Shen Qiutang.
Date of death: March 14, 1962.
Yet Shen Qiutang, in 1986, was standing right there in the archive room.
From that day on, a photograph, a death certificate,
