On their wedding night, Matchmaker Wang refused to leave, insisting on keeping watch over them to make sure they followed the rules. Three words from Zhou Zhengguo sent her out the door. Then he turned around and slept outside the room, saying only, "Fold up your clothes." Lin Xiu sat motionless on the edge of the kang, her fingers digging into the lining of her wedding dress. Hidden beneath it was a photograph of her brother, Lin Jianjun. He enlisted in 1968 and earned a third-class merit citation in December 1970. The only thing he ever sent home afterward was a crooked line of writing: "Xiu'er, your brother might not make it back. Don't cry." But for three years, this final letter had remained hidden from sight. Zhou Zhengguo took a dark blue cloth bundle from the inner pocket of his uniform. It was wrapped in cotton thread three times. He said he had received the letter in person in November 1970, yet it hadn't been in the box sent home. The official notice contained only two words: deserter. Lin Xiu refolded the letter along its original creases, tied the same knot, and pushed it back toward him. She asked who he had gone looking for. The old scar on the back of Zhou Zhengguo's hand gleamed in the lamplight. Inside and outside the kang, two people sat: one bearing the label of a deserter's family, the other carrying a secret he couldn't explain. Who had taken the letter all those years ago? Whose hands had the box passed through before it returned to the unit? They had to find out before dawn.
