My husband’s younger brother’s wife developed an illness that made her smash things. The first time, she broke the antique clock his father had left behind. My husband said, “Dad won’t blame you.” The second time, she smashed his mother’s jade Guanyin statue, and his mother comforted her instead. “The Bodhisattva won’t hold it against someone who’s ill.”
On Lunar New Year’s Eve, she suddenly looked at my daughter. Before the reunion dinner was even on the table, my daughter’s screams rang out from the twenty-third floor. When I rushed up to the rooftop, all I saw was my sister-in-law, Yang Lei, pale as a sheet. Down below lay my daughter’s limp body.
“It was my sister-in-law who pushed her… It was her!” Yang Lei pointed at me, her voice trembling but clear.
I desperately called for an ambulance, but in the hospital corridor, I heard my mother-in-law tell the police, “My daughter-in-law has bipolar disorder. She breaks things all the time, but she’d never hurt anyone… It must have been my elder daughter-in-law!”
My husband grabbed me. “Let it go. Leilei is sick. Just give her some leeway.”
I clutched a kitchen knife and charged in, but he snatched it from me and plunged it into my chest.
When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the evening my sister-in-law was about to take my daughter to the rooftop to watch the fireworks. This time, I clung tightly to my daughter and ran downstairs. While I was chatting with a retired detective who lived on the twenty-second floor, a loud crash came from below.
My mother-in-law, who had called me a heartless woman in my previous life, had fallen from the twenty-third floor, landing where my daughter had fallen before.
