16
As night falls, we drive to a field of flowers.
C
<
We set up a tent and lie under the starry sky, taking in natur
I finally ask the question that’s been on my mind.
“Sarah, why are you so good to me?”
She cups my face, gazing at me with a gentle smile.
“Haley, it’s not by chance, nor fate.”
“Seven years ago, I met you.”
e and the
night.
“You were my mother’s lawyer. She was almost 80 and wanted to divorce my father. She came to you.”
I look at her face as memories resurface in my mind.
It was the face of an old woman ravaged by the years.
“Lawyer Xu, I want a divorce. I can’t live with my husband anymore. He hasn’t looked at me properly in 40 years. Everyone says he’s so good. They say I’m an uneducated woman who’s used up several lifetimes of good fortune to marry a college graduate like him. But I can’t take it anymore. Lawyer Xu, please help me.”
The old woman gripped my hand, begging over and over.
I had just started practicing then. My mentor advised me to turn the old woman away. But I wanted to help her.
“She doesn’t have much money. At her age, her family won’t support this either.”
I took her case. As expected, the lawyer faced quite a few obstacles because of it.
The old woman’s children came to vandalize my office. I hadn’t charged her, but they stood outside demanding I return the money I’d
“swindled” from her.
In the end, the old woman took all the documents and left.
She was illiterate and didn’t know how to collect evidence. She just took blurry photos of her life with her husband.
I saw photos she took of two pairs of chopsticks, two shoe racks, two bedrooms, two bowls.
The old woman didn’t know how to document her husband’s emotional abuse. She just cried and rambled in front of the camera.
“His is his, mine is mine. For decades it’s been clearly divided. He looks down on me. Everyone only sees me yelling at him, pressuring him, hitting him. But no one knows about the knives he stabs into my heart.”
“Miss, can you help me? I have a younger daughter who’s studying abroad. When she comes back, she’ll pay your lawyer fees. Please help me first, okay?”
I agreed. But after her son took her away that day, she never came back.
I look at Sarah lying beside me.
“You’re that younger daughter.”
She nods. “Yes, it’s me.”
I anxiously ask:
“So did your mom end up getting divorced?”
She sighs, looking ahead as if telling someone else’s story.
“Mom committed suicide. Everyone said Mom was mentally ill, that she ruined Dad. But I know Dad wasted Mom’s entire life. I’ll hate him
forever.”
3
“I’ve been looking for you. I wanted to thank you in person. Mom mentioned you before she died. She said there was a lawyer who could prove
she wasn’t crazy.”
Then everything that followed happened. She discovered a mother with no income selling handmade crafts.
That mother was named Haley.