Chapter 377: The Tape Wasn't the Same Strip

At nine in the morning on April 18th, she sent a message to the firm: Writing from home today. The reply came back fast: Okay.

She put her phone face-down on the desk. The screen lit once, then went dark. She didn't write anything all day. She'd finished copying Qinghe's three forms yesterday. The personal injury complaint for Ge Xiaoyu's case had a beginning—she wrote as far as "Defendant" and stopped. The pen lay on the paper; a tiny dot of ink bled from the tip.

She straightened the stack of notebooks, Volumes One through Nine, one by one, edges aligned. When she finished she decided it didn't matter and left them where they were. Volume Eight sat on the desk. She didn't bring it.

She spent the whole morning thinking about how to open: hand him the notebook, or read just one line and stop, or say nothing at all and ask him one question first. By noon, none of them felt like her. It wasn't until afternoon that she settled it: the first words didn't need her to think of them. The first words were her father's.

She skipped lunch. At four she made a bowl of noodles, ate two bites, and left the rest on the stove. It was still there when she left, the broth skinned over with a film.

At five she put Volume Seven into the cloth bag, then took it out to flip to the March pages and read them once more. In the name "Lu," the vertical stroke on the right side still dragged down too long. She closed it and put it back.

At five-thirty she sat on the edge of the bed. The tree shadows outside the window shifted one space on the wall. Her phone lay by the pillow, silent. Under last night's "You asleep yet?" the line she'd sent back was still the last one.

She left at six-forty. Waited six minutes at the bus stop, rode seven stops. She sat near the back door, the cloth bag on her lap, both hands pressing it down. Every stop, every open and close of the doors, she pulled the bag a little closer to her chest.

Seven sharp, she got off. She didn't go straight into the alley. She walked a stretch along the street opposite, past the intersection, then turned back. On the walk over, she went through her father's two lines in her head. On the way back, again. Not one word wrong. When she turned back, she looked up once: the eaves light at the mouth of the alley was on, a thread of light spilling over the wall.

Seven-oh-five. She stood at the alley entrance.

The repair stall was put away, tools shut up in the metal box, a pool of black water on the ground, half a cigarette-pack wrapper floating in it. The roll-up shutter was already down.

The door sat all the way down, a finger-wide gap at the bottom. Light leaked through the gap, landing on the lowest step, on the spot worn white by shoe soles. The lamp by the door was on, its metal shade wiped clean, the old rust along the edges left untouched.

Inside, the sound of an abacus. Beads clicked up one at a time, a full column, a pause, then down again. Scallion-oil smell squeezed from under the door—hot, cooling. Someone inside coughed once, short, then nothing.

The old man next door at the hardware store was pulling down his own shutter. Halfway, he stopped and called over: "No noodles today?" He Xiufen answered from inside: "Stove's broke." The old man grunted, pulled the shutter down to the bottom, took two steps, then looked back at the stoop.

A cyclist came out of the alley, headlight sweeping a bright patch over the ground. He shouted toward the stoop: "Lawyer Lu, waiting out here for someone?" And the answer came: "Waiting." The bike turned out.

She looked up. The second-floor window was dark. On the third floor, a lit square—two pieces of laundry hung from the rack, sleeves brushing the wall in the wind.

A man stood on the lowest step.

He stood straight, not leaning on the door, both hands in his coat pockets. No cigarette butts at his feet, nothing else either. Toes pointing toward the alley mouth. His weight shifted from one foot to the other, then back.

She stood at the mouth of the alley and didn't move forward. A car passed on the street, headlights sweeping in, lighting the whole alley for a second, then gone. He lowered his head slightly and stayed still.

Seven-ten. She walked over.

The alley wasn't long—twenty-some steps—and she didn't hurry. The bag strap slipped off her shoulder; she switched it to her hand.

Two steps from the stoop, she stopped.

He turned his face out of the lamplight. The lamp hung overhead, washing half his face yellow, sinking the other half into shadow. The top button of his collar was done all the way up. A stretch of sleeve showed past the coat; the cuffs were worn pale. She glanced at his hands, in his pockets, the fabric at the pocket mouths pulled taut.

"You came," he said.

She didn't answer that. She shifted the bag to her left shoulder, pulled the zipper. The fabric caught; she shook the bag once, then it ran to the end.

Volume Seven came out. Blue cloth cover, spine up, corners frayed, the tear at the bottom corner of the back cover still there. The paper was slightly damp; two pages stuck together when she opened it and came apart with a soft sound.

She stepped half a pace into the light and opened the notebook flat, both hands pressing the edges. The light still fell short; she moved an inch left until both lines lay fully inside the pool of light.

Heat from inside the lampshade pressed against the page, brightening it. Inside the door, someone shifted a stool; the legs scraped the floor, then silence.

"My dad read first," she said.

He didn't move. His eyes went to the page, but he didn't lean in.

"March 21st. Morning." Her finger landed on the line. Her voice was level, one phrase at a time, unhurried. "Sample courier, intern: Lu Jibai."

She finished and moved her finger down a line.

"The packing staple sealing the cardboard box cut his knuckle. He didn't make a sound. Gave him a Band-Aid."

At the last few words, her voice dropped a little. She heard it herself and didn't lift it back. Her thumb pressed into the corner of the page, creasing it.

At the far end of the alley someone pushed a cart past, chain clattering. The noise went behind them and vanished around the corner.

She closed the notebook. Both hands pressed together as she shut it, the pages falling into place, the spine making a small sound.

The abacus inside the door stopped, and stayed stopped.

He didn't reach for it. Her hand stayed on the cover a while before she drew it back and let it drop to her side.

He looked at the closed notebook for a long moment.

She wound the bag strap around her hand twice, tight, then let it go loose.

He shifted his weight, a shoe heel scraping a faint line through the dust on the stoop.

"Nine years ago, I was interning at Hengzheng," he said.

"Baixi Village, second batch of samples. Twelve total. I loaded them from the village committee office into the car and delivered them to Qingyuan Testing."

"My name is on the sample submission form."

He paused after each sentence. When he paused, he looked at her, didn't avoid it. When she didn't answer, he kept going.

She checked the page edge against what she knew. The line above read: Second batch, twelve items. Two cardboard boxes, small plastic buckets inside. The count matched. Two cardboard boxes matched too.

"The samples sat in the village committee office overnight. When I went to load them the next morning, one of the two boxes had tape on the opening that wasn't the same strip as the night before."

The small circle of light under the shade flickered—wind coming in from the alley mouth.

"I saw it."

Her finger pressed into the cover, leaving a white mark. It stayed a while, then slowly faded. The soles of her feet had gone slightly numb; she didn't shift her weight.

"I signed, and I sent it off."

"In nine years, I've never told anyone."

The scallion-oil smell had faded. The abacus inside was silent, no sound of bowls touching the table. With the roll-up shutter between them, both sides had gone still. The second-floor window was dark. All that was left was the distant traffic on the road, wave after wave.

He hadn't written this part down. Her father's page stopped at "two cardboard boxes" and "sat overnight"—a blank in between, the Band-Aid below. The line about the tape wasn't on the paper.

Nine years. One line on the paper, and behind that line, nine years, and he'd never said a word.

She remembered the photocopy spread out on the dinner table nine years ago, her dad pointing at the signature line: The signature's mine. The report isn't. That year, both men signed the paper. One confessed. The other said nothing.

Only now did she realize the lamp was hot; the side of her face burned.

"This scar," he said.

This time he lifted his head and looked at her. His hands stayed in his pockets. From the moment she'd walked over until now, they hadn't come out once.

"This scar, it's from the packing staple on that box. Your dad gave me a Band-Aid."

Her eyes dropped, landing on his coat pockets, then lifted again. Last winter, under this same lamp, she'd turned his hand over and looked at that scar, said: Tell me sometime when it's convenient.

He had no "I thought" and no "I didn't know." Every sentence that needed saying, said; every one that didn't, left out.

"I wanted to read these to you tonight first," he said, "then ask you one thing."

He didn't say what it was. He stood there, waiting for her to take the words with her or leave them where they were.

She didn't ask.

The wind came in again. The circle of light under the shade wavered, settling on the lowest step. A bug knocked against the shade, a tiny sound. A thin layer of dust lay on the step; the sweep marks from daytime were still there, row by row, picked out clearly by the light.

"You knew the moment the verdict came down, I'd open Volume Seven," she said. Her throat was drier than she'd expected when she spoke.

"I knew."

"And you still waited until today."

He didn't answer.

The line of light under the door hadn't moved. No one inside came over.

"Those three years my dad was inside," she pressed her voice down, lower than before, "where were you?"

"At Hengzheng," he said.

The three years her father was inside, he'd been at Hengzheng. She let that sentence sit in her chest for a moment and didn't push further.

She looked down at the closed notebook, at the frayed fibers along the edge.

"Okay," she said.

She wound the bag strap around her wrist once more, a fingernail scraping the fabric edge. Then she pulled the zipper shut, all the way down.

"I'm going." Her voice wasn't loud; it landed and scattered.

He stepped aside half a pace, clearing the lowest step entirely.

She didn't walk onto the step. She was already standing in the alley, two steps from the stoop. She turned—that was the way back.

The lamp at the door was at her back, throwing her shadow forward, stretching it out section by section, onto the wall, then onto the ground. She walked past the pool of black water; its surface wobbled, pushing the cigarette wrapper to the edge.

Past the hardware store. The shutter was all the way down. The metal toolbox sat by the door, a brick on top.

The wind at the mouth of the alley was colder than inside. She pulled her collar up.

She walked to the alley mouth and didn't look back.

The line of light under the door was still there, unmoving. Inside, a stool scraped once; no one came to open up.

The man on the stoop still stood there, toes pointed toward the alley mouth. The lamp overhead turned the ring of dust beneath the shade into a ring of white. He didn't go upstairs, didn't leave. He looked down at his shoes, then up again, toward the alley mouth.

The lamp outside the noodle shop stayed on all night.

His hands never left his pockets. His fingers curled inward. One corner of the small box dug into his palm, deep.

Inside the door, the abacus started up again—click, click—slower than before.