Chapter 408: Someone Comes Asking About Baixi Village

June 3, 3:00 p.m. She tucked two pages into a piece of cardboard.

One page of the Consent Form, one page of instructions. She'd written the instructions the night before, line by line: sign on the blank after "Personally signed," use a blue-black pen, not pencil; next to the name, press a thumbprint, red ink pad, press hard, don't smear when lifting; after signing, lay flat, don't fold—a crease shows up as a break when scanned; mail back in the enclosed envelope, waybill and postage already attached, address marked to the second floor of Zhengping Firm.

The line "a thumbprint also works" was added later. She'd remembered Chai Guizhi saying on the phone, "Us country folk go by thumbprints," so she wrote it next to the name, each character clear.

She'd gotten the Guangdong address by phone. Ge Changlin read it out three times, with one line wedged between: "Day shift, night shift, always switching."

The courier point at the street corner sat beside the shoe-repair stall. A string of plastic clips hung from the tin awning, rattling when the wind blew. The woman there was crouched in a pile of packages, scanning barcodes. She glanced up.

"What are you sending?"

"Documents."

"Insured?"

"Yes."

The woman quoted two yuan. She did the math herself, then agreed.

"Documents with insurance? First time I've seen that." The woman drew on the waybill with a pen.

"There's a signed paper inside," she said. "If it's lost, someone has to come back from Guangdong to sign again."

"Then better insure it." The woman slapped the waybill onto the box. "This run goes out today, arrives at the town by the morning after next. If the factory's outside the village, give it one more day."

"Day after next."

She copied the tracking number into her notebook, then checked it against the waybill again: June 3, Guangdong, one page Consent Form, one page instructions. Added a line below: one return envelope, stamped. Another line: bring original on the 22nd, no copies.

Leaving the courier point, she shifted the cardboard under her arm. It was cut from an old case file cover; two holes from a stapler still marked the edge.

[Thud. The person signing isn't in the city. The paper has to make the trip.]

At 3:20 she was back on the second floor. Lu Jibai looked up. "Sent?"

"Sent. Arrives in town the day after next."

"The return envelope's inside."

"It's inside. Stamped."

He made a sound of acknowledgment and set his pen down. On his desk, Qinghe's Remediation Supervision Form lay open to the "Replanting Quantity Confirmer" column, still blank.

June 4, 4:00 p.m. Li Huilan came in from outside, hung her bag on the back of a chair, and drank half a bottle of water first.

"Went to the procuratorate today."

"Which case?"

"Xing Shuqin." Li Huilan sat down, straightening a stack of materials at the corner of the desk. "The case moved to review for prosecution yesterday. I filed the application to change her compulsory measures today."

"How old is she?"

"Seventy-plus. I asked her age; she said she couldn't remember, told me to write 'seventy-plus.'" Li Huilan uncapped her pen. "The one you saw—four items cut to three, with a single character 'slow' written in the page corner. She talks slow, walks slow, writes even slower. A woman that age—detained is detained, no way around it. Last time at the meeting, she stuck her hand through the slot in the divider, palm up, showed me her fingernails. Trimmed. Neatly trimmed. She said someone inside cuts them for her."

"Filing isn't the same as approval."

"Of course not." Li Huilan said. "I only wrote what should be written: age, health, who in the family can take her in, how far they'd have to travel. Four items, no extras. Add one soft line and they'll see right through it, know I'm crying on her behalf."

"How long for a response?"

"Two, three days." She pushed up her sleeve. "If nothing, write again, different wording. Her son calls every day from out of town, asks the same question."

"What question?"

"Whether his mother ate tonight." Li Huilan said. "I can't answer that. All I can say is, I'll go ask tomorrow."

She wrote that in her notebook, under Xing Shuqin's entry.

Across by the window, a page turned, soft. She looked up. Lu Jibai was writing in a form's grid, pen moving slowly. The "Replanting Quantity Confirmer" box was blank. Not a single stroke in it.

No letter from the Intermediate Court this week. The missing item was still missing. What she could do now came down to two things: send the papers where they needed to go, and ask the questions in person.

June 5, 8:00 p.m. She was home.

Zhi'an was on the balcony collecting laundry, hangers clinking against the railing.

She pulled out Volume Nine from the bottom of the stack of nine, flipped to the first page of July, then further on.

The July 11 passage was easy to find; one flip and she was there. Her finger pressed down, landing on the two lines in the middle:

"He said he'd put it in the court's file. Nobody could take it away."

"Which file, he said he'd tell me after the case was done."

She read "after the case was done" aloud.

When it was done, the paper didn't say. She only remembered another date: June 14 the year before last, heart attack. How far his lawsuit had gone, whether it ever finished—not a word left behind.

[Thud. Volume Nine, July 11, two lines.]

She lifted her hand from the page.

At the Intermediate Court window, the notice slip had a third item checked; she remembered it clearly: Where is the original? Who can verify it? That day she couldn't answer, could only hand over the scanned copy. Now she had a different way of asking—which file.

And there was one sentence she'd heard. In May the year before last, Cen Shouye said something to his daughter. She only heard about it after he was gone—Qingyuan Testing Family Compound, Building 3, Room 502. Cen Hong had just come in, blue cloth apron, barcode scanner in her pocket. She was talking about the day he sat on the balcony in the sun, voice kept low:

"Someday, when someone comes asking about Baixi Village, then you bring it out."

She'd written it in her notebook then, and when she wrote it, she thought it meant that drive under the cabinet. Later the drive really was pulled from under the cabinet—sealed, notarized, decrypted, five pages laid on the table. She thought the sentence had been settled, emptied out.

But what he wanted the family to "bring out" wasn't only that drive under the cabinet.

She turned the words "someone comes asking about Baixi Village" over in her mind, slowly. Someone coming to ask about Baixi, making trips from the city, sitting at the courier hub with a cup of cold water, name on a piece of paper—from the year before last to now, there was only one. That name was her own.

She reached over and flipped her notebook to the "Still Unknown" column. Item four was still that half line: Which file did Director Cen put it in?

She counted off the people she could ask. Her father—gone. Director Cen—gone June 14 the year before last; the "which file" line would never get an answer. Only one remained—the person who heard those words in May the year before last, married in Chengbei, receiving packages at the lane entrance.

The door pushed open a crack. Zhi'an stood in the doorway, holding a bowl.

"Sis, Director He asked me to pass on a message—are you coming for breakfast tomorrow?"

"I am."

"She said she'd cook even if you don't." Zhi'an set the bowl on the desk corner. "This wonton is from her. The rest I froze in the top drawer of the freezer."

He glanced inside, saw the volumes on the desk and her pen, then backed out, pulling the door nearly shut, leaving a crack.

June 6, 7:00 p.m. She washed the dishes, dried her hands, picked up her phone.

She dialed halfway, then hung up, rehearsing the words in her mouth. What she'd meant to say was "I want to ask about the court file"—but say that and Cen Hong would have to think about it on the phone, standing at the courier hub, thinking while receiving packages, not able to think it through. She cut that part, kept only the first half.

She pressed the button. On the other end: first a barcode scanner beep, then voices, the sound of dragging boxes. Only on the third ring did someone answer.

"Courier hub."

"Cen Hong, it's me, Shen Zhixia."

"Lawyer Shen." A shift on the other end. "Hang on."

A plastic door curtain rustled; the voices receded. Cen Hong stepped outside, wind rushing in from the lane, the receiver muffled.

"Go ahead."

"I want to ask about your father. About those years."

A pause on the other end.

"My father's affairs." Cen Hong repeated.

"Yeah."

"He lived a long life with a lot in it." Cen Hong said. "Which period?"

"Whatever comes to mind, start there," she said. "I'll get my notebook and write it down as you talk, read it back to you."

"Okay." A breath on the other end. "Come after ten tomorrow morning. Before ten it's all package pickups, can't even step in the doorway, shoulder to shoulder. After ten it thins out."

"After ten."

"Come in from the lane entrance. The place with the blue awning, that's mine." Cen Hong said. "I'll clear the table in the back room, take the stuff off the stool."

"Okay."

"If my mom asks," Cen Hong paused, "I'll say a lawyer's coming to pick up a package."

"Thank you."

"No need." A soft laugh. "When you come, I'll make you tea. My dad left a tin, seal still on, never opened."

"That tea—"

"Let it sit and it just sits." Cen Hong said.

She gripped the phone. "I'll be there at ten past ten."

"No rush." Cen Hong said. "Come early, I'll drag a stool out for you to sit by the door."

She hung up, opened her notebook, and under the "Still Unknown" column started a new line:

June 7, ten o'clock, Chengbei, courier hub.

Read it over, added another line below: bring notebook, pen, the Intermediate Court notice slip. Then capped the pen.

Volume Nine still lay open on the desk. She smoothed from the first page to the last, closed it, slid it back to the bottom of the stack, squared up all nine.

Then she crouched down and pulled the cardboard box from under the bed half a foot out. Dust on the lid showed in the lamplight; she wiped it with her sleeve before lifting the flap.

The hardcover notebook sat at the very bottom, under a few old newspapers and an empty kraft envelope. When she pulled it out, the contents settled, paper scraping paper, a dry sound.

She sat back in the chair, laid the notebook across her knees, flipped to the pages holding the Baixi Village visit forms.

Beside one of the forms, a name had been crossed out with a single stroke. The line ran from upper right down, pressed hard enough to leave a shallow groove in the paper; the remaining half looked like the top of a character, the lower half gone, impossible to tell who it was.

She looked at it. She didn't try to guess. Closed the notebook, put it back, pushed the box under the bed, leaving a palm's width of gap.

That was another matter.

Another time.