“Excuse me, is anyone home?”
It was a morning in late August. Jiang Jie was at home cleaning the house with her child.
The knocking at the door came again and again, growing increasingly irritating.
“I’m coming! Stop knocking!”
She shouted loudly, but the person outside seemed not to hear her and continued pounding on the door roughly.
The Lin family’s front gate was quite low, so people inside could easily see whoever was standing outside.
Jiang Jie looked the unfamiliar older woman up and down.
“Who are you looking for?”
“This is Shen Huai’s home, right?”
Although technically that wasn’t entirely wrong, it still sounded strange to her.
“This is the Lin family’s home, not the Shen family’s. Who are you looking for?”
“Are you the nanny here? I’m Shen Huai’s aunt. Go call my nephew out for me.”
Shen Huai had said that he was an orphan and that there was no one left in his family.
“What beggar came here looking for handouts? You don’t have any relatives here. Shoo, shoo! Go somewhere else!”
Seeing the woman’s hostile attitude, Yang Guifen began to wonder if the passerby who had directed her here had deliberately tricked her.
Was this really the address the military academy had given her?
But when she looked at the house number, the numbers and characters were exactly the same as those written on the note.
Seeing Jiang Jie turn around to leave, the woman became anxious.
“I went to the army already! They told me Shen Huai lives here, so that’s why I came! Look, this is my identification. I’m not a bad person!”
Jiang Jie suppressed her irritation and walked back to the gate, only then noticing that two children were sitting beside the woman’s feet.
Since she had no idea where these people had come from, Jiang Jie didn’t dare invite them inside.
“I’m going to make a phone call. Stay here and wait.”
Jiang Jie hurried back inside and called the research institute.
After quite some time, she finally heard Lin Hui’s voice on the other end.
She quickly asked him whether it was true.
“Is Shen Huai really an orphan?”
Lin Hui found the question strange.
“Yes. His family died a long time ago. He grew up on his own, and later he was raised in the army.”
“There’s an older woman here with two children. She says she’s Shen Huai’s aunt and is refusing to leave the gate. Are you coming home today?”
Lin Hui thought about it.
This matter couldn’t be judged so easily. The woman had actually come all the way to their home and had even brought children with her. Besides, Shen Huai was a soldier serving the people. Anyone pretending to be his relative would be taking a considerable risk.
“Do this. Invite them into the house first. I’ll call Shen Huai and ask him.”
“Okay, we’ll do that.”
Jiang Jie was still a little frightened, but she could only force herself to invite them into the courtyard.
“Come in.”
She let them inside, only to immediately receive a sarcastic remark from the woman.
“No wonder you can only be a nanny. You don’t even have that much sense…”
“Auntie, you’d better be careful. Your thinking is getting a little dangerous. There happens to be someone wearing a red armband coming this way…”
Yang Guifen immediately shut the door.
Jiang Jie almost laughed.
She had only casually said something, yet it had scared the woman into revealing her true nature.
This woman clearly wasn’t a good person. Everything she said carried an air of contempt toward others.
Jiang Jie brought them into the living room and had them sit down. She turned around to make some tea, only to hear the mother and her two children exclaiming over how luxurious the house was.
“Oh my goodness! Shen Huai really made it big and became some important official? Such a huge house, and he lives here all by himself?”
Thinking about it, Yang Guifen was practically beaming with joy.
Who would have thought that her dead husband’s nephew would turn out to be so capable?
If she had known this earlier, she should have brought him into her own family back then.
But it wasn’t too late now.
Even though his uncle was dead, he still had his own cousin. Surely Shen Huai wasn’t the kind of ungrateful person who would forget his relatives.
“Have some tea. Come over here and have some pastries.”
Jiang Jie had just bent down to put the pastries on the dining table when, in the blink of an eye, the flower cakes in her hands were gone.
The two children stuffed them into their mouths, eating ravenously.
Yang Guifen looked at her embarrassing sons, Da Mao and Er Mao, and coughed several times.
“We didn’t eat anything on the way here. We’ve been drinking nothing but water for the past couple of days.”
“Oh, I see. There isn’t much food at home either. How about I take you all to the state-run restaurant for a meal?”
Jiang Jie was worried that if they stayed any longer, the living room she had just cleaned would be completely ruined. It would be better not to let them stay at home too long.
There were already crumbs scattered all over the floor.
Yang Guifen’s eyes rolled around as she thought to herself, The nanny’s wages must be pretty high too, huh?
No wonder this was such a big city like Yuncheng.
“That sounds great. We’ll be troubling you, then.”
“No problem. Let me go call my son first.”
Yang Guifen was surprised.
This nanny was even allowed to live here with her child?
“Does your son always live here with you?”
“Yes. He’s lived here ever since he was born.”
Jiang Jie deliberately played along with her.
Seeing the woman’s pained expression, one would think Jiang Jie had eaten all the rice in her house.
Jiang Jie sneered inwardly.
She had already seen that this woman wasn’t a good person. She had probably heard that Shen Huai was doing well now and had come to take advantage of him.
Yang Guifen sucked in a sharp breath.
Just how much grain, cooking oil, rice, and flour must this family be consuming?
Just thinking about it made her heart ache.
For a moment, she even began blaming Shen Huai.
If he hadn’t deliberately kept his circumstances hidden and had let her, his aunt, know about him earlier, how much money could she have saved?
Those were real money and ration coupons!
She watched as the young woman brought a child down from the upstairs bedroom.
And the child was so sturdy and well-fed.
Her heart ached even more.
A child this healthy and solid must have eaten plenty of meat and oily food.
“Auntie, let’s go.”
Yang Guifen gave a couple of dry laughs and followed Jiang Jie out.
“Auntie Mei, someone from our family should be coming home later. Please tell them that I took Shen Huai’s aunt to the state-run restaurant on the front street for a meal.”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
The elderly woman known as Auntie Mei looked carefully at the mother and her two children beside Jiang Jie.
No matter how she looked at them, they didn’t seem like relatives at all.
Shen Huai was good-looking, so perhaps these were some distant relatives who had come to the city looking for handouts. She had seen this kind of thing plenty of times.
Just after they left, Lin Shu returned home.
She had gone to the Red Sun Food Factory early that morning to see Director Xie.
Lin Shu had indeed given Director Xie the recipe for free, but she had made one thing clear from the beginning: the flower cakes tasted so good because the recipe was only thirty percent of the secret, while the other seventy percent was her “honey dew.”
At first, the others didn’t believe her.
But after trying it, they discovered that whether it was flower cakes or other pastries, anything made with the honey dew had a sweetness and fragrance that the control batch simply couldn’t compare with.
Lin Shu generously gave Director Xie a small bottle to try first.
If Director Xie was satisfied with it, the two sides could discuss an honest business partnership later.
However, this partnership would be kept private for the time being and would only begin next year.
By then, the Lin family should already have been raided, and their lives would gradually have stabilized enough for Lin Shu to find time to contact her regularly.
If the investigation team discovered at the end of the year that they had been doing business together, all of Lin Shu’s efforts during this period would have been wasted. Xie Hongjun might even be implicated.
So after discussing it just now, Xie Hongjun agreed despite not fully understanding Lin Shu’s intentions.
If they were going to cooperate, they would start next year.
Lin Shu arrived at the entrance of the state-run restaurant and looked around.
She spotted her sister-in-law and nephew.
“Sister-in-law?”
As soon as she approached the entrance, Jiang Jie quickly stood up.
“I’m sorry, Auntie Shen. You all keep eating. I’m going to talk to my sister for a moment.”
Lin Shu glanced at the table.
Her nephew was eating ravenously, while the bowl in front of him was so clean that there wasn’t even a trace of oil left.
She couldn’t help finding it strange.
“Something happened. That woman really is Shen Huai’s biological aunt. I even saw a photograph. Although she’s much younger than I expected, it really is her. Did Shen Huai deliberately hide his family from us? Don’t get me wrong, Sis-in-law isn’t looking down on them. Just watch for yourself and you’ll understand. She thought I was the nanny here. She also thought our house had been given to Shen Huai because he had become some high-ranking official.”
Lin Shu nodded.
With an expressionless face, she walked over and sat beside her nephew.
Yang Guifen hurriedly poured the last bit of oil and gravy from the plate into her bowl, then shoveled mouthful after mouthful of rice into her mouth.
She looked as though she hadn’t eaten properly in days and had simply been waiting to come to the city for a proper meal.
While she was eating, Lin Shu asked in a deep voice,
“You say you’re Shen Huai’s aunt. What proof do you have?”
“A photograph…”
“What does a photograph prove? You’re not an enemy spy, are you?”
From the few things her sister-in-law had told her, Lin Shu could already tell that this woman had bad intentions, so she didn’t even give her a chance to explain.
Yang Guifen was so frightened that she fell straight onto the floor on her backside, immediately drawing a burst of laughter from everyone around them.