“What does the matter between me and Shuiqin have to do with looking down on our family?” Yu Heng’s brow furrowed slightly, his tone irritated at having a sore spot touched. “Do you actually want to help me, or do you want to lecture me?”
“If I didn’t want to get involved, I’d have already gone inside to rest. As for lecturing you? Hardly!” Xie Fuling had already understood why her eldest brother had ended up living such a wretched life. “Eldest Sister-in-law must have told you plenty in private about the ways of the world when dealing with people outside the family. But if Big Brother had listened to even half of it, would Eldest Sister-in-law have refused to come home with you?”
“I—!”
Yu Heng’s whole face flushed red, his mouth pressed shut, glaring at Xie Fuling in indignation.
“Mother.”
Xie Fuling looked at the dazed Zhang Qiaofeng. “Whether to give the money that was pawned or not is for you and Father to decide. I’ll go back to my room first.”
What needed doing, what needed saying, she had done and said.
Any more words, and the little gratitude in her eldest brother’s heart would turn to resentment.
“Lehuan, take good care of your fourth sister.”
Zhang Qiaofeng, the first to come back to her senses, instructed her youngest daughter, then exchanged a look with her husband before turning a cold gaze on her eldest son. “What Fuling means is what your father and I mean too. If you can’t figure it out tonight, how you’re going to live properly with Shuiqin from now on, don’t even think about taking a single copper coin from me!”
“Aren’t you afraid that once Shuiqin gives birth at her own family’s home, people outside will point fingers at your back, saying you’re a vicious mother-in-law who mistreats her daughter-in-law?” Yu Heng was getting desperate. In fact he did have some cunning, but he’d spent all of it on the people closest to him.
“Ha!” Zhang Qiaofeng gave a cold laugh, her expression disdainful. “That would suit me just fine. From now on this family will be decided by me, the vicious mother-in-law. Let’s see if Li Shuiqin has the ability to stay at her own family’s home for the rest of her life!”
With that, Zhang Qiaofeng turned and stormed into the kitchen. Fuling was still waiting to eat the braised pork she’d made.
“Yu Heng!”
Having watched the whole scene, Yu Qingshan finally spoke, his gaze, calm as still water, falling on his eldest son. “You give in this time, and there’ll be a next time. If you don’t change, this whole family will be dragged down with you. Think it over carefully yourself.”
“I… I understand.” Of his parents, Yu Heng was actually more afraid of his father. He slowly got up and hurried back inside the house.
At the dinner table.
A full basin of braised pork sat in front of Xie Fuling, and her bowl held gleaming white rice.
She glanced at her parents’ and sister’s bowls, a few shriveled corn buns.
“Fuling, don’t just stare, hurry up and eat.” Zhang Qiaofeng picked up a piece of braised pork and placed it in Xie Fuling’s bowl. “This meat, I stewed it good and tender.”
Xie Fuling saw her mother lick the oil off her chopsticks, and having already seen the bare, poverty-stricken rooms of the house, she realized this family was even poorer than she had expected.
She got up, brought her parents’ and sister’s bowls over to herself, and divided her own rice among them. “Since we agreed to share both good times and hard times, how could I enjoy it all alone?”
She also picked up a corn bun and took a big bite. “Mm, better than the ones at the Marquis’ estate.”
“Huh? The Marquis’ estate has corn buns too?” Zhang Qiaofeng was shocked, the Marquis’ household was so grand, shouldn’t every meal be delicacies from land and sea?
“If I didn’t finish my lessons, I wouldn’t get to eat, and the little kitchen maid would give me the corn buns she’d hidden away.” Xie Fuling wasn’t saying this to comfort her mother, it was the real life she’d lived at the Marquis’ estate. “The Marquis is a very frugal man. He decreed that white rice could only be eaten once a day for the three meals, the servants only got to eat rice on festivals and holidays, and ordinary meals were no different from what people outside ate. He called it ‘remembering hardship to appreciate the good times.'”
“There’s nowhere else to cut corners, and he has to cut corners on food?” Zhang Qiaofeng couldn’t understand what these great and important people had in their heads, but she still handed both corn buns from her own bowl over to Xie Fuling. “If you like eating these, Mother will make them for you every day.”
“Food, drink, women, gambling, food comes first among them all. It looks like just saving one meal of rice, but over time it adds up to quite a lot. Grain is hard currency everywhere you go.” Yu Qingshan took a bite of his corn bun, chewing slowly.
“Is Father worried about Xie Leyi?” Xie Fuling saw her father’s heavy mood and asked without thinking, a habit built from constantly reading people’s expressions at the Marquis’ estate.
“Back with her birth parents, she’ll get the best care and treatment.” Yu Qingshan paused for a moment, his fingers tightening around the corn bun. “Our family is poor, but we never mistreated Leyi. You, on the surface, lived in fine clothes and had every luxury at the Marquis’ estate, yet you had to watch every step you took. Did they truly treat you as a daughter, or as an object they were carefully cultivating?”
“Eh?”
Xie Fuling looked at her father’s grave face.
She was deeply shocked inside, from just that one short sentence of hers, her father had seen through, at a glance, a truth she herself had never fully grasped.
“How could a perfectly good daughter be raised as an object?” Zhang Qiaofeng thought she was hearing a joke. “Qingshan, you mustn’t talk nonsense like that, if they ever heard it and came knocking on our door, that wouldn’t be good.”
“If Fuling hadn’t taken the initiative to ask to come home, would they have let her go? One more daughter is just one more object to them. Whether it’s for a marriage alliance in the future, or as an easy favor to hand off to someone, the Marquis knows it very clearly in his own heart.”
Her father’s words instantly made Xie Fuling think of why the Marquis had gotten angry when she’d said he wanted her to be Xie Leyi’s servant girl.
What angered him wasn’t her defiance, it was that she didn’t know a good thing when she saw it, that she didn’t understand gratitude.
“Then what about Leyi?” The moment the words left her mouth, Zhang Qiaofeng looked anxiously at her daughter. “Mother’s just asking, no other meaning behind it.”
“My temperament since I was small never pleased the Marquis and his wife, I gave them a lot of headaches. Xie Leyi is their birth daughter, her temperament will naturally take after them, and on top of that she’s frail. From what I know of them, they wouldn’t be so heartless as all that.” After all, having the wrong daughters swapped for seventeen years, no one could let go of all their feelings overnight. Xie Fuling could understand her mother’s worry.
“Let’s not talk about these upsetting things.”
Zhang Qiaofeng put another piece of meat in her daughter’s bowl. “From now on, you’re the fourth daughter of Zhang Qiaofeng and Yu Qingshan, Yu Fuling. In this family, you can do whatever you want, even if you tear a hole in the sky, it doesn’t matter, if it really comes crashing down, your father and I will hold it up!”
Xie Fuling, no, Yu Fuling now, gazed at her mother’s plain, unadorned face, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, and thought of how every time she’d done something to displease the Marquis and his wife, they’d always say, why don’t you just tear a hole in the sky while you’re at it?
But Mother was telling her: if the sky falls, Father and Mother will hold it up.
“Me too!”
Yu Lehuan raised her right hand, her expression very serious. “I ate the pastry Fourth Sister gave me, I have plenty of strength. I can hold it up too.”
That one innocent, childish sentence washed away, in an instant, all the grievance Xie Fuling had been holding in her heart. She picked up a big piece of braised pork, both fat and lean, and placed it in her sister’s bowl. “Then eat your meat, once you’re full, you’ll have the strength for it.”
“This meat is what Mother made for Fourth Sister.”
“I can’t finish it alone. Lehuan, help me share some of it, won’t you?”
“Okay!”
Zhang Qiaofeng looked at her two affectionate daughters, feeling a sense of steadiness she’d never known before. But the moment she thought of her eldest son and his wife, she began to worry again.