Summary
My mother was the Lu family’s long-lost daughter, abducted and taken deep into the mountains.
Before she was taken, she had been married and had a two-year-old son.
Afterward, she was sold to an old man nearing sixty—and then she had me.
When I was seven, the Lu family finally came into the mountains with the police.
Sobbing, Mother clutched the son who was now ten years old.
When she looked at me, she asked the police only one thing:
“Do I have to… take this child back with me?”
The uncle I had just met and my ten-year-old brother were furious, their faces full of disgust.
“How could the Lu family ever accept the child of a bastard like that?”
Terrified, I trembled from head to toe.
I quietly pinched a corner of Mother’s shirt between my fingers, too afraid to speak or even raise my head.