Congratulations on Your Wedding - Chapter 3
Chapter 3
The rain fell harder and harder. Mist rose from the eaves, and the wind drove icy water against my body.
It was nearly impossible to find a taxi in weather like this.
Growing more frantic by the second, I tried to book a car while repeatedly messaging my mother for news of Grandma. Distracted, I twisted my ankle.
Someone caught me from behind.
I turned. It was Song Chenzhi.
“Don’t be stubborn. Getting to your grandmother is what matters now.”
“I didn’t follow you right away because I went to bring the car around from the garage.”
I looked at him and was about to answer when Chen Qing came running toward us from the distance.
She was soaked through. Water dripped steadily from her long hair. She looked both fragile and deranged.
“Song Chenzhi.” Her voice was hoarse.
He stared at her.
Neither of them said another word.
She was the one standing in the rain, yet I felt as though my own clothes were drenched, frozen into heavy armor that crushed the breath from my lungs.
“I’m going to give her an umbrella,” Song Chenzhi said suddenly. He took one from the car.
But Chen Qing clutched her chest and collapsed before he reached her.
Before I could react, Song Chenzhi thrust the open umbrella into my hand and rushed over.
He scooped her up and carefully laid her in the car. Only when he was about to pull away did he remember to lower the window and explain.
“Xixi, Chen Qing has a heart condition. She’s been out in the rain, and I’m afraid something will happen. I need to get her to the hospital right away—”
The car surged forward before he finished. He did not seem to hesitate for even a second.
All that remained was a hurried “I’m sorry,” swallowed almost at once by the downpour.
By the time I finally found a car and reached the hospital in the countryside, it was already two in the afternoon the next day.
The doctors had issued two critical-condition notices. My mother had called me over and over, begging me to hurry.
I was still too late.
I never got to see Grandma one last time.
The old woman who had been alive only yesterday now lay beneath a cold white sheet. My mother sobbed in my stepfather’s arms.
I stood there numbly, my head roaring.
My phone chimed.
Chen Qing again.
She had sent two taunting messages and several photographs.
They had been taken at a hospital, in what appeared to be a private room with expensive furnishings.
The first showed a pair of long, pale female legs—clearly Chen Qing’s.
The second looked as if it had been taken in secret. Song Chenzhi was changing with his back to the camera. A bright red scratch ran across it, fresh enough that beads of blood still welled along the mark.
“Guess what we just did?”
Many people came to pay their respects on the day of Grandma’s funeral. Her portrait stood at the center of a long table at the far end of the mourning hall.
In the photograph, she watched me with the same familiar, loving gaze that had always seemed capable of forgiving anything.
I saw her as she had been when my parents divorced. Neither of them wanted custody of me, so Grandma had pulled me into her arms and said that she wanted me.
I saw her again on a video call after I told her Song Chenzhi had proposed. She cried with me.
“Xiao Song is a good boy. All those years you were overseas, he often came out here to visit me.”
Grandma had fallen ill shortly before the wedding and could not travel to attend it. I had been miserable for days.
Song Chenzhi stroked my hair. “We can have two weddings, one Western and one Chinese. We’ll hold the Chinese ceremony at Grandma’s house. Don’t be sad, all right?”
Grandma had been thrilled.
“When you come, Xiao Song, Grandma will open a jar of plum wine. Even when Xixi’s father wanted some, I wouldn’t let him touch it.”
She had truly adored him.
That was why, on the day I canceled the wedding, she had carefully messaged me to ask what had happened.
I had not known how to explain, so I never answered.
Tears slipped silently to the corners of my mouth. I watched numbly as one mourner after another stepped forward to pay their respects.
When I went to wash my face, a familiar hoarse voice sounded behind me.
“Xixi, I’m sorry for your loss.”
It was Song Chenzhi.
He met my gaze, the pity and guilt in his eyes undisguised.
“I didn’t know Grandma’s condition was so serious that day—”
The crack of my palm against his face cut him off.
His eyes darkened. His Adam’s apple bobbed.
“Xixi, I mishandled everything before. From now on, I’ll stay with you.”
As I looked at the regret in his eyes, the nurse’s words replayed in my head.
“The old lady held on because she was waiting for you. If you had arrived half an hour earlier…”
Grandma had stopped breathing half an hour before I reached the hospital.
My heart swelled with such pain it felt ready to burst. I turned to leave, but Song Chenzhi caught my wrist.
I had thought I could control myself. At that moment, I finally broke.
“Song Chenzhi, what were you doing with Chen Qing at the hospital while Grandma was dying?”
He froze.
I shoved Chen Qing’s messages in front of him.
“You told me she was only your junior. You abandoned me for her again and again because you were afraid her unstable behavior would get her hurt.”
“What about now? Is she still only your junior?”
It seemed to take him a moment to understand.
“Nothing happened between us.”
His jaw tightened, and his gaze slowly turned cold.
“That day, I wanted to leave and come after you. She held a fruit knife to her wrist and threatened me. While we struggled over it, she clawed my back.”
“I didn’t understand why she had done that. Now I see she wanted the photograph.”
“Do you think I can still believe you?”
Helplessness flickered across his face.
“We’re over. Leave.”
I did not say another word to him for the rest of the funeral.
