Only I Understand His Gentle Heart novel · Chapter 9 of 24
Chapter 9: The Night Train
Ji Hanzhou stood on the platform at nine-forty with his hands at his sides and no plan.
He had faced a bridge collapse and a flooded tunnel without one either, but those had been easier.
The night train came in with a long sigh.
His mother was the third person off, a small woman in a padded jacket with a cloth bag on each arm.
Behind her a porter pushed a trunk the size of a coffin.
"There he is," said Ji Suwen, and she reached up and patted his cheek. "You're thin. They don't feed you."
"Mother. What is in the trunk?"
"Everything." She looked past his shoulder. "Where is she?"
"Asleep."
"At ten at night? She's a writer. They never sleep."
He did not answer.
His mother studied him for a moment, then patted his sleeve and said nothing more, which was worse.
On the drive to the base she told him everything she had done since March.
She had told the neighbours on both sides. She had told the tailor, the butcher and the woman at the post office.
She had bought red thread, four quilts and a jade bangle her own mother had worn.
She had been pricing venues for the banquet.
"I wanted to wait until you brought her home," she said. "But the colonel's wife telephoned tonight and said, Suwen, you must come at once, she's here. So I came."
"Mother," he said. "There is something I need to say."
"It can wait until morning."
"It cannot."
"Hanzhou." She turned in her seat, and her eyes were quick and kind in the dashboard light. "I have raised you alone for twenty years. If you have something to tell me, you can tell me when I have looked at her. A person says a different thing after they have seen the girl."
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