I Ran Away With His Child novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Two in the Morning

The guest annex stood at the back of the kitchen court, and nobody had changed it.

It had the same narrow bed under the same window, with a newer quilt and a lamp with a paper shade.

Mu Qing sat on the edge of the bed in his white shirt and did not lie down.

The old house was dark.

His son was asleep in a cot beside Old Madam's bed, and Mu Qing had been told not to worry.

He was worrying anyway.

The folded agreement and the soft envelope lay on the quilt beside him.

He had carried them in his jacket all day without telling anyone.

He did not know why he had taken them out.

Someone knocked on the door, three times, and did not try again.

He rose and opened it.

Xu Zhengyuan stood on the stone step in his shirtsleeves, with his tie gone and his collar open.

His eyes were red, and his hands hung at his sides.

He had walked the length of three courtyards in the dark to get there.

"I didn't know," he said.

Mu Qing did not move.

"I didn't know. I never knew. I did not agree to it, I was not told, I was in Rotterdam arguing about a ship."

His voice was hoarse.

"My mother told you I had agreed. She told me you had gone home."

"I believed her, and that is mine to carry. But I did not know."

"Come in," said Mu Qing.

Xu ducked under the lintel.

Mu Qing shut the door behind him, and the two of them stood in the small room with one lamp between them.

"I made you a promise," said Xu. "I said I would not ask. I'm going to break it. Please tell me."

Mu Qing looked at the papers on the quilt.

He had told it to Fan Yue in a sentence, and to Ran in a smaller one.

He had never said it aloud to anyone who had been there.

"I was sick on the second Tuesday of August," he said. "In the banquet kitchen, over the sink."

"The crew manager sent me to the clinic. I thought it was something I'd eaten."

"Qing," said Xu.

"The clinic said eight weeks. I said that couldn't be right, and then I worked back the calendar."

His mouth moved.

"The crew manager told the house the same afternoon. I don't think he meant harm. He thought it was news."

Xu sat down on the only chair, very still.

"Your mother sent for me the next day," said Mu Qing. "I stood in front of her desk."

"She told me the child would be raised in the house by her own nurse."

"I would take three million yuan and a ticket out of the city, and I would not write or call."

"She had no right," said Xu.

"She said, my son has agreed."

Mu Qing heard how flat his own voice had gone.

"I waited for you to walk in. I stood in that room for an hour."

"I thought, he'll come through the door and say no. And you didn't. And I thought, he's agreed. Of course he has. He's a Xu."

"I was at sea," said Xu.

"I know that now," said Mu Qing. "I didn't know it then."

"There was no note, Zhengyuan. There was a bowl and a saucer on the counter and nothing under it."

It was the first time he had said the name without the surname in front of it.

Xu heard it, and his face changed.

"I left a note." His voice broke. "Under the saucer. My name and my number."

"I wrote it on a menu card, in the kitchen, while you were asleep."

Mu Qing said nothing for a moment.

"There was nothing," he said.

"Then someone took it."

"The housekeeper cleared the kitchen at first light."

"On my mother's word," said Xu, almost to himself.

Mu Qing did not hear the rest.

He had been steady for six years, and steady for the whole long day, and there was nothing left.

He stood in the middle of the room and began to shake.

"I waited nineteen days," he said, and his voice cracked wide open.

"I sat on my bed with the phone in my hand. I told myself you were busy. I told myself, you've lost the number."

He was shaking hard now.

"Then it was August, and I was alone on a platform with a train ticket and a child I couldn't feel yet."

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