I Ran Away With His Child novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: Table Four, Again
The bag was heavier than he remembered, and it smelled of six years of shop dust and vinegar.
Mu Qing sat on the cold tiles in front of the shelf, with one lamp on, and unzipped it.
He took everything out and laid it in a row on the floor.
Two shirts, folded small, one of them child-sized.
A paper map of the Zhenjiang bus lines with the route to the hospital marked in pencil.
A tin of biscuits, empty.
Forty thousand yuan in notes, the whole of what he had saved in the first year.
A baby sock, grey with washing.
And a train ticket, Ningbo to Zhenjiang, dated six years and four months ago, soft at the folds.
He held that one a long time.
Someone's bare feet came down the stairs.
Xu Zhengyuan stood at the bottom in the quilt, with his hair on end and the iron ring on his hand.
He saw the row on the floor, and the open bag, and said nothing.
Then he sat down on the tiles beside Mu Qing, with the quilt over both their shoulders.
"I kept it packed," said Mu Qing. "In case your mother came, or someone like her."
"I thought I'd need to be gone in four minutes."
"I know," said Xu.
"I tried it once. I stood at the back door with Ran on my arm. The lock was stiff."
"It took me a minute to get it open, and I thought, I can't even leave properly."
"You never had to," said Xu.
"I know that now."
Xu reached over and picked up the sock.
He turned it over in his big hand, and his throat moved.
"May I?" he said.
"Keep it."
"I'd like to keep it somewhere."
"Put it on the shelf by the photograph," said Mu Qing. "My grandmother won't mind."
He took the train ticket and smoothed it flat on his knee.
After a moment he got up and found a pin in the drawer under the till.
He pinned the ticket to the wall beside the framed picture of the stout woman with the pot lid.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of I Ran Away With His Child are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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