After winter set in, the weather grew colder and colder.
Winters in the north were especially long. After a single night's sleep, the world outside had turned into a sea of white.
Wang Cuicui crawled out from under her quilt and looked at the heavy snow outside. Sleeping on the cold kang bed only left her colder.
Although she still lived with her grandfather, Old Wang, he never called her to meals.
In the second month after Old Madam Wang's arrest, Old Wang began living with a widow from another brigade who was twenty years younger than him.
The woman had led a bitter life, too. Not long after she married, her husband insisted on going to the river to catch fish during a thunderstorm.
The consequences were easy to imagine. He had barely reached the river when a thunderclap crashed overhead. He lost his footing and fell into the water, and somehow things went wrong.
The river had only come up to his thighs, but after he fell, he could not get back on his feet no matter how hard he struggled.
During a thunderstorm, even people working in the fields would not stay outside for long.
And so he drowned in the river.
After his mother finished arranging her son's funeral, she lay down in bed that very night and passed away, too.
Just like that, the woman became a widow and lived alone for over ten years.
No one knew how she and Old Wang had gotten together, but a month after Old Madam Wang's arrest, she moved into his courtyard to look after him.
And she really did look after Old Wang alone. When Wang Cuicui first saw her, she assumed the woman would be easy to push around.
She imperiously ordered the woman to cook