Extra: Wind Chime Alley
It was a summer long, long ago.
Without telling my husband, I took a bus ticket bought with the few yuan I had secretly saved and went to Wind Chime Alley in Whitebank Town to see how my mother-in-law was doing.
Ever since we married, my husband had forbidden me from having any contact with her.
But I had always felt that my mother-in-law, Li Suhua, was a good person.
The year I gave birth to Little Rain, she secretly sent me a few little outfits she had sewn herself, carefully embroidering the words "safe and sound" in tiny, close-set stitches of red thread.
But I was unlucky.
A large padlock hung on the wooden door at the end of the alley. My mother-in-law wasn't home.
Clutching that packet of osmanthus cakes, I didn't know where to go.
The alley was silent except for the calling cicadas.
I was wondering whether to find somewhere in town to sit and wait-perhaps my mother-in-law would be back soon?
Suddenly, a low rumble of thunder rolled across the horizon.
I looked up. At some point, the sky had darkened. Heavy clouds hung low, and the wind had picked up, sending fallen leaves swirling across the ground.
It was going to rain.
I backed farther into the alley, hoping to find some eaves to shelter beneath.
The alley was narrow, lined with old houses with gray walls and dark tiled roofs. Every door was shut. As I kept backing up, I suddenly heard a creak behind me.
I turned.
The door across from me had opened.
A young woman stood inside the doorway, wearing a plain dress, her hair loosely pinned up, an umbrella in her hand.
She looked at the dark clouds, then at me, and paused in surprise.