“Mom, don’t leave me behind…” Andrew Brooks murmured to himself, his trembling hand pulling out the key to unlock the door.

Pushing the door open and entering, the house was utterly silent. On the somewhat worn cotton sofa in the living room sat a stack of freshly washed, neatly folded clothes, and on the oval-shaped locust wood coffee table, a transparent mesh cover shielded a plate of egg fried rice, with a note placed beside it.

Andrew Brooks’s trembling hand shook as he picked it up and read: “Xiao Tao, Mom made you some egg fried rice for dinner. Just heat it up when you get home tonight. I have something to take care of and might not be back this evening.”

……

……

Andrew Brooks collapsed onto the sofa, his mind in turmoil. But in an instant, he calmed down again; the maturity and experience from his previous life allowed him to quickly regain his usual composure and steadiness.

There was no doubt—his stubborn mother had definitely gone out to pull some strings for him. Although he was starting to make a name for himself at the newspaper, his traditionally-minded mother was still determined to get him into a government job as an official.

But where did she go? Who would she turn to?

In ’83, his mother had brought him back from a poor little county in the west to Binhai, and became a Chinese teacher at an elementary school. Later, she studied on her own at the Open University and started teaching first-year high school Chinese at Binhai No. 2 High School. All these years, his mother had raised him alone through hardship, and aside from work, she spent almost all her time at home, doing endless housework.

His maternal grandparents had long since passed away, and his only aunt was in Yanjing. Locally, they had no relatives, and even less in the way of social connections. She was just an honest, unassuming high school teacher—who could she possibly turn to?

Time ticked by, second by second. The quartz clock above the 24-inch Changhong color TV on the TV cabinet made a ticking sound—it was already two in the afternoon.

Suddenly, Andrew Brooks felt a surge of joy as someone came to mind: the history teacher at Binhai No. 2 High School, Jack Scott.

Jack Scott had lost his wife early and was raising a daughter about the same age as Andrew Brooks, named Yangyang. The teachers at school, seeing that both Ashley Brooks and Jack Scott were single parents, had tried to match them up.

Andrew Brooks remembered clearly that Jack Scott must have had quite a fondness for Ashley Brooks; otherwise, he wouldn’t have come over so often to help the An family change their gas tanks. And that year, when 13-year-old Andrew Brooks came down with a high fever in the middle of the night, it was Jack Scott who rushed over and took him to the hospital, staying the whole night to help Ashley Brooks take care of him.

In this world, no one understood his mother’s loneliness and hardship better than Andrew Brooks. That’s why he had always supported Ashley Brooks being with Jack Scott; he felt Jack Scott was a kind and decent man, someone his mother could rely on. Yet Ashley Brooks had never agreed, keeping a vague, ambiguous relationship with Jack Scott all these years.

There was no time to think about all that now. Andrew Brooks grabbed the newly installed programmable phone, less than a year old, and quickly dialed a pager service number. The operator’s sweet voice came through the receiver, “Hello, Haihua Paging Service at your service. Would you like to page or leave a message?”

“Please page 2256897 for me. It’s urgent, please call back as soon as possible.”

After hanging up, Andrew Brooks stood there silently, waiting.

Before long, the phone rang sharply. He snatched up the receiver, and on the other end came Jack Scott’s unhurried, gentle voice, “Yazhi, is there something you need?”

“Uncle Sun, it’s me, Xiao Tao,” Andrew Brooks said urgently.

“Oh, Xiao Tao, is something wrong?”

“Uncle Sun, do you know where my mom went?…” Andrew Brooks’s voice was calm, but the hint of urgency in his tone didn’t escape Jack Scott’s notice. “I haven’t seen your mom, Xiao Tao. What’s wrong? Did something happen at home? Tell Uncle Sun…”

“Uncle Sun, do you know if my mom has any other acquaintances?”

“I don’t think so… All these years, I haven’t seen your mom interact with anyone else, just some teachers from our school.”

……

……

Getting no answer from Jack Scott, Andrew Brooks felt empty inside, waves of anxiety and dread washing over him. After a moment’s thought, he walked into his mother’s spotless bedroom and gently opened the drawer he’d always wanted to look inside but never had. He took out Ashley Brooks’s old diary, its red cover printed with the portrait of a great leader.

The diary began in 1974, the year his mother had just turned nineteen, graduated from teachers’ college, and was sent to the countryside as an educated youth in a county in the west. There, she met her first love, and had the only child of her life—Andrew Brooks… In Ashley Brooks’s elegant handwriting, the diary brimmed with the youthful passion of those years spent building the Great Northwest, and between the lines, the shadow of a man flickered faintly.

The diary abruptly ended in the summer of ’76. Andrew Brooks was born in the deep winter of that same year.

That man! The man who abandoned mother and son!

Even with more than thirty years of life experience, Andrew Brooks still couldn’t suppress a deep sense of resentment and anger. He could hardly imagine how, in those days when morality was held up as a sacred ideal, his unmarried mother managed to survive with a child. But he knew all too well how much suffering and humiliation she had endured. All of it was beyond words.