Chapter 39 (1)
With white walls, black tiles, and moss on the slate, Jiang Jingchuan took out the key from his pocket, opened the door, turned his head, and said to Su Yan, “Come in. An a part-time worker came to clean it the other day, so the house should be clean. “
Su Yan followed Jiang Jingchuan and walked in. There was a large yard inside. There was a grapevine trellis on one side of the yard, stone tables and stone benches under the shelf, and flowers and plants planted on the other side. The people took care of them carefully, but it still looked quite messy.
“I don't know why, but the vine doesn't bear grapes anymore. When I was young, there would be a lot of grapes every summer. It's strange to say it, but after my grandmother left, it stopped bearing grapes. None of the other methods worked too.” Jiang Jingchuan walked under the vine and reminisced with Su Yan about his childhood.
For Jiang Jingchuan, this small yard is proof that he had a carefree childhood.
It was summer, there were chilled watermelons and his grandma fanning him, truly one of his best memories… Su Yan noticed some engravings on the wall, she pointed to the black lines one after another and asked, “What is this?”
Jiang Jingchuan was a bit shy, and this time his voice is much lower, “My grandmother recorded my height.”
Every time he came to his grandmother's house, his grandmother would always make him lean against the wall, and then she would record his height with a black charcoal pen. After a while, she would always pat his head with a smile and say that our Xiaochuan has grown taller again. “Come, come here.” Su Yan pulled Jiang Jingchuan, made him lean against the wall, and took out the lipstick from her bag. She tiptoed hard, drew a stroke on the wall, and said with a smile: “Okay, this is Mr. Jiang's height when he was twenty-eight years old. Maybe grandma will see it when she comes back.”
Su Yan believed in the existence of ghosts, and it is precisely this unswerving belief that made her stay strong.
She always believed that her family was by her side in another form. Just because she couldn't see them, didn't mean they disappeared.
As long as she thought like this, no matter what setbacks or grievances she encountered. She will always feel that her mother and nanny were holding her.
Jiang Jingchuan was stunned for a while after hearing this. He then rubbed her head and said slowly, “Well, that's why I brought you here. Grandma will definitely think that I have a good eye.”
“It's not that you have a good eye.” Su Yan argued Said, “Obviously, your grandparents have good eyesight, so they chose me to be their granddaughter-in-law.”
Now she wasn't very curious about why Old Madam Jiang favored her, but the pair was sincere to her, and that was enough.
There might be another story here.
Jiang Jingchuan thought about it and felt that what Su Yan said was right. He nodded, “It seems I have to thank my grandparents. If it wasn't for them, I wouldn’t be able to touch you.”
It was a strange feeling. He was still having headaches about this marriage a few months ago. Jiang Jinchuan didn't know if it was time to end it. Now, he started to feel fortunate to have married her.
“I don't know if what you said is true. I don't know if it's perfunctory.” Su Yan held back her laughter. She knew that what Jiang Jingchuan said was true, but what he and she should thank the most was the original body. Whether the original body was dead or whether she is occupying another person's body and living well, she will always be extremely grateful to the original Su Yan.
Jiang Jingchuan hugged her and walked into the house, smiling: “If what I said is true or not, won’t you know? I won't say it here. Maybe my grandmother is watching me, it would be too embarrassing. I'll tell you when we get home.”
The house was a two-story building, the walls of the house were covered with ivy, and because it was in the innermost part of the alley, it was still cool despite it being a hot summer.
The furnishings in the house were simple. Jiang Jingchuan pulled Su Yan to sit on the bamboo bed in the main room, patted the bamboo bed that made a creaking noise, and said, “Do you have this at home? In summer, after eating and washing, my grandmother would move the bamboo bed to the yard, and I would sit on it to watch the stars and eat watermelon. I used to think that the bed looked big, but now it looks so small.”
Of course, Su Yan had no recollection of this kind of bamboo bed. She shook her head and was afraid she would be exposed, so she said, “Maybe, but I don't remember it.”
“My grandmother was a very kind-hearted person. In fact, my mother's family is really very ordinary. My grandfather died when my mother was still in junior high school, and my grandmother took the burden of carrying everything. After my mother married, the neighbors asked my grandmother why she didn’t move to the big villa. After all, her daughter married so richly that they all thought my grandmother had a lot of money, but it wasn’t true. Every time my mother wanted to give my grandmother money, she didn’t want it. She told my mother that living in a wealthy family was not easy, and everyone in the family would have opinions about her giving cash.”
“You know, before my grandmother passed, her consciousness was a little sluggish, so she pulled me and asked me to look at an iron box in her closet, we opened it, and it was a passbook with 50,000 yuan in it, all of which she saved, and my grandmother said that the money should be reserved for me to marry a wife.” When Jiang Jingchuan said this, he spoke very slowly.
Jiang Jingchuan wasn’t short of money at all. Grandma also knew that her 50,000 yuan wasn't enough for Jiang Jingchuan to buy clothes, but to Jiang Jingchuan, the 50,000 yuan was the most precious.
“Actually, I like my mother's relatives very much. To be honest, they are more human than my father's. My uncles and aunts can obviously rely on my mother to live a good life, but they never did. My mother took a penny here, and they are as kind as my grandmother, and I think my mother's life must not be easy when she gets married, Xiaoyan, after a while, I will take you to see my uncles.”
While Su Yan was listening, she felt a thump in her heart, and she always felt that she was really different in Jiang Jingchuan's mind.
In fact, from what Jiang Jingchuan said, she could feel that he has deep feelings for his relatives on his grandmother's side. He was now bringing her to his grandmother's former residence. He also said that he would bring her to his uncles. He saw her as his wife to some extent.
Not the Jiang family's Mrs. Jiang, but his wife
“Well, I also want to see my uncle and the others. Did they come during the wedding?” Su Yan asked such a question confidently because Jiang Jingchuan knew she was reluctant when she got married, making it normal for her to not notice them.
Jiang Jingchuan glanced at Su Yan and nodded, “Come on, in fact, my uncles also like you very much. They mention you every time they call, but you also know that at that time... we were not so good.”
"It's normal to like me.” Su Yan said very embarrassingly: “Everyone likes me.”As the relationship between the two deepened, they also relaxed a lot in their conversation.
"Yes, yes. Mrs. Jiang is adorable." Jiang Jingchuan looked at her and smiled, his eyes were filled with doting.
After resting for a while, Jiang Jingchuan took Su Yan to the bedroom. The bed was covered with clean sheets with blue flowers on a white background. There were also dressers and wardrobes in the room. They looked very old. There was a sheet beside the bed. There was a rattan chair with a fan on it. Su Yan guessed that this should be Jiang Jingchuan's grandmother's room. Sure enough, when she looked up, there was a black and white photo hanging on the wall. The woman was wearing a cheongsam, standing under the tree. Looking like a lady from the Republic of China