Chapter 14: Orphaned

Two days later, the man called "Father" finally hurried back, travel-worn.

When he pushed open the familiar, creaking door, I didn't recognize him at first. The father in my memory was tall and quiet, with a bookish air. The man before me wore a fine-quality suit that couldn't hide his travel fatigue, had grown slightly thick around the middle, and his hair was combed to perfection. His face carried a formulaic gravity and distance; his eyes were the eyes of a stranger, mixed with impatience and a barely detectable awkwardness.

He stepped into the house. His gaze swept over the shabby little rooms, looking even barer now in their grief, and his brow creased, just slightly. His eyes came to rest on me—on the urn I held in my arms—and paused for several seconds before he managed, stiffly: "...Nian-Nian."

The voice was dry, without a trace of warmth. No excitement of reunion, no grief of loss—only the coldness of a man transacting business.

I sat on the old sofa holding Grandma's ashes. I didn't stand, didn't answer. I only watched him quietly—watched him take inventory of this home he had once lived in and long since abandoned, like an outsider to it all.

Grandma's funeral was handled by this only son of hers. He moved fast: contacting the funeral home, selecting the burial plot, filing the paperwork—everything arranged swiftly and efficiently, with the practiced smoothness of a social elite disposing of an inconvenient matter. The only thing missing was any warmth at all. The funeral was simple to the point of hasty. Few relatives or friends came; only a handful of the neighbors who had known Grandma well came to pay their respects. He stood in a black suit before the headstone, expression solemn, reciting a eulogy that could have belonged to anyone, as if completing a task that had to be checked off.

When everything was done, he didn't stay a single night in this "home" that had once been his. Before leaving, he counted out a thick stack of bills from a leather wallet that looked expensive and laid it on the old, oil-stained dinner table.

"Nian-Nian," he said, his voice as flat as if he were closing a file, "you're... an adult now. It's time you learned to live on your own. Take this money for now. From here on... look after yourself."

With that, he didn't look at me again. He didn't look at Grandma's portrait on the wall, didn't look at the little rooms where his daughter now lived alone. He turned, pulled open the creaking wooden door, and his tall figure vanished into the dim light of the stairwell outside. His footsteps faded fast, without a second's hesitation, without a trace of reluctance.

As resolute as the day he walked out on a small, bewildered girl.

I knew, of course. He had a new family now, a thousand miles away.

The door clicked shut gently, cutting off the last of the sounds outside.

The house went completely quiet. Only I remained, and the cold stack of bills on the table.

Slowly I raised my head and stared, hollow-eyed, at the closed door. Outside it was the bright new family and new life that were his now. Inside it was me—cast off completely, with nowhere to go.

The tears had long since run dry. Where my heart was, there was only a hollow, whistling with cold wind. This time, I had truly become an orphan the whole world had left behind.

Completely.