The house was freezing—an icebox.

That’s when I remembered. The water, electricity, and gas had been shut off seven years ago.

With a sigh, I pulled my phone from my bag, ready to call someone to get them reconnected. But after scrolling through my contacts, I realized I had no idea who to even call.

No choice but to head to the factory office and ask.

After locking the door, I made my way slowly downstairs.

Just as I stepped into the courtyard, I spotted a familiar old-fashioned three-wheeler parked below.

The owner was a man in his fifties, surnamed Joe—everyone called him Uncle Joe. Back when my father was still around, Uncle Joe had been a driver in the factory’s transport team.

“Uncle Joe?”

I called out tentatively.

Hunched over and smoking, he glanced up at the sound of my voice. He squinted at me for a long moment before his face brightened with recognition. “Well, I’ll be! If it isn’t Benjamin’s girl, little Dorothy! You’ve finally come back!”

Meeting someone familiar in this unfamiliar place thawed a sliver of the ice in my heart.

“Yes, Uncle Joe. I’m back for a visit.”

“Good that you’re back, good that you’re back!” He stamped out his cigarette and waved me over warmly. “Where you headed? Let me give you a ride!”

“I was going to the factory office to ask about the water and electricity.”

“Perfect! That’s on my way! Hop on!”

I climbed into Uncle Joe’s three-wheeler. With a sputter, the vehicle came to life, carrying me away from the housing complex that held half a lifetime of my memories.

“Just saw that Gregory kid earlier, driving a fancy car,” Uncle Joe said as he pedaled, making small talk. “You two… made up?”

“No.”

My reply was flat.

“Ah.” Uncle Joe sighed. “What a perfect pair you were back then. How did it ever come to this? We all watched Gregory grow up. How could he… do something like that?”

The wind whipped against my face, sharp as a blade.

I stayed silent for a moment. Then, as if possessed, I poured out everything I’d bottled up for seven years to this not-so-familiar Uncle Joe.

Maybe it was because I was dying. Some things, if left unsaid, would never have another chance.

Or maybe I was just too lonely.

“Uncle Joe, do you know Laura?”

“Laura? Sure, I know her. That girl who used to follow you around like a shadow—like your own sister.”

“Yeah. Like my own sister.”

I tugged at the corner of my mouth, producing a smile uglier than tears.

Laura and I really were as close as sisters.

Her family was poor. Her parents were always away in other cities, caught up in some “multi-level marketing” scheme—a pyramid scam, to put it bluntly.

She practically grew up eating at our house.

My mother felt sorry for her, sharing every good thing we had.

I considered her my best friend, my closest confidante. I’d even given us a nickname—the “Dorothy-Laura Duo.” We were a match made in heaven, I used to say, the perfect pair of sisters.

Looking back now, it’s all so bitterly ironic.

After university, I became a teacher in Rivermouth, while Gregory stayed in the Capital City and joined a top law firm. We became a long-distance couple.

To end the separation—to be by his side and take care of him—I ignored my parents’ objections, quit my stable job, and moved to the Capital City.

I was so full of joy, thinking I was rushing toward our future.

I never imagined it was the beginning of my nightmare.

I wanted to surprise Gregory, so I never told him I was coming.

Using the address he’d given me, I found the apartment he was renting.

The door was unlocked. I pushed it open and stepped inside—only to freeze at the sight forever seared into my memory.

There was my husband, entangled with my best friend, both of them naked on the bed.

In that instant, my entire world crumbled.

I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry out. I just stood there, my blood turning to ice.

Laura noticed me first.

When her eyes met mine, she didn’t even flinch. Instead, she sat up from Gregory’s arms and gave me a triumphant smile.

Then she pulled an ornate tin box from the nightstand and opened it right before me.

It was brimming with letters—letters Gregory had written to her.

The earliest was dated the summer after their college entrance exams.

In it, Gregory called her *my lily, my perfect one, the light of my life*. He wrote that meeting me had been an accident in his life, while she was the one fate had destined for him. He promised to be good to me only because my father had funded his education—a debt of gratitude, nothing more.

Every page, every line, was a fresh stab to the heart, each word dipped in venom.

So the childhood sweethearts I thought we were, the mutual affection I’d believed in—all of it had been a one-woman show from the very beginning.

I was the one who was laughably, painfully superfluous.

“What happened then?”

Joe’s voice pulled me back from the memory.

“Then,” I said, my voice eerily calm, “they came for my father.”

Just three days after I discovered the affair, an anonymous tip was made to the city’s disciplinary committee. My father was accused of embezzling a hundred thousand yuan by abusing his position.

A hundred thousand—an astronomical sum in those days, enough to ruin a man and his family’s reputation forever.

My father was suspended pending investigation.

He had lived his whole life with integrity. How could he bear such slander?

Before the investigation team could get to the truth, he leaped from the roof of the factory offices, using his own life to prove his innocence.

Later, the truth finally came out.

That hundred thousand yuan *had* been moved by my father from the factory funds, but it wasn’t embezzlement.

It was the summer of Gregory’s sophomore year. His grandmother had suddenly fallen gravely ill and urgently needed surgery.

Our family’s savings had just been drained by my uncle’s medical treatment. With nowhere else to turn, my father temporarily used the public funds, intending to repay everything as soon as the year-end bonus was issued.

But he never made it to that day.