Chapter 3

A woman with messy hair, wearing a cheap bathrobe and holding a half-burnt cigarette, poked her head out. She looked at me with annoyance. "Who are you looking for?"

I stared at her, frozen.

It wasn't my mother.

My heart sank.

"Is Sarah living here?" I asked, using my mother's name.

The woman sized me up, her eyes filled with suspicion and judgment. "Sarah? She moved out ages ago! Left without paying months of rent! What are you to her?"

She ran away?

Left unpaid rent?

My brain went completely numb. "Do... do you know where she went?"

"How should I know?" The woman blew a cloud of smoke and scoffed. "She didn't look like she had any money anyway. Working multiple jobs just to act rich. I heard she was trying to put a daughter through college or something."

I couldn't hear a single word after that.

"Multiple jobs," "acting rich," "putting a daughter through college"...

Those words pierced my ears like sharp needles.

What kind of life was my mother actually living?

Wasn't she constantly sending us huge sums of money? How could she have fled from unpaid rent?

Where on earth was she?

Standing on that unfamiliar street, watching the crowd rush past, I felt utterly lost and helpless for the first time in my life.

My mother was gone.

In a city of millions, I had lost my only lead.

I had no choice but to report to my university first.

I started my college life just like any other freshman.

Except, there was a heavy boulder weighing down on my chest every single day.

I used all my spare time to work.

Tutoring, handing out flyers, waiting tables at restaurants.

I wanted to earn my own living. I couldn't take my mother’s money anymore.

Not that she had sent any more transfers anyway.

I even began to question how she had made those massive sums of money in the first place.

But I was too afraid to dig deeper into that thought.

Occasionally, I would call Grandma. She would always ask, "Did you see your mother? How is she? Did she gain some weight, or is she skinnier?"

Holding the phone, my throat would tighten, and I could only lie. "Yes... I saw her. She's great... Just very busy with work... She’ll come back with me during the holidays..."

The moment I hung up, my tears would fall uncontrollably.

"Mom, where are you?"

Days turned into weeks, and weeks into months.

I gradually adjusted to city life and made some new friends.

But I never stopped looking for her.

I visited job centers, asked employment agencies, and even kept an eye on missing person flyers on the streets.

Nothing.

She had vanished like a drop of water in the ocean.

One weekend during the spring semester, I was working at a high-end restaurant in Manhattan.

It was an expensive place, filled with wealthy, well-dressed people.

I was carrying a heavy tray, carefully navigating through the tables.

And then, I saw her.

She was sitting by the window.

She wore an elegant emerald green velvet dress, her hair pinned up beautifully, her makeup flawless.

She was laughing softly, talking to a distinguished-looking middle-aged man in a tailored suit.

The profile of her face was so gentle, so painfully familiar.

It felt like a lightning strike. The tray in my hands nearly crashed to the floor.

"Mom?"

"Is that my mother?"

The mother in my memory wore washed-out clothes, had dry, rough skin, and carried an air of permanent exhaustion.

The mother who hadn't come home in ten years because she was supposedly "suffering to make ends meet"?

How could this be...

She looked so elegant, so poised, as if she had belonged to this wealthy world her entire life.

The man sitting with her looked rich and influential.

The intimacy between them didn't look like a casual friendship.

A horrible, poisonous thought crawled into my mind.

She had lied to Grandma.