156 At her wit's ends

Mr. Wang was deeply disturbed to see his son in such a defeatist zone.

"And what if she doesn't? Will you just give up?" he queried gently.

Wei looked at the weather outside which looked gloomy as compared to the sunshine from the day before.

"I will wait for her…"

Xie Mansion

"I need you to trace a person's movements for me right away. I am sending you the details now," Tang spoke urgently in the phone.

"Where is the fire, Tang? You always seem to be coming and going of your own free will. When are you planning to join back work?" his father asked him.

He was seated at the breakfast table when Tang entered. He completely disregarded his father's words and turned to speak with his mother who was sitting next to him.

"Mom, I will be gone for the next few days. Will try and be in touch as and when I can. I am going to my room to pack," with that he walked away.

"What is the meaning of this? Where is he going? How can he ignore me and walk away?" he asked angrily.

Whatever the situation, Tang had never been impolite towards his parents. Apart from the occasional barb, he stayed neutral if not normal. But today he had clearly been in a defiant mode and Mr. Xie was having a tough time digesting that.

"Maybe this time his heart doesn't have any space left to accommodate anyone else except one person. Just give him some time. He will wrap his head around this and go back to his artificial self soon," Mrs. Xie replied with a decided edge to her voice.

He looked at his wife in surprise. It seemed everyone had gotten up from the wrong side of the bed today. In their thirty years of marriage, she had never spoken to him in such manner. He put his knife and fork down and excused himself from the table, just to show his displeasure at the mother-son's behaviour.

Mrs. Xie couldn't be bothered by her husband's sensibilities at the moment. She took a deep breath. Fortifying herself, she went up to her son's room. He was rummaging through his drawers with the hand which wasn't in cast and throwing in stuff haphazardly into an overnight bag. Wordlessly, she took the clothes from his hand and sat down to arrange the same in the bag.

He stood quietly watching her, before uttering in a defeated voice, "she has gone away, without saying a single word to me. I am hoping against hope that I find her in Moganshan but my instinct is telling me otherwise. How did it all go so wrong? Why can't she see that I did it all for us to be together. She didn't even give me a chance to explain it all properly. How much longer should we go through pain before happiness finds us?"

Mrs. Xie pulled her son next to her and patted his back soothingly. She couldn't see him in pain but on the other hand, she didn't want to give him false hopes. She could understand why Jia Li took the decision to walk away from the situation. Even if Tang managed to find her, she didn't think that he would be able to convince her to come back to him, especially under the current circumstances. She knew that her son had been reduced to this state of misery all because of one man and she hated him for it!

"What? She has left the house? Are you sure that this is not a stunt, Aunt Wang?" Mei Zhen asked, with hope in her voice.

She had been at her wits' ends trying to think of a way to bring her life back on track. But she had never imagined that Jia Li would throw away such a golden opportunity at choosing either of the men. She couldn't understand that woman. Why entice so many men if she wasn't interested in playing with them?

Shrugging mentally, she started thinking about how to get back into the Xie Mansion. The only person who could help her at this juncture was her father in-law. A well-rehearsed apology to him could bring her back into his good graces immediately and that was half the battle won.

Outskirts of Moganshan

Jia Li closed her eyes in exhaustion. She was sitting in a cab travelling back from Moganshan to Shanghai. She had left the Wang residence at 4am and had gone to Moganshan for probably the last time. By the time she had packed essentials and shut the house, it was 9am.

She had then gone to a lawyer friend's residence and handed him the power of attorney to take care of her house's sale and the responsibility for its upkeep till then. She had bid a silent, tearful goodbye to her childhood town and headed back towards the Pudong airport in Shanghai.