Where Chen Hansong lived looked very plain next to the house at Red Leaf Estate.

The door opened straight onto a very small living room.

There was a couch in it and a glass coffee table, and no television. The kitchen was on the right, with barely any space to move around in. Jiang Meilin went in and checked the refrigerator first.

Sure enough.

The refrigerator was all but empty, a few scattered things in it and nothing else — a quarter of a cabbage, a limp carrot, and underneath those some eggs and a carton of milk.

Jiang Meilin took out the milk, glanced at it, and handed it to Chen Hansong. "This goes bad in two days. You don't look at the date before you buy it?"

Chen Hansong said awkwardly, "I bought all that two weeks ago."

Jiang Meilin let it pass and pulled open the freezer underneath. There was a great deal more in there, all of it frozen — dumplings, rice balls, steamed buns, steak…

Chen Hansong put the milk back and explained as he did it. "I don't eat at home much. Mostly I eat out."

Jiang Meilin turned and went out of the kitchen, took in the living room at a glance, and headed for the bedrooms.

Two bedrooms, a living room and a bath. The second bedroom, the one nearer the door, had been made into a storage room and had things stacked in it. The master bedroom beyond it was Chen Hansong's. It was clean — clean it certainly was — but it did not look like anybody's home. It looked like a hotel room.

Jiang Meilin did not go in. She only stood in the doorway a long time. What had caught her eye was a photograph on the nightstand.

It was from when Qingqing was still in elementary school — the three of them, in a photo studio, a family portrait.

The picture already looked like something out of another era.

But as far as Jiang Meilin was concerned, that day might have been yesterday. She could see every…