That night, I moved the savings book.
I didn’t tell Daniel.
The next morning, I took it to a bank and placed it in a private safe-deposit box together with my father’s notebook and the old key.
Then I called a lawyer.
Not because I wanted a divorce.
Not yet.
I simply wanted to know exactly what belonged to me.
The answer was reassuring.
My father’s inheritance was mine.
I kept the 1,200,000 yuan untouched.
And then I waited.
My father’s note had said one year.
So I decided to give him that year.
Daniel’s questions gradually stopped.
For a while, I almost convinced myself that I had imagined everything.
Then, eight months after my father’s death, Daniel came home unusually excited.
“I found an investment opportunity.”
He opened his laptop.
His college friend had started a technology company and needed capital.
Daniel wanted to invest 600,000 yuan.
“We don’t have that kind of money,” I said.
“We could borrow against the apartment.”
“No.”
His smile disappeared.
“Why?”
“Because it’s our home.”
He leaned back.
“Your father left you something, didn’t he?”
There it was.
The question he had been circling for months.
I kept my expression neutral.
“Why do you think that?”
“He worked his entire life.”
“So?”
“So he must have had savings.”
I stared at him.
Daniel immediately softened his voice.
“I’m not asking for myself. I’m thinking about our future.”
“No.”
“What?”
“Whatever my father left me isn’t available for your investment.”
His face changed.
Only briefly.
But I saw it.
Anger.
Then he smiled again.
“Fine.”
He closed the laptop.
“We won’t discuss it.”
That should have reassured me.
Instead, I became more afraid.
Because Daniel had never asked whether my father left money.
He had spoken as if he already knew.
Two weeks later, I returned home early.
The apartment was quiet.
Daniel wasn’t supposed to finish work until seven.
Yet his shoes were by the entrance.
I heard his voice from the study.
“I’m telling you, the old man definitely left more than the apartment.”
I stopped.
Daniel was on the phone.
“No, she hasn’t told me.”
Silence.
“Because her father poisoned her against me before he died.”
My hand tightened around my bag.
Then Daniel said something that made my blood turn cold.
“I searched the old house already.”
I stopped breathing.
“When?”
A pause.
“The week after the funeral.”
My father had been dead seven days.
While I was barely sleeping, my husband had secretly entered his house searching for money.
Daniel continued:
“The savings book wasn’t there.”
My legs nearly weakened.
Then another sentence came.
“I think she moved it.”
I stepped backward before he could discover me.
I left the apartment silently.
That evening, I returned at my normal time.
Daniel kissed my forehead.
Asked about work.
Made tea.
I looked at him across the dining table and finally understood something my father had probably understood much earlier.
A person didn’t need to hate you to betray you.
Sometimes greed was enough.
Eleven months after my father’s death, I received a call from an unknown number.
“Mrs. Chen?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Attorney Wu. I represented your father regarding a private matter.”
I sat upright.
“What matter?”
“Your father instructed me to contact you exactly one month before the anniversary of his death.”
My heart began pounding.
We met the next morning.
Attorney Wu placed a sealed envelope on the table.
My name was written across it in my father’s handwriting.
Inside was a letter.
My daughter,
If you are reading this, you probably already started understanding why I asked you to wait.
I had to stop.
Attorney Wu quietly pushed a glass of water toward me.
I continued.
My father wrote that Daniel had approached him several times during his illness.
Not about my health.
Not about our marriage.
About money.
Daniel had asked whether the old neighborhood would be demolished.
Whether the apartment belonged entirely to my father.
Whether he had savings.
At first, Dad thought Daniel was simply planning our future.
Then something happened.
Daniel asked him to sign a document.
He claimed it was authorization to handle hospital reimbursements.
My father read everything before signing anything.
He had been a teacher for thirty-four years.
The document wasn’t about medical expenses.
It was a property authorization.
It would have given Daniel broad authority over the old apartment.
My father refused.
Daniel never mentioned it to me.
But Dad began watching him.
That was why he had written the warning.
That was why he hid the savings.
I looked at Attorney Wu.
“Why wait a year?”
He opened another folder.
“Because your father wanted to know what Daniel would do if he believed the old apartment had little value.”
I frowned.
Attorney Wu unfolded a municipal redevelopment notice.
My father’s neighborhood had been selected for a major urban renewal project.
Owners would receive substantial compensation.
“How much?”
“For your father’s unit, approximately 3.8 million yuan.”
I stared at him.
The 1.2 million had never been the real test.
The apartment was.
“Did Daniel know?”
Attorney Wu’s expression became serious.
“Your father believed he did.”
That evening, I didn’t confront Daniel.
I did something simpler.
I lied.
At dinner I said:
“I’ve decided to sell Dad’s apartment.”
Daniel’s chopsticks stopped.
“For how much?”
“Maybe 700,000.”
“Don’t.”
Too fast.
Too sharp.
I looked up.
“Why?”
He immediately corrected his tone.
“The market is bad. Wait.”
“For what?”
“Maybe redevelopment.”
My heart sank.
“How would you know?”
“I heard rumors.”
“From whom?”
Daniel smiled.
“People talk.”
I nodded.
“Fine.”
Three days later, I told him something else.
“My father’s savings were only about 80,000 yuan.”
Daniel stared at me.
“That’s all?”
“Yes.”
He couldn’t hide the disappointment.
That night, he barely spoke to me.
And at two in the morning, while pretending to sleep, I heard him leave the bedroom.
The next morning, Attorney Wu called.
“Someone attempted to obtain information about the apartment.”
“Who?”
“Your husband.”
There was no pain this time.
Only clarity.
My father had been right.
On the anniversary of Dad’s death, Daniel came home to find two envelopes on the dining table.
He opened the first.
Divorce papers.
His face changed.
“What is this?”
“The end.”
He laughed nervously.
“Because I asked about your inheritance?”
“No.”
I placed copies of everything before him.
The property authorization he had once tried to make Dad sign.
Records showing his inquiries about redevelopment.
The dates he accessed the old building.
His face became progressively paler.
“You investigated me?”
“My father did.”
Daniel froze.
I placed Dad’s final letter on the table.
“He knew.”
For once, Daniel had nothing to say.
Then his eyes moved toward the second envelope.
“What is that?”
“The answer to the question you’ve been asking for a year.”
I opened it.
The savings certificate showed 1,200,000 yuan.
Daniel stared.
Then I placed the redevelopment valuation beside it.
3.8 million.
His lips parted.
“Your father had five million yuan?”
“No.”
I looked directly at him.
“My father left me security.”
I gathered the documents.
“And you spent a year proving why he didn’t leave you access to any of it.”
Daniel stood.
“I never wanted to steal from you.”
“You tried to get Dad’s signature while he was sick.”
“I was planning for us!”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
Silence.
That was the only answer I needed.
I took my suitcase.
Daniel suddenly blocked the doorway.
“What about seven years together?”
I looked at the man I had met in a university library.
Maybe part of him had loved me once.
But love without respect had become entitlement.
“My father gave you a year too, Daniel.”
He frowned.
“You just didn’t know you were being tested.”
I walked past him.
Two months after the divorce, the redevelopment agreement was finalized.
I kept Dad’s old desk.
His lesson plans.
His photographs.
And that worn copper key, even though there was no longer a door for it to open.
I thought the story had ended.
Then Attorney Wu called again.
“There’s something you should see.”
When I arrived, he placed an old photograph on his desk.
My father was standing outside his apartment building.
Beside him was Daniel.
The photograph had been taken eighteen months before Dad died.
But there was a third person.
A woman.
I recognized her immediately.
Daniel’s mother.
“What is this?”
Attorney Wu’s expression was grim.
“Your father hired someone to investigate after Daniel tried to obtain the property authorization.”
He pushed another document toward me.
“Daniel wasn’t the first member of his family to ask about that apartment.”
I looked down.
Years before Daniel and I married, his mother had already requested information about ownership records in my father’s neighborhood.
My hands went cold.
“That isn’t possible. Daniel met me at university.”
Attorney Wu nodded slowly.
“That’s what your father believed too.”
He opened the final file.
Inside was a photocopy of my university admission record.
Someone had requested it two weeks before Daniel first approached me in the library.
The applicant’s surname was Chen.
Suddenly, I remembered the story I had repeated affectionately for seven years.
Daniel dropping a rubber band beside my feet.
Daniel pretending it was an accident.
Daniel using it as an excuse to speak to me.
I had always believed that was the beginning of our love story.
My father, apparently, had died wondering whether it had been an accident at all.
