I don't know much about my father, except for the few pitiful memories of my youth, which are yellowed photographs. I once asked my brother about my father, but everything that year seemed to be the last thing my brother wanted to talk about, and he never said much, just said, when I grew up, he would tell me.

I know that my brother doesn't want me to bear too much, because people are often the saddest when they know best, and I also want to try to be a fool and pretend that nothing happened, but the memories are pieced together piece by piece, and slowly return to their original state over the years, so I have to go to the bottom and find the roots.

My father was a cadre when he was young, and after I was born, he began to turn to business, and for the first few years the business was in full swing and he became well-known in the local area. My brother and I have had more pocket money than our peers since we were young, and he always said that "my daughter's family should be rich", so I hired the best piano teacher and bought the best clothes for me at a very young age...... I also have a lot of friends in the house, all of whom are friends of my father's business, and they bring me a lot of new things every time they come.

But the good days didn't last long, and then my father's company went bankrupt, and people left to cool up, and his former friends never went to my house again. My father and mother quarreled all day long, when I was seven or eight years old, in elementary school, and my brother had just entered high school.

Later, there would often be a chubby uncle in the house, I vaguely remember my father calling him "Ah Zhou", I had not seen him before, but I didn't like him, because every time he came to my house, my father would mysteriously take him into the study, and we would talk until late at night, and every time that Uncle Ah Zhou left, my parents would quarrel even more fiercely.

My brother couldn't stand this family environment and started to live in school, only to come back once a week, and he also changed, became silent, and became not good at words. At that time, my only hope was to stand at the door on Friday afternoon and wait for my brother to come back, because it was only in the days when my brother was there that my parents would have a slight truce, and I could find the only warmth I had.

It was April 11th, and in the morning my brother drove us to my father's cemetery on the outskirts of the city. None of us spoke, except for the occasional noise from Coco, who was unaware.

My brother's eyes were red, and he must have not fallen asleep last night. On that cold and rainy night more than ten years ago, we lost our only loved one because of snooze. When I first came, I saw my brother crying in front of the cold stone monument, and I cried along, and now that we are all grown up, we know that no amount of tears can change anything.

My brother silently put a large bouquet of white chrysanthemums in front of the tombstone, and then lit a cigarette, and while the cigarette butt was burning, I couldn't help but ask, "What happened back then?" ”

In the past, every time I asked this question, my brother would always let out a long sigh and find all kinds of reasons to prevaricate me. But this time, he did not refuse my request, but told the story of the long absence, "When my mother was pregnant with you, our father worked in the agency, and he had a very good colleague and friend named Ah Zhou. Do you remember that? ”

"Hmm."

"Once, Dad and Uncle Ah Zhou were on night duty, and they accidentally found some secret documents......"

"What documents?" This is the first time I've heard of it, and I'm very curious.

"This is where it all started. Do you know what those documents are? It is about the evidence of corruption and collusion with the underworld by one of their superiors. At first, the two of them reported the incident anonymously. It's a pity that at that time, the legal system was not perfect, the officialdom was corrupt, and the officials protected each other, and the higher authorities did not make any punishments, and the matter was suppressed on the grounds of 'maintaining reputation'. ”

Dad and Uncle Zhou couldn't stand this kind of behavior and didn't want to go along with it, so they both quit their jobs in a fit of anger. Do you know? At that time, it was not easy to have an iron job bowl working in a departmental agency! ”

Later, Dad and Uncle Zhou started a partnership with the little savings they had. God pays off, their first business is very successful, and they get the first pot of gold in their lives. That winter, you were born, and your father's career improved, and the business became bigger and bigger, and he became famous in the local area......"

The elder brother sighed, as if he had been thinking about it for a long time, and continued: "But when you were eight years old, your father's company had a crisis due to the leakage of secrets, and at that time it was in urgent need of a fund to alleviate the problem of raw material procurement. Few of his friends were willing to help. People go to tea and cool, and those so-called good friends at the beginning turned out to be like hiding from the plague one by one......"

Dad and Uncle Zhou became nervous all of a sudden, because the company was already an empty shell at that time, crumbling, and many employees in the company began to change jobs. In order to appease people, they had to raise money everywhere......"

"Do you remember how often Mom and Dad quarreled that year?" My brother asked me suddenly.

"Hmm." How could I forget? During that time, every time I came home from school, it was deserted, my mother often cried, my father often smoked sullenly, my mother was no longer in the mood to help me with my schoolwork, and my father never sat next to me and listened to me play the piano......

"Why are they arguing?" I asked.

When the company was desperate, Uncle Ah Zhou offered to exchange the criminal evidence of the corrupt official he had discovered at the beginning for a sum of money in exchange for that person. Dad initially disagreed, because it was a crime to blackmail with evidence of corruption. But Uncle Zhou frequently went to our house to lobby Dad. Mom was afraid that Dad would listen to Uncle Zhou's suggestion, and asked Dad to cut off contact with Uncle Zhou many times. ”

"Daddy didn't want to, so they had an argument, didn't he?" I'm getting my head out.

"Dad always felt that Mom didn't understand him and didn't support him!"

"And then?"

"Later?" My brother's voice trembled a little, and his eyebrows were full of unwillingness, "How could she be so ruthless?" If she had insisted on staying with her dad in the first place, so many things wouldn't have happened! ”