When My Parents Charged Me by the Minute for Their Love I Left Chapter 08

When My Parents Charged Me by the Minute for Their Love I Left Chapter 08

The next day, Mom went to the house where Grandma had once lived.

It took her three tries to get the key into the lock.

When the door opened, years of settled dust drifted towards her.

The pencil marks measuring my childhood height were still on the living room wall.

Age seven. Four feet.

Age nine. Four feet five inches.

Age eleven. Almost five feet.

Beside each mark was a note in Grandma’s handwriting.

[My sweetheart has grown taller again today.]

Mom reached out to touch the words, and a layer of dust clung to her fingertips.

Then she noticed another tiny line of writing near the bottom.

[Mom picked me up today. Eighteen minutes. I was so happy.]

Mom’s hand went still against the wall.

After that, the entries grew fewer.

[Dad came to my awards ceremony. Twenty-seven minutes.]

[Mom took me to the doctor. Forty-five minutes.]

Later, only the height marks remained.

No more Dad.

No more Mom.

An old notebook of Grandma’s lay in a bedroom drawer.

Mom opened it to the first page.

[She keeps asking me what time her mom and dad will be home.]

The next page read:

[She didn’t ask today. She heated up her own dinner and finished her homework by herself.]

Then the next:

[Sweetheart says she won’t call them even when she’s ill. She’s afraid they’ll deduct her entire living allowance and she’ll have nothing to eat. It breaks my heart to hear her say that.]

The notebook began to tremble in Mom’s hands.

She pressed one hand against the pages, but the tears kept falling.

By the time Dad arrived, she was sitting on the floor with Grandma’s old notebook clutched to her chest.

“We always thought she’d learnt to be independent.”

Her voice was painfully hoarse.

“But all she really learnt was to stop coming to us.”

Dad said nothing.

He took out his phone and called me again.

The call didn’t go through.

His messages were blocked.

His emails went unanswered.

He had his assistant look into my overseas university applications, but they could only confirm that I had

applied to schools in several different countries.

No one knew where I had ended up.

For the first time, Dad realised that if a child truly wanted to leave her parents, she could disappear without leaving a single clue behind.

That afternoon, they took the broken cassette recorder to the repair shop.

Mom held the tape, already close to snapping, in the palm of her hand.

“Cost isn’t an issue. Please. You have to fix it.”

The grey-haired owner shook his head.

“This isn’t about the budget. The tape has to be spliced back together bit by bit. Rushing it won’t help.”

Mom stared at him.

“How long will it take?”

“I can’t give you a time.”

She instinctively glanced at her watch.

Then she suddenly took it off and shoved it into her handbag.

“Take as long as you need. Please, don’t rush it.”

They waited through the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, then stayed until the shop closed.

For the first time, Mom sat on a hard wooden chair and did nothing but wait for someone’s voice.

Near midnight, the owner finally managed to restore a short section.

Static crackled from the machine for a long time.

Then Grandma’s voice came through in broken fragments.

“Sweetheart… don’t keep waiting for your mom and dad…”

Mom suddenly covered her mouth.

Another burst of static followed.

“They’re busy… Grandma will stay with you…”

The recording jammed again.

The owner quickly switched off the machine.

Mom bent forward, her shoulders shaking uncontrollably.

Dad stood behind her, his eyes red.

His phone rang.

One of the company executives reminded him about an important meeting the following day.

Dad glanced at the screen.

“Cancel it.”

The executive hesitated.

“Mr Parker, we’ve been preparing for this meeting for three months.”

“Cancel it.”

Dad ended the call.

Mom suddenly gave a short laugh.

But the more she laughed, the harder she cried.

“When she had a fever, we wouldn’t even cancel one meeting for her.”

“What’s the point of cancelling one now? Who’s it for?”

Dad’s lips moved, but no words came out.

The next day, they spent another full day sitting in the repair shop.

The cassette still couldn’t be fully restored.

But they no longer had anywhere else they needed to rush to.

No one was waiting for them at home either.

The time they had once been so reluctant to give me now stretched out before them, empty minute after

empty minute.

That evening, Mom sent me an email.

It contained only one sentence.

[Madison, I’ve got time now.]

She waited for a reply long after sending it.

She stayed up until dawn.

The screen never lit up once.