Autumn, 1980.
The air in Jing City was thick with the sharp smell of coal smoke.
A black Hongqi sedan rolled over a yard full of dry locust leaves and came to a stop in front of a three-story house.
The door opened.
Vivienne Ashford stepped out.
She had on old clothes with patches sewn all over them, and she was so thin she looked like a hard gust could blow her away.
But on that cool, pale face, those dark clear eyes showed no panic at all.
In the sitting room, the crystal lamp overhead was so bright it made people’s eyes ache.
A whole row of people sat on the sofa, every one of them blood family to this body of hers.
Her real father, Benjamin Ashford, a high-ranking military man with stars on his shoulders, sat stiff-faced, his stare heavy enough to press the air down.
Beside him was her real mother, Millicent Weston. She had clearly lived well, but there was a knot of worry between her brows.
Across from them sat her two brothers.
The second brother, Clifton Ashford, was still in uniform, sitting broad and straight, his face full of impatience.
The third brother, Amadeus Ashford, was still in high school, and his eyes kept drifting to the girl beside him.
That girl was the Ashfords’ adopted daughter, Rosalind Ashford.
She wore a brand-new dress, her eyes rimmed red, biting her lip as she shrank into the corner of the sofa.
"Vivienne, you’re back."
Millicent Weston looked at the face that resembled her own by almost eighty percent, and guilt made her voice come out dry and strained.
Vivienne Ashford said nothing.
"Sister..."
Rosalind Ashford shot to her feet, and the tears came the instant she stood up.
"It’s all my fault! I never should’ve let Mom and Dad adopt me. I definitely shouldn’t have taken what was supposed to be yours!"
She covered her face and cried so hard her shoulders kept shaking.
"I’ll move out right now. I’ll give everything back to you, all of it!"
With that, she turned and made to run upstairs.
Vivienne Ashford watched the whole performance with cold eyes.
Every single line was exactly the same as the scene from that true-daughter-fake-daughter novel she had read before she died.
She had been the youngest chief state-level research engineer of the twenty-first century. Then a plane crash had thrown her straight into this messy melodrama, where she became the cannon-fodder real daughter.
Amadeus Ashford had just started to rise, but Vivienne spoke first.
"No need."
Her gaze landed on Rosalind, cool and sharp.
"Put that act away. I’m not interested in this cheap little innocent-girl routine."
Rosalind’s crying stopped on the spot.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
In her last life, when this bumpkin had first come back, all she knew was how to throw fits and act jealous. So why was she suddenly refusing to follow the script?
"Vivienne Ashford!"
Clifton Ashford snapped. He pointed right at her and started cursing.
"You wild country girl, you come back and start bullying Rosalind the minute you walk in? Rosalind’s lived in this house for more than ten years. She’s our sister!"
"Sit down."
At last, Benjamin Ashford, the head of the family, spoke.
The commanding air he’d built up over years in the army made the whole living room go dead quiet.
Leaning back against the sofa, Benjamin Ashford looked Vivienne Ashford up and down, his brows locked tight.
“No manners at all.”
He lifted his enamel mug, took a sip of tea, and spoke in a voice so cold it seemed to frost the room.
“You’re back in the Ashford family now, and you don’t even know how to call your parents Mom and Dad? Is that what the orphanage taught you, to talk back?”
“You ought to look at Rosalind and learn how a proper Ashford carries herself.”