Chapter 7 — Protecting Mom, Once Again

Diep Man Ngung was nowhere to be seen at the trial. Her legal counsel submitted a formal medical certificate detailing her fragile health condition. Yet, within the solemn courtroom, her personal voice recordings, intimate chat logs, and convoluted financial transactions were read aloud one by one, leaving no room for denial. When the devastating sentence—“didn’t you say her little girl is extremely easy to coax”—echoed through the silent room, Lu Hoai Khiem finally lowered his head in profound defeat. I felt no surge of triumph or malicious joy. There was only the quiet realization that the truth, though delayed by cruelty and deceit, had finally been restored to its rightful place.

As the proceedings concluded and we stepped outside, the afternoon sunlight was exceptionally brilliant, casting a golden glow over the courthouse steps. My mother descended the stone stairs, paused for a brief moment, and then gently reached out to link her arm through mine.

“Van Ninh, let us go home.”

I nodded, feeling a heavy weight lift from my shoulders.

“Let’s go home.”

In that house, there would no longer be any stifling marriage sustained solely by forced endurance and silent tears. No one would ever again dare to orchestrate another’s death under the hypocritical guise of saving a life and true love. Sometime later, my mother chose to rename her design studio. The new name she bestowed upon it was Tu Huu, meaning to possess oneself. She often told me that in the journey of a single human life, the truly essential things are few. The physical body belongs to oneself alone. The beating heart within the chest is equally one’s own. Saving a life can never, and should never, be built upon the monstrous foundation of stealing the life of another innocent soul. My mother’s heart belonged entirely to herself, and no one would ever be allowed to harvest it as a sacrifice for the hollow phantoms of an old romance.