CHAPTER THREE
1547 Words
The Eldest Daughter
The apartment felt strange when Xia came home from work.
“Hmm? What’s with the weird silence?” She thought.
The television was off, Mei’s door was shut. Her father was sitting at the table with his coat still on, a cup of tea growing cold in front of him. Xia slowed near the doorway. She knew that look. He had worn it when the hospital called about her mother and anytime debt collectors called. When her father didn’t know how to say something, he became very still. She put her bag down by the door.
“Did something happen?” she asked.
“ The Croft family contacted me.”
She frowned.
“Who?”
“Ethan Croft. He owns a company,” her father said. “A large one. According to his lawyer, he has eighty-four days to get married or he loses forty percent of it.”
Xia pulled out a chair slowly.
“And what does that have to do with us?”
“The will requires the eldest daughter,” he said quietly.
Xia stared at him. For a moment, she thought she had misunderstood.
Then she laughed, not because it was funny, but because sometimes a thing will be so absurd your body could react before your mind could.
“ So that’s it?” she said.
“Xia—” he replied quietly.
“You actually want me to marry a man I’ve never met?”
“It’s a contract marriage,” he said after a pause.
“It’s still a marriage.” Her voice cracked.
“You are sitting here asking your daughter to marry a stranger because he needs a wife before some deadline runs out.”
“He will clear our debt Xia,” he said.
She went still.
Of course. There it was.
Not love. Not concern. Just bills, debts and numbers.
The things she had spent years trying to keep ahead of her.
She swallowed hard.
“Did you even think about what will happen to me?” she asked.
“He isn’t a bad man.”
“ You don’t know that!” she snapped.
Then she asked quietly, “If Mei had been born four minutes earlier, would you be sitting here asking her to do this?”
Her father opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
Xia nodded. She already knew the answer.
Tears rolled down her cheeks.
“I’ve spent twenty-four years trying not to care that she always comes first to you.” She laughed weakly.
“ I told myself it didn’t matter, that some families are just like that.”
“But I never thought you would look at me and decide I was the daughter you could marry off because of a debt.”
The room fell silent.
Her father didn’t argue. He didn’t apologize. He sat there staring at his untouched tea for so long that Xia almost thought he wouldn’t answer.
Then he said quietly,
“I thought you would at least consider it.”
She laughed through her tears.
“Consider it?” Marrying a man I’ve never met?”
“No,” he said. “Helping us.”
That hurt more than anything else he had said.
“Helping us?” she repeated softly.
As though that wasn’t what she had been doing for years. She looked at him for a long moment.
“You really believed I would do it.”
“I believed…” He stopped.
Then he looked away.
“I believed you would do what you’ve always done.”
“And what’s that?”
“Carry the family when no one else can.”
Xia wiped at her face angrily.
“No.”
She shook her head.
“I’ve carried this family.”
“I’ve paid for this family.”
“I’ve given up enough for this family.”
“But I am not going to marry a stranger to save it.”
Xia stood there a moment after saying no.
“I’m not doing it,” she repeated.
Her father didn’t answer right away. He just sat there, staring at the tea like it had become more interesting than her face.
Then he spoke.
“Then what will you do instead?”
Xia frowned. “What are you talking about?”
He exhaled slowly.
“You work at a diner. You barely earn enough for yourself. Most of what you bring in goes back into this house.”
Her chest tightened a little.
“I’ve tried,” he said, quieter now. “But I can’t keep this place running like this. I can’t keep paying what I owe.”
Xia’s voice came out sharper than she meant. “So what are you saying?”
He finally looked at her.
“If you refuse this, don’t expect to come back here.”
That made her freeze.
“What?”
“I’m not chasing you out,” he said, but his voice didn’t match his words. “I’m just telling you… I don’t have anything left to give.”
Silence stretched.
Then,
“If you walk away from this, Xia… you’re on your own.”
Her throat went tight. “You’re telling me to leave?”
“I’m saying I can’t carry it anymore.”
He paused.
“You know your salary and savings won’t last.”
Another pause.
“You’ve been living like this long enough to know that.”
For a moment, it felt like her ears had gone slightly numb, like the sound in the room was coming from far away.
She blinked once. Then again.
“You’re… serious,” she said quietly, like she was still trying to make it not true.
Her father didn’t respond.
Xia let out a short laugh, but it broke halfway.
“You’re actually telling me to leave.”
Her voice rose slightly.
She didn’t move at first. She just stood there, waiting—hoping he would say something else. Something that made it less final.
He didn’t.
So she turned and went into her room, shutting the door harder than she meant to. She stood there for a second, then sat on the bed. After that, she just stared at the ceiling, her body tired but her thoughts too loud to rest.
What am I supposed to do now? Where would I even go?
She already knew the answer before she finished the thought.
All through the night, she cried. She didn’t sleep.
***
By morning, her eyes burned and her head ached. She changed into her uniform, tied back her hair, and opened the door.
Her father was sitting at the table with a cup of tea in front of him.
Xia stood there for a long moment.
Then she laughed. It wasn’t a happy kind of laugh, it was the kind of laugh that came when you were too tired to cry anymore.
“You know what’s funny?” she said.
“I keep saying no as if I have something better waiting for me.”
Her father looked up.
She adjusted the strap of her bag.
“I’ll go to work today.”
“I’ll come home tonight.”
“Thursday I’ll send money.”
“Next month I’ll do it again.”
She shrugged.
“Maybe marrying him will be terrible. Maybe I’ll regret it.”
“But I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
She looked at her father.
“Call them.”
His lips parted.
“Xia—”
“Don’t.”
She shook her head.
“I’m still angry.”
She opened the door.
“But I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
“Just call them.”
She didn’t wait for a response. She picked up her bag and headed for the door.
“Xia.”
She stopped but didn’t turn around.
Her father looked down at the cup in front of him before speaking.
“They already sent the agreement.”
She frowned and looked back at him.
“What agreement?”
“The marriage contract.”
He swallowed.
“It arrived this morning.”
For a moment, Xia simply stared at him.
She had spent the whole night crying over a marriage she didn’t want. She hadn’t expected someone to already have written the terms of it.
She had never met Ethan Croft. She didn’t know what he looked like, how he spoke, or what kind of man arranged a marriage before seeing the woman he intended to marry.
Her father reached for a large brown envelope resting beside the fruit bowl.
“The lawyer said you should read it before tomorrow’s meeting.”
“Tomorrow?” she asked.
He nodded.
“They don’t like wasting time.”
Her father slid a cream-colored card out of the envelope. “The address is on the back. Two o’clock tomorrow.”
Xia looked at the envelope for a long moment.
Less than twenty-four hours ago, Ethan Croft had been a stranger whose name meant nothing to her.
Tomorrow, she was supposed to sit across from him and discuss becoming his wife.
She tightened her grip on her bag.
Then she took the envelope from her father’s hand, tucked it under her arm, and left before she could change her mind.
- Writer
