A while ago, I saw a Japanese movie called "Like a Father Like a Son", which tells a very touching story about a pair of parents who were told by the hospital when their children were 6 years old that "your children were wrong in the hospital".
I cried the whole movie and watched it, and after watching it, I also thought countless times: If Xiao Xun was held wrong, would I really be willing to change my own son back?
Fortunately, this hypothetical nature does not exist.
But what if when the child is not yet born, the parents know that the child has been mistaken by the hospital? Will you choose to be born? After giving birth, will you wonder who your child's original biological parents were? When a child grows up to know the truth, how will she treat herself?
Keigo Higashino's latest mystery novel, The Line of Hope, tells such a story. The story unfolds in three lines, but the seemingly unrelated three lines are finally connected.
First, I don't want to be a substitute
The relationship between Meng Nai, who is in the rebellious period, and her father is not good, and the relationship has become even more bizarre since her mother died two years ago. Meng Nai felt that her father looked at him wrongly, and his father did not know how to get along with Meng Nai.
In Meng Nai's mind, she is just a substitute, and after the death of her brother, sister and mother, she established her father's only spiritual sustenance. Meng Nai hates this feeling, from childhood to adulthood, the most she has heard is: you have to take the love of your brother and sister and live happily.
Since childhood, parents have been careful and careful about everything about Meng Nai, even if it is to learn the swimming lessons that everyone must take, dad also has to take special leave to visit, afraid that Meng Nai will have an accident. They did not dare to take Meng Nai to a crowded place, did not dare to let Meng Nai away from their own sight, Meng Nai was like a container full of hope.
This is where Meng Nai is most irritable, because she doesn't want to be a substitute for anyone.
15 years ago, Mom and Dad had two very cute children, but an earthquake accidentally lost their lives. The couple spent a year in decadence, and then decided to have another child so that their spirits could be pinned down.
This child is Meng Nai.
Why was the gentle and kind shopkeeper killed?
It was a headache for the police, who visited all the people involved in ms. Yayoi, the owner of the slain coffee house, and all of them unanimously praised Ms. Yayoi, saying that she was gentle and kind, could remember the tastes of each guest, and had never quarreled with anyone.
In short, it is a good person, and it is impossible to have a grudge with people.
One afternoon when Meng Nai was 14 years old, two policemen came to the house, and the police consulted her father a lot of questions and asked Meng Nai a lot of things about her father.
The case visit to Meng Nai's father seems to have suddenly made progress, and Matsumiya, with his intuition as a policeman, feels that Meng Nai's father is hiding other things.
At the same time, another suspect has also begun to appear, that is, Ms. Yayoi's ex-husband Mianshun. They had been divorced for more than a decade, but a month ago, Yayoi suddenly took the initiative to contact Mian, and they talked for a long time at the hotel.
But Mian Guan's words to the police are: reminisce. This kind of words the police naturally do not believe, more than ten years do not contact, suddenly remember the old? It's so perverse that Mian Chuan is also included in the key observations.
Third, the biological father who suddenly appeared
One afternoon, the criminal police officer Matsugu suddenly received a message from a strange woman who was far away and unrelated, saying that there was something very important to discuss with him, and if he did not have time, he could also contact his mother.
Matsumiya asked her mother if she knew such a girl, and her mother was silent. Curious, Matsumiya decided to go to the girl herself to find out what was going on.
It turned out that the girl was his half-sister, and that the father, who had been said by her mother to have died in the fire, was now on his deathbed. The girl came this time because she wanted Matsumiya to see her father for the last time.
These three main lines are finally connected, although the story is very tortuous, but Higashino Keigo's novel is like this, always cloaked in the cloak of "speculative fiction", telling a warm and hopeful story.
Meng Nai felt that her father looked at her eyes a little strangely, and her feelings were not wrong, because she was not her father's own child;
The owner, Ms. Yayoi, is indeed very popular, and the sudden contact with her ex-husband is not to simply reminisce about the past, but to tell Mianguan that they had a fertilized egg that was mistakenly committed by the hospital 14 years ago and implanted in the stomach of another mother;
The dying old man was indeed Matsumiya's biological father, but his father did not deliberately abandon their mother and son, and the mother did not resent his father.
In fact, I don't like spoilers very much when I write novel reviews, and I am afraid that readers will lose the desire to read the original book, because a good novel is definitely not a simple 2,000 words can be written clearly.
Therefore, I will not spoil in the article who killed the Yayoi shop owner and why he killed Yayoi. In fact, when I watched it myself, I was very afraid that the murderer was Meng Nai's father, but fortunately it was not.
Meng Nai's dad is a good dad.
The last time Meng Nai broke out at her father, she said, I'm not your child, right? Is it the mother cheating on someone else's child, right? That's why you hate me so much.
Dad slumped down by the door of Meng Nai's room and told Meng Nai the truth about everything. He said:
The hospital made the wrong fertilized egg and mistakenly implanted someone else's fertilized egg into your mother's body. The hospital told us two months after your mother was pregnant, but we wanted a child so much that we had tried many times before without success, and this time it was so successful that my mother and I didn't want to give up. So I told the hospital that we were willing to bear all the consequences and that we were going to give birth to this child.
At that time, your mother said very firmly: We must believe that this child is our own child.
After my mother died, I kept thinking about what to do to be good for you, thinking about it or thinking that I should tell you the truth, but I wasn't ready, and the case happened.
Dad has suffered so many grievances, but this is a decision made by Dad after seriously considering how to be good to you. No matter what, Dad wants you to be happy and doesn't want to hurt you, if you want to ask why, it's because Dad loves you very much.
After listening to her father's words, Meng Nai said, "You are talking too wordy, what fertilized eggs or something, is this important?" Instead of that, you just have to say the last thing to me. ”
Because Dad loves you very much...
Yes, it is enough for the father to love the child, and enough for the child.
The novel reads that this place is very touching, it is in the rebellious period of Meng Nai, it turns out that her father's love is so important to her.
After the father and daughter untied the knot, they had a long-lost meal, and Meng Nai personally made breakfast for her father.
Meng Nai and her father are not biological father-daughter relationships, but so what? As the novel says:
As long as our hearts do not leave, there will be invisible threads of hope that connect us to each other, and we can feel happiness.
The other two lines in the novel are also very touching. The last time Moena's biological parents, Yayoi and Mian, Matsumiya, and their biological father meet, each of the protagonists in the story is warm and pure, and reading Keigo Higashino's novels always makes people see hope.
Finally, to paraphrase a sentence on the cover of "Threads of Hope": Have you ever wondered why you came into this world?
My answer is: it must be because of love, you must also believe that it is because of love, even if the novel is born to make up for the grief in the hearts of her parents, she was born as a "substitute", but in the final analysis, it still stems from the love of her parents and mothers.
At that time, the fertilized egg could be formed because of Yayoi and Mian's love; later, the fertilized egg could gradually grow in the belly of Meng Nai's mother, also because of the love of Meng Nai's parents.
Love is free and doesn't have to be defined.