An Jin was reviewing documents in the study while I crouched in the kitchen watching the dragon-horse young chicken stew, ensuring no ingredients were missed before putting the recipe away and adding two pieces of firewood.
The reason for secretly hiding here to stew the soup was just to be a good wife, absolutely not for having a child, absolutely not!
“Ah Yao?” Someone pushed open the kitchen door and walked in. “Just as I thought.”
I was startled, almost dropping the clay pot lid. “Father-in-law?”
Father-in-law walked in, looked at the stew on the stove, and understood immediately: “Ah Yao has worked hard.”
I felt embarrassed and asked why he was here. He simply said mother-in-law didn’t sleep well, and he came to brew some calming soup for her to soak her feet.
Probably due to exhaustion, father-in-law’s face looked slightly dark. I rushed to help, but he insisted on doing it himself, only letting me help organize the medicinal herbs.
“Not admitting one’s age won’t do,” he laughed while putting the herbs I organized into the jar. “These days, my eyes aren’t seeing clearly.”
My father-in-law could truly be called the most filial husband. If I hadn’t been stewing soup in the kitchen, I wouldn’t have known that father-in-law came to the kitchen every night to brew medicinal herbs for mother-in-law’s foot bath, handling every step personally from buying herbs to brewing and finally pouring them into the wooden basin.
Father-in-law and mother-in-law were about the same age, with mother-in-law maintaining her original beauty, while father-in-law had already gone gray. How else would he be so devoted if not for his wife?
To outsiders, mother-in-law was beautiful and had an inherited family business, making father-in-law’s position as a live-in son-in-law seem like a lucky blessing. However, I felt that mother-in-law was truly blessed to have met father-in-law, though she was cold-natured and rarely showed warmth even to him.
If An Jin could learn from father-in-law’s example of caring for mother-in-law, I would be content.
An Jin looked surprised when I carefully brought him the soup.
“You made this?”
I smiled and handed him a spoon. “Try it.”
He took a deep breath over the bowl and smiled. “Chicken soup?”
I nodded vigorously.
