Mei returned to the meeting room with her daughter before the morning clinic opened.
The girl held the draft statement in both hands. She had folded it once, then opened it again. The crease ran through the sentence about the family waiting for care before leaving the furnace town.
They had come in while the room was still being swept. Ning moved a stack of route copies off the bench so the girl could sit. Mei stayed standing, watching her read the page. She had already told Ning she wanted her first name printed; the question now was whether the details around it made that choice safe for her daughter.
“You can mark anything you want removed,” Ning said. She set a pencil by the girl’s hand. “You don’t have to defend the mark.”
The girl shook her head. “I don’t know if I’m allowed to change it.”
“It is your family’s account,” Mei said. “You know what happened too.”
The girl looked down at the paper again. She pressed the pencil tip beside the inn name but did not draw a line through it yet.
“Is this what you want printed?” Qinghe asked Mei.
