Yuanli (5)

There was a black cat in an empty lot. Too bad there are no cats tame enough for the kids to pet. They always watch them creeping and running with interest. The folded red envelope we saw a couple weeks ago by the lane was gone. Probably the family of the dead girl had given up, and tried another location for a spirit groom. Sara tells me families of unmarried girls who die will toss an envelope, with money and presumably the girl’s name, by a roadside, hoping a man will pick it up, open it, and hence be made the dead girl’s groom, giving her a place to rest. Apparently the ghost bride doesn’t get in the way of the man marrying a living woman. Does anyone pick these envelopes up these days? Is there anything in it for the man? Sara had said there probably wouldn’t be enough in the envelope to make it worth any man’s while. But what if the girl could help the man find riches somehow? I had joked with her.