Chapter 1373: Chapter 508: I Am the Evil Nanny (Part 10)_3

To be honest, sometimes Zhao Yan would think, her mom stayed single for more than ten years because of her.

Now her mom was already over forty, and after Zhao Yan finished college she would work, get married, and sooner or later leave her mother.

Once she had her own little family, what would her mom do?

Was she supposed to go on gritting her teeth and suffering alone?

Her mom had already sacrificed too much for her; if there was a chance, Zhao Yan also hoped her mom could have a steady, good old age!

To remarry, to find an old partner, to have someone to lean on in her later years—that was a kind of happiness too.

What Zhao Yan was thinking wasn’t about shirking responsibility or being unwilling to support her real mother.

It was, starting from feelings, that she hoped her mom could have a few comfortable, good years.

Not to mention—

"Professor Qiao? Mom, you mean that finance professor at A University, the one who lives in A University’s family housing?"

Zhao Yan’s brain began to spin quickly.

He Tiantian deliberately pretended not to see the calculation in Zhao Yan’s eyes. She nodded blankly. "Yeah, that’s him!"

"He said that after this bout of illness he’s thought everything through and wants to find an old partner who can take care of him!"

"And I was thinking, you’re in college now, and in the future when you get married, having a complete natal family is always better than being from a single-parent home..."

He Tiantian specially added this line, wanting to tell Zhao Yan: Listen, there’s nothing romantic between me and Professor Qiao. I didn’t seduce him, and he doesn’t really fancy me. We’re just teaming up to live.

After saying this, He Tiantian hurriedly added, "But how this matter should be decided in the end, I still want to discuss it with you!"

"Yanyan, I know that at my age, to talk about getting married again is really a bit shameful—"

Before He Tiantian could finish, Zhao Yan, who had already reacted, hurriedly interrupted.

"Mom, what do you mean shameful or not shameful!"

"And what do you mean ’at your age’? What’s wrong with you? You’re only forty-five this year!"

Back in their hometown, women in their forties really were at an age where life was already set: arranging marriages for their kids if they could, or helping carry and raise their grandchildren.

But after coming to the Provincial City, Zhao Yan realized that many women, especially the particularly outstanding, exceptional ones—

Getting married in their thirties was completely normal.

And forty-five was not the age of some middle-aged or elderly woman who should just sit tight and wait for retirement.

Zhao Yan had never been against her real mom remarrying, and now her mom’s remarriage target was actually a university professor, living in the A University family housing that even Li Sangzi envied!

Thinking of the trouble she’d planted yesterday by lying, Zhao Yan felt a rush of heat in her chest.

If her mother married Professor Qiao, then she would be the Qiao Family’s stepdaughter.

Saying she lived at A University would be perfectly reasonable.

She hadn’t lied, she really hadn’t!

In the future, if her roommates suggested visiting her home, she wouldn’t have to rack her brains to patch up her lies!

And when her roommates brought up their families and parents again, Zhao Yan wouldn’t need to dodge and cover up, but could openly say—

"My dad is a professor at A University, and my mom is a housewife!"

Fine, Zhao Yan admitted it: she was vain.

For the sake of her own face, she could so easily acknowledge a dad.

It seemed she was being a bit unfair to her biological father.

But when her real dad died, she was only eight.

And in the depths of her memory, her impression of her real dad was of a drunkard who ignored his wife and daughter for his brothers!

Yes, for Zhao Yan, her real dad was not a warm, cherished presence.

Her real father, Zhao Yongfeng, was an ordinary farmer. Everyone said he was honest and kindhearted.

When he was young, he had once gone to the city to be a migrant worker.

But after being cheated by a contractor once, working hard for more than half a year without earning a cent, he never wanted to go to the city to work again.

He went back to their hometown, tending the family’s ten-odd mu of land, and occasionally doing odd jobs in the orchards and fish ponds contracted by fellow villagers, barely managing to support the family.

Maybe because he couldn’t make big money, Zhao Yongfeng felt a bit inferior deep down.

He was desperate to prove to everyone that he wasn’t a "loser."

Only his way of proving it was rather strange: instead of working hard to make money, he, he chose to eat and drink with a pack of good-for-nothing buddies.

As if at the drinking table, where he competed with others in downing drinks, or grabbed the bill after the meal, once those "brothers" praised him a few times, he really became a "capable man."

The money he earned wasn’t even enough to cover his drinking.

He was incredibly generous to those drinking buddies, willing to let his wife and daughter go hungry just so he could lend the little money the family had scraped together to "brothers" who weren’t even really short of money.

After drinking, he’d come home and start a drunken rampage.

Fortunately, he didn’t hit people, but that look of cursing and swearing, smashing things around, railing at the world and bragging to high heaven on a drunken high was truly ugly.

The young Zhao Yan, seeing a father like that, genuinely couldn’t muster the slightest respect or affection.

Her real dad’s cause of death wasn’t very dignified either. He had drunk himself into alcohol poisoning and died.

Within a ten-li radius, whenever people mentioned Zhao Yongfeng, they would curl their lips and say, "Oh, that drunkard, right? Never did a proper day’s work, drank every day, and literally drank himself to death!"