The Room Without You

Sixteen days after Li'an Cheng dies, his widow receives notice that his other home must be emptied. Jingru Xu has seven days to clear an apartment her husband kept secret for eleven years. The door recognizes their daughter. The rooms contain a second CPAP machine, unfinished divorce papers, and traces of a life Li'an never brought home. With her daughter's wedding only nineteen days away and her son determined to uncover what everyone else knew before him, Jingru spends the one question every adult is permitted to ask Echo-a system capable of reconstructing the past from the evidence people leave behind. Her question is simple: Did Li'an ever truly love me? Echo returns facts, not mercy. It finds devotion and deception, care and withdrawal, a hidden emotional attachment, and a final week in which Li'an appeared to be preparing both to leave and to return. Then six seconds of a private recording escape into public view, forcing the family to confront more than what Li'an did. They must decide who has the right to possess a dead man's secrets, how much of the truth belongs to those he left behind, and whether a lifetime of care can coexist with an unforgivable lie. Set in near-future Taipei, The Room Without You is a literary speculative novel about marriage, grief, privacy, and the dangerous hope that a complete record of the past can tell us what it meant. One question can uncover the truth. It cannot tell you how to live with it.