Adeline walked into Jenny’s. It had just opened. She went in the front doors.
Go to Genevieve Hwang, Pek Mun had said, knowing so muchin one sentence. Who her mother’s close partners were. Who remained to clean up her affairs—and her daughter—now that she was dead. The Butterflies knew her mother far more than she ever had. It didn’t make sense that Jenny’s was still standing. It didn’t deserve to be there still.
But here it was: fluorescent lights and artificial air, vapid women with their hideous taste and their pointless squabbles and dreary husbands. Her mother must have been with the Butterflies every time she had an odd secretive meeting, every time she claimed she had a call with Johor that ran too late. And the fire, and the lies.
Adeline got to the center of the store before sinking at the feet of a mannequin, tangling her fingers in its long skirt. The silk slid over her skin. Then it started to smoke.
A shadow fell over her. It was attached at the heels to a pair of glossy pumps, which led up to a fine blue skirt, and then up to a string of pearls and curled hair, and then Genevieve Hwang was kneeling next to her and pulling Adeline into a frantic hug.
Adeline didn’t return it. “Did you know about Red Butterfly?” she said in Genevieve’s ear.
Genevieve stiffened and drew back just enough to look her in the eyes, their expressions and words both concealed from any passersby. This close, Adeline could see the bumps of her face under the expensive powder. “How did you find out?” Genevieve whispered.
Adeline thought,So she really did tell you everything.
The first night in which Adeline’s mother had also betrayed her had been as fluid as this one, the stages blurring all together even as they occurred. She had been young enough to be stirred by a nightmare, sidling off the edge of the mattress seeking her mother and finding, in the living room, her mother burning a palmful of fire with Genevieve cupping the hand under her. They had been talkingin low voices like they had a secret—the way Adeline’s mother was only supposed to talk to her.
“You said we couldn’t tell anyone,” Adeline had demanded, when her mother wrestled her back to bed.
“Auntie Genevieve is family.” Her mother had been rougher than usual, her color high. “We can tell family.”
Adeline had no other family to rebut this with. But she’d lain there, unable to fall asleep, staring at the tiniest flame she could balance on her pinkie and being careful not to let it touch the blanket. She’d hated Genevieve from that point on.
And yet here she was, in an unfamiliar bed in Genevieve’s guest room wearing a too-large nightdress, slowly combing out the last smudges of ash from her hair. Every time she turned away from the mirror she saw in its withdrawing reflection her mother slashed in flame. She switched the light off, tucked herself in, and breathed into her knees. Another memory was shaking loose: her mother kissing her on the forehead, her lips so hot they left a red mark. She had smelled like ash, and Adeline had dreamed that night of homes burning; perhaps she’d also dreamed the kiss, in hindsight.
CHAPTER FIVETHE WHITE MAN PAYS RESPECTS
Adeline considered how to dress for her first dinner with the entire Hwang family. Until now she had been allowed isolation on pretext of shock and grief. But tonight the older boys were back from university and national service respectively, and Mr. Hwang had called for a proper family dinner before the funeral started the next day; Genevieve had been overseeing the cooking all afternoon. Looking put together would work in Adeline’s favor, as the outsider who needed what leverage she could produce. She ended up in two braids and a blue cotton dress. It made her look a bit like a bad Chinese Dorothy, but it couldn’t be helped.
The Hwangs had four children. For the past two days, Adeline had been sharing the house with their daughter, Cecilia, who attended St. Mary’s two years below Adeline, and their youngest son, Gerald, who went to St. Andrew’s like his father and two older brothers before him. Now, seated between Marcus, the university student, and James, the serviceman with a fresh buzz cut, Adeline remembered that Genevieve and her mother had joked about her marrying one of them.
She ate her pork and vegetables with a silent grudge as Marcus began gossiping about student protests at the Chinese university about some English adoption policies, and James updated his parents on his rehearsal schedule for the upcoming National Dayparade. Every time she swallowed her throat stung a little, and a couple of times picked at the scab under her chin where Tian had cut her.
“Do you have everything for the wake? Need anything?” Mr. Hwang asked his wife. “I can send some of the guys to help.”
“We’re okay, dear,” Genevieve said, ladling more soup into James’s bowl. “The Sons are coming down.”
Genevieve Hwang. Adeline had spent the past few days ushered around by her and thus got the chance to study her mother’s partner more closely than she ever had. Unlike Fan Tai Tai or even Adeline’s mother, whose well-to-do image had always been brittle, you could tell that this big house and the pearl earrings tucked under her elegant updo—even the English at the dinner table—were Genevieve’s natural set. So, it seemed, were various undertakers, florists, caterers, and other funeral services. Adeline had been left out of all the planning; it was the first time she was hearing any details.
“The Sons?” she asked quietly.
To her surprise, Mr. Hwang responded: “The Sons of Sago Lane; they’re an old clan that used to run the death houses for all the coolies in Chinatown. Now they have a big funeral business. They oversaw my grandfather’s funeral; he still swore by their practices. According to my wife, your mother did, too.”
“They’re kongsi?”
“No, no, no, no. They’re not gangsters, they run a proper business. Although of course I’m sure they take money on the side to clean up all the crime, too. You know, back in my day”—this elicited eye rolls from Cecilia and James—“if you were a Chinese man in business, you had to be dealing with the kongsi. They were so influential—I tell you, last time, even the politicians had to have their backing. After the war everyone was involved with a clan. Now they’re just thugs. The police know how to deal with them.” He chewed conspiratorially. “You know, I was even kidnapped by them once.”
Gerald spluttered. “What?”
“I didn’t tell any of you?” Mr. Hwang pointed at Adeline with his chopsticks. “Actually, your mother saved me.” Now he grinned like a man who had her full attention. “I was twenty-three, before we got married—”
“Twenty-four,” Genevieve said.
“Ah, same thing. A gang called the Blackhill Brothers wanted to extort money from my father. I was on my way home at night when they forced me into a car at gunpoint. A real gun, you know. I saw my life flash before my eyes. They kept me for six days in a room with no light. Apparently, your mother lived in their territory and had seen them moving about… She reported it to the police, and imagine our surprise that she was Genevieve’s childhood friend! Of course my father rewarded her once the police found me. And the gang members responsible were all executed.”
James was positively agog. “Ba, that’s so cool.”
“What’s cool?” Marcus whapped his brother’s hand. “You think kidnapping is cool?”
