I set my bowl down and turn to Ace, then bow my head. “It would be very helpful to me if you would take the bus so that I can focus on the shop, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to see you or spend time with you.”
He huffs. “We see each other every night for dinner.”
Nai Nai makes a shrill noise as she clears her throat.
Ace sets his bowl down and turns to me, bowing his head. “I would be honored to help relieve you of some of the burden, so that you may carry on strongly.”
I sit up straight and he looks me in the eyes, then smiles.
“Speaking of burden, can you help me with the website stuff? You know I suck at computers,” I say.
He blows a raspberry. “That’ll take me twenty minutes.”
“What about a Facepost page? I think we’ll want one for advertising.”
“Another five minutes,” he says.
“After dinner?”
“You got it.”
I grab my food and tuck in, finally ready to eat. Ace seems ready, too, as he scoops another serving of rice into his bowl. Nai Nai tells us more about the newspapers she read on the town, but again, my attention is divided. I’m thinking about what to stock in the pantry, and if Nai Nai wants to bake sweets for the shop, and if I need to hire someone to help me run it…
We wash all the dishes and pack away the leftovers in the fridge before running back to my room to get to work. Nai Nai stays out in the living room, semi-surrounded by all our stuff as she works on custom cushions for the chairs in the cafe.
Ace pulls up his laptop and I lay out all the color swatches I’m using for the shop so he can get to work organizing the color theme for the website.
“I really am sorry I wasn’t there,” I say.
He bobs his head and whispers, “I know.”
“But being sorry doesn’t excuse me or fix anything. I want to make it up to you, Ace.”
“Well, then just do a good job here and maybe buy me a new solid-state hard drive for my birthday.”
I give him an incredulous look. “A hard drive will make you forgive me?”
“It’s better than no hard drive,” he says with a grin.
I flick one of the paint swatches at him and he deflects with an indignant, “Hey!”
We work quietly for a while; me on our marketing text, him on the website. It’s nice to just sit in peace with him, but theair doesn’t feel clear yet, and I don’t know what to do. Maybe there’s nothing I can do. It’s his move next.
He shows me the layout of the website in twenty minutes, like he promised. It’s basic, but that’s really all we need. There’s a drink menu page that I need to fill in, a contact page, and the home page has a “featured” section for specials.
My mind whirls. It’s information overload, but I’m excited to take on the new challenge. There are so many things I didn’t consider, and Ace’s website just woke them up inside me.
“Mom and Dad wasn’t your fault,” he says.
Like a punch to the gut, my excitement deflates. I don’t know what to say.
“You keep acting like every time you’re not around, I’m in danger,” he says.
“What if you are? I pissed offZhao Shang.”
“And we’re far away from him now. He doesn’t know where we are, and he’s in jail anyway.”
I don’t want to tell him that he’s allowed to make phone calls and have visits in jail. It’s yet to be seen, but anyone could be ferrying information and requests to and from his gang. I don’t want to tell him that Shang was aware that Nai Nai had won several small contests, and the sweepstakes that landed us this café—though the address wasn’t on the website, it did say “Northern Maine.” That might be enough.
