“I was not,” I lie. “Told you. They never kill the best characters.”
She pauses the tablet and adjusts her body so she’s facing me. “Niks.” Her hand brushes the hair from my eyes. “Have you been crying?”
“No.”
Ma purses her lips so I change tactics. “Allergies,” I say instead.
She answers with a heavy sigh and silence stretches between us.
“I know I’m the last person you want to talk through things with, but if you ever need somebody to talk to…” She eyes me with a sad smile. “Offer’s always open.”
My sister would want me to lie and deny for Ma’s sake. Tell her that everything’s okay, that I really have nothing I want to talk about—but something tells me that she can see right through me.
So I show her Pa’s old phone. “I saw your messages.”
Ma fidgets when she scans the texts she’s been sending the past few weeks. “You weren’t supposed to see those.”
“It’s not like I saw the dirty ones.”
“Nika.”
“Ma, it’s okay!” I tell her. “I send myself messages from Pa’s phone and pretend like they’re from him. That’s more embarrassing.”
Her eyes grow wide. “You message Ton?”
I nod. “Have you tried looking Pa up online?”
Ma’s brow scrunches. “Isn’t that dangerous?”
I type out Pa’s name in the YouTube search bar on her tablet. “Promise. This won’t lead to the kidnappers finding us,” I tell Ma when she still looks concerned.
With a heavy sigh, she finally relaxes enough so I can click on the video of Pa playing the piano at the mall. I laugh at the part where the people surrounding him start calling out song requests.
“Of course I’m going with Mariah Carey,” I say right before Pa says it.
“How many times have you watched this?” Ma asks me.
I shrug. “Achi watches it too.”
She stays silent and I worry that I said the wrong thing again.
But I finally voice the question I’ve been too scared to ask. “Did Pa tell you he was sick?”
Ma then stiffens and retreats to her scary, quiet place.Take the question back!my brain screams. I need to change the subject, make Ma forget about losing Pa, dosomethingso I don’t hurt Ma even more. So many thoughts are tumbling in my head when Ma can’t even look at me.
Her eyes linger on the screen when I hear her reply. “Your dad made me promise not to tell.”
I’m holding my breath the whole time she speaks.
“Your angkong, your dad’s dad, was diagnosed with… terminal cancer when Ton was around your age,” Ma starts to say.
My dad’s side of the family always said my angkong was “gone too soon.” No one ever mentioned that he had cancer.
“His uncles told Ton not to tell your amah about the diagnosis.”
I pause to make sure I heard that correctly. “Why would they ask Pa not to tell his mom?”
“They were worried that your amah might not be able to handle that information, that it was too much for her. So Ton did everything he could to mask your angkong’s condition.”
