“Which reminds me: A package came for you before I left. Sorry, I totally forgot.”
“What about the gloves reminded you of a package?”
Ana ignores me as she shoves aside a pile of neon corsets to put the box on a display table. “It’s from Vancouver.”
My mood plummets as I regard it warily. The box has been wrapped and double-taped along every seam with the same fastidiousness a drug mule would use to hide a brick of cocaine from sniffer dogs. Except…that name. Written over the original recipient of the battered packing box, the shaky black script readsHua Luling, Ile de Grasse Perfumery.
Not “Lucy Hua.”
Ana joins me. “Luling. Pretty. Is that your real name?”
A cold sweat breaks out over my back. I keep my answer safe and my voice polite but distant. “I prefer Lucy.”
“The return address is to Hua Yulan.”
“My grandmother.” Waipo never uses my chosen English name.
Ana gives me a sharp look. “That’s from your family? You don’t talk about them much.”
“No.” I have a lengthy list of topics I don’t consider anyone’s business, and my family is the undisputed holder of position number two.
Not the number one spot, though. That’s reserved for the secret that is 49 percent of the reason why I’m currently shivering in the Toronto snow instead of the Vancouver rain.
My mother is the other 51 percent.
I contemplate the box. Waipo has rarely contacted me since I left, and isn’t the type for care packages, so chances are good it’s not warm socks or homemade brownies. What could she possibly need to send? I hover in the liminal zone between curious and concerned, the two intersecting waves forcing each other higher as they drag my growing unease along for the ride.
I extend my hand and Ana slaps a box cutter in my palm with a flourish, her ragged but glittery nails tapping against my damp skin.
Two slashes of the blade later, I realize impatience has consequences. I should have taken the package home to open because Ana will have questions I’ll have to answer or risk damaging the pleasant rhythm of our business relationship. It’s too late now. Ana bends over from the other side of the table, wafting the languid afternoon of Plage in my direction as I pull apart the meticulously folded white tissue.
Ana whistles. “That’s old. Is it a first edition? No wonder I had to sign for it.”
It’s a book not meant for any eyes other than a Hua woman’s, and I instinctively cover it up again. Ana’s right: The book is old—from the 1920s—but what’s older is the information it contains. In that box is my family’s precious register, a list of fragrance formulae, notes, and personal histories, handed down to each eldest daughter and kept in the possession of the oldest Hua woman in the direct line.
Since that’s Waipo, not me, it should be safe across the country,instead of here in Toronto. My heart already knows what my head refuses to accept, and my breath shallows out as it catapults me into the cold chill of truth.
I stare at the box and do my best not to hyperventilate as Ana’s worried questions drift over me. My phone rings, piercing through the rush in my ears. It’s my mother, and for the first time since I left Vancouver, I answer without hesitation.
“Luling?” Mom’s voice wavers through the phone. “Luling.”
“I’m here.” I think I say it, but I’m not sure.
“Luling,” she says again. “I have bad news. It’s your grandmother.”
Despite Ana’s gaze, I pull back the tissue again to float my shaking fingers over the book. The brown leather corners have worn and faded to a pale sand. A few scratches score the front cover, embossed with a golden stylized peony, and the leather is patterned with darker blots from the fingers of busy women who gripped it with the loving, casual carelessness of familiarity.
It’s as fat as a sleeping cat on a rainbow pile of Ana’s chiffon scarves, and it’s my birthright and my curse.
“I know,” I say to the book, my mother eavesdropping on the phone. “Waipo’s gone.”
2
Hua Mingyue
Tang dynasty. The first in the family to get a dental filling of tin and silver, after her mother was concerned about Mingyue’s toothache.
Heart note //Reduce timidity
