My hands collapsed to my sides. Did he?
Funny, it wasn’t the war that had hardened me, it was my years at 12 Harbourage with Sai Ma and my aunt. I was familiar with the machinations of the mind, the twisted ways humans could convince themselves that someone else’s pain wasn’t pain at all, but a sacrifice for a greater cause.
Maybe Tommy’d always been like this. Maybe he’d changed. In the end, it didn’t matter.
Old Director Fung knew I was too proud to become a second wife. I could imagine what he’d told Tommy. That if I refused, it meant I didn’t love him enough. Or that I was only after their family’s money.
“Your grandfather is a clever man,” I said through my teeth. “You never told me he was a cruel man.”
“Ying... please.” Tommy held my arms. “You’re angry, and you’ve the right to be. After you’ve calmed down, you’ll see I had no choice. Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to.”
He’d said that once, long ago. It ought to have been a warning.
I stepped back. “Now I know the ending of that story you used to tell. Yeh Shen married the emperor, who swore to love her to the end of his days. But he lied. Upon their marriage, she was made into a concubine, and once the emperor tired of her, she was cast into the shadows, forced to serve the highborn lady who was empress.”
“Ying, what are you talking about? That was just a story—”
“That won’t be my fate,” I said over him. “It won’t.”
I twisted out of his grasp and whirled for the house. Sai Ma was waiting for me by the door shelling peanuts while wearing a jubilant smirk.
Inside, everyone started talking at once. Baba, Gu Ma, Director Fung. I didn’t know what they were saying, only that at the sight of me, my aunt caught me by the collar and hissed into my good ear, “Don’t be stupid, Yut Ying. Think about your family. Think what this could do for us.”
I stole a glance at Tommy. Stupid girl that I was, some desperate part of me was waiting, wascountingon him to come to his senses and choose me. But he merely stood at his grandfather’s side, his eyes trained on the floor.
Never in my life—not even on that hellish morning crouched inside Mama’s cupboard, one broom’s sweep away from murderous Japanese soldiers—had I known a silence more thunderous.
“May Yut Ying have a few days to consider?” Sai Ma said, coming to my side.
Gu Ma sent my stepmother a scathing look.What are you doing? Have her accept now!
“We’ll come back next week,” Tommy agreed.
I barely noticed as Sai Ma wove her arm through mine and guided me to the settee. “Susu, bring her a cup of herbal tea.” My stepmother rubbed my shoulder. “And persimmons. Yut Ying’s always liked my persimmons.”
Hot tears tracked down my cheeks. So this was what people called heartbreak, I thought. So this was betrayal.
It hurt. It hurt desperately.
I held my tea to my lips without drinking and listened to the sound of Tommy’s footfalls until they grew faint, far, then silent.
A piece of me broke with every step.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
A sickness fell upon me. For days, I burned with fever and vomited every time I ate or drank. My body was full of disagreements—I was hot yet cold, my head light as water while the rest of me was weighed down like an anchor. I sank into the bed, certain that I might never rise again.
Gu Ma sent for Dr. Wong. One niece’s ghost haunting the house was perilous enough. Two would be a catastrophe.
I became sure that I was carrying Tommy’s child, and in my delirium, I took Dr. Wong for a demon, the very one who’d visited my mother twenty years ago and had murdered her unborn twins. I thrashed at him. I clawed and punched until Gu Ma had to send for help. I wouldn’t let anyone touch me.
At night when I was asleep, in the dark, someone spooned soup into my mouth, so bitter that I tried to spit it out. They pinched my nose and forced it down, patting my cheek like a baby when I swallowed. Then came my reward: a chunk of candied persimmon, sweet enough to erase the herbal, nettle-like tang on my tongue.
Night after night this routine continued. On the eighth day, my fever broke. As I sat up in bed, a sticky gush released into my underpants, delayed a few days by my sickness. I was always hungry during this time of the month, and I stumbled down to the kitchen. Inside, Susu was boiling soup in a clay pot. She didn’t see me lurking by the door, but I saw her. I saw the plate of dried persimmon slices, the opened pouch of angelica root, halfempty. Dong quai, we called it—Sai Ma had been mulish about not having any of it in the house while she was pregnant for it was known to induce miscarriages.
The festering hole in my stomach vanished, replaced by a dizzying wave of revelation.
I ran upstairs and flew back into bed before anyone saw me.
