Page 55 of Ideal Life

“Hmm,” Roger said, as Sam showed them inside Lighthouse Books. His dad browsed the shelves and kept repeating “Hmm” every so often.

“Hmm?” Sam asked.

“All books in English.”

Sam shrugged apologetically. “Sorry.” He didn’t know how to say in Taiwanese that there wasn’t much demand here for works in foreign languages.

“No café, Sammy?” Jenny asked. “In Taiwan, many bookstores have café.”

“No space for café,” Sam said. Again, he didn’t mean to be terse, but he didn’t have the vocabulary to explain that he would’ve loved to have had a little coffee shop, but it was a complicated and separate permitting process to get a license to cook and sell food on the premises. Besides the fact that there really was no space for a café.

“Let’s go upstairs?” he said, pointing. “My office. My apartment.”

He gave them a brief tour of the second floor of the lighthouse, which took all of five minutes, and then they all crammed into his tiny studio at the top. Thankfully, they’d left Jenny and Roger’s luggage behind the counter with Kenneth, although Roger had been a little wary of the employee who was clearly half-stoned. But Jenny had smiled and held up two fingers in a peace sign and said to Kenneth, “Groovy, dude.” Kenneth had grinned and placed both hands over his heart. “Peace and love to all,” he’d said, and then Jenny had whispered something in Taiwanese to Roger that Sam didn’t catch, but apparently it had made it okay to leave the suitcases with the groovy dude.

Now he pulled out chairs at his tiny kitchenette table for his parents and bustled around to make them some green tea. He’d even baked a batch of pineapple cakes last night, using Jenny’s recipe—technically, it was a trade secret, but the recipe was also Jenny’s most prized possession, and like hell she wasn’t going to give it to her own son. Or, at least, that was the gist that Sam had gotten, because she’d said all that years ago in Taiwanese when she had gifted him with the recipe as his college graduation present.

“Here, eat a snack,” Sam said, setting the plate of pineapple shortbread onto the table with a teapot and two mugs. “I know they’re not as good as the way you bake them…”

Jenny took a big bite and patted him on the arm. “Very good, Sammy. You are my son, good baker. You are your dad’s son, good math, good…” She turned to Roger and asked how to say a word in English.

Roger shook his head but pulled out his phone and typed in the query. The translation popped up. “Phi-lo-so-phy,” he said.

Sam frowned. “Philosophy?” He knew his dad was a numbers guy—he’d run all the financials for Sunshine Cakes for decades—but where did philosophy come in?

“Hmm…” Roger typed something else into his phone, then held it up for Sam and Jenny to read: I majored in philosophy at the university. Fascinating topic, but there aren’t jobs for philosophers. That’s how I became a baker’s husband.

Jenny laughed and whacked Roger lightly on his shoulder. “Ah, you! Always joke!”

Sam was stunned, though. He himself had majored in philosophy—well, double-majored with physics, but that was irrelevant right now—so how come this had never come up before?

But of course he knew. It was because he never really had long conversations with his parents. The barriers of language and culture had kept them at arm’s length, and to be honest, Sam had been a typical kid who hadn’t really thought of his mom and dad as full-fledged people with robust histories. To him, they’d just been parents.

“How Talia doing?” Roger asked. “She make good deal, too. Omni big company.”

“You know about Talia’s deal?”

“Of course,” Jenny said. “She your friend. We use Google Alert. Very easy, Talia Morgan not popular name. Too many Sam Chang, no news about you. But lots news about Talia.”

“It’s kind of bizarre that you probably know more about my friend than about me,” Sam mumbled in English.

“What you say?” Roger asked.

“Nothing,” Sam said. But he was feeling a little stung over it, even if it was silly to be jealous over something like a Google alert. They weren’t wrong; there were too many Sam Changs, and anyway, he didn’t do anything particularly newsworthy, other than occasional top-ten finishes in poker tournaments. Still, he changed the subject. “Tell me about your big travel plans.”

In her excitement, Jenny quickly swallowed the bite of pineapple cake she’d been eating and whipped out her phone, swiping open YouTube with an easy flick. She really was more dexterous on the phone than Sam was on his.

“I love this channel, Libby and Jacob.”

Sam’s jaw dropped. “You follow Libby?” he said in English, and then in Taiwanese, “Libby is Talia’s sister.”

Jenny rolled her eyes. “I know that! They look same, both so pretty. You and Talia, beautiful children together.”

“Mom!”

“What? I dream be grandma.”

“Oh my god.” Sam crammed a pineapple shortbread into his mouth so he wouldn’t have to talk for a minute.