The Moon Festival Cousin Switch novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: The Spare Key
Mengyao's mother is waiting inside with a green dress and the suitor's gift box. Anqi invents a work date to get Mengyao out, and Mengyao packs a bag for Anqi's flat.
Anqi parked, turned off the engine, and got out of the car before she could think better of it.
She held the lobby door open, and Mengyao followed her in.
They climbed four flights in silence, Mengyao two steps ahead with her shoulders high and tight.
The apartment door was ajar.
Fang Shuhua sat on the sofa in her plum jacket with her handbag on her knees.
Beside her on the coffee table sat a red lacquer box, a green silk dress still in its plastic, and a folded sheet of paper.
She looked at Anqi, and her face closed.
"Miss Zhou. How kind of you to bring her home."
"Auntie Fang," Anqi said, because the grandmother had said to call every elder that. "I hope it's all right that I came up. I wanted to say goodnight properly."
"It's late."
"It's the festival. Nobody's counting."
Mengyao went to the table and lifted the lid of the red box.
Inside lay a heavy gold bangle on a bed of red velvet, with a card tucked underneath.
The card was printed in gold ink.
Anqi could read it upside down from where she stood: the Gao family, the Xu family, and a date.
"The Double Ninth," Mengyao read in a flat voice. "The Lakeview Hotel. Table twenty. You've already booked the hall."
"The deposit was paid last week."
"Without asking me."
"I am asking you now," her mother said. "The dress is for the tasting on Sunday. Wear it."
Mengyao did not touch the green silk.
She stood with one hand still on the bangle's lid.
She looked at her mother with a face Anqi had not seen before, not angry, only very tired.
"Mom. I don't know him."
"You know him. You sat in the same room tonight."
"He took the seat of a stranger and smiled about it."
"He was gracious. That woman should not have been in his chair."
"That woman," Mengyao said, "is standing right behind me."
Her mother looked at Anqi again, longer this time.
"Miss Zhou," she said carefully. "I don't mean to be rude. But this is a family matter."
"I understand," Anqi said. "I only have a small one."
She heard herself say it in the same even voice she used at publishers' meetings.
"I'm in the middle of a translation. There's a character who speaks pure Hangzhou dialect, and I can't get the voice right. Mengyao promised to help me with it tonight. She's the only person I know who talks like that."
Mengyao turned her head slowly.
"Did I promise?" she said.
"At the cake table, two years ago," Anqi said. "I've been waiting."
Mengyao's mouth shook with the effort not to laugh.
"I did say that," she said. "I remember now."
Her mother stood up, smoothing her jacket.
"At this hour?"
"The deadline is Monday," Anqi said. "It's a very long book."
She went into the bedroom, and Anqi heard a closet door and a zipper.
The mother and Anqi stood alone in the small living room.
The older woman said, quietly and without any smile, "She has always said yes to everything. I do not want you to give her ideas."
Anqi thought about the long years of her own family dinners, and the way Anning had never stopped asking if she had met anyone.
"Auntie Fang," she said, "I only want her to get home safely."
"Her home is here."
"Then I'll bring her back on Monday."
Something moved across the mother's face, fear first and then stubbornness.
It was the look of a woman who has been holding a roof up with her hands.
Mengyao came out with a gym bag over her shoulder, her work boots tied together by the laces and her cardigan on again.
"Bye, Mom," she said, and kissed her on the cheek.
Her mother caught her wrist.
"Your father would have wanted you settled," she said, very low. "I'm doing this for you."
"I know you think so."
"I'm not wrong."
"I didn't say you were wrong," Mengyao said. "I said I don't know him."
She freed her wrist gently, and they went out and down the four flights without talking.
On the sidewalk Mengyao leaned against the car door, trembling slightly.
"I've never walked out like that," she said. "I've never said a word back to her. Not once."
"You said several."
"I said 'I don't know him.' That's barely one."
"It was a good one."
"Where am I going?" she asked. "I can't go to Haoran's. Anning will be thrilled."
"You're coming to mine."
She drove across the river to the quiet streets near Xixi.
Sycamore trees lined the road, and lanterns still hung from a few balconies.
Anqi unlocked the door, switched on the lamp, and saw her home as a stranger would.
Stacks of manuscript pages stood along the floor in leaning towers.
An English dictionary lay open on a stool, and three half-empty tea cups sat on the windowsill.
The couch was buried under a landslide of paper.
The only other place to sleep was the double bed she could see through the open bedroom door, with a navy quilt and two pillows.
"Oh," Anqi said.
Mengyao stood in the doorway with her gym bag and looked at the couch, then at the bed, then at Anqi.
"You have one bed," she said.
"I have one bed."
"And a couch that is currently a book."
"It's a very large book."
Mengyao set her bag down on the only clear patch of floor.
"I'm not complaining," she said, and her voice came out much softer than she had meant.
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