Chapter 6: Table Nine

The Lakeview Hotel had a seating chart on an easel at the ballroom door.

It was printed on cream card, with twenty round tables drawn as neat circles and every guest's name inked in by hand.

Anqi stopped in front of it with her sister on one arm and a grandmother on the other.

"Haoran drew that," Anning said proudly. "Auntie Fang asked him because his handwriting is so tidy."

"I know whose handwriting it is," Anqi said.

She had seen it on the cards at Mid-Autumn.

She followed the lines to table nine.

Table nine held Gao Chenyu, his father and his mother, Xu Mengyao, Fang Shuhua and the grandmother.

The last name was Zhou Anqi, in the seat beside Xu Mengyao, in exactly the same neat black pen.

"I didn't write you in," Anning said. "I swear."

"Somebody did."

"Haoran?"

Anning looked across the lobby at her husband, who was adjusting his tie in the glass of a trophy case.

He glanced up, saw the three of them staring, and turned to look at a potted palm.

"He's been odd since Friday," Anning said slowly. "Quiet."

"He's always quiet."

"Odd quiet."

The ballroom was gold and red, with a lion-dance banner over the stage and a waiter at every table pouring jasmine tea.

Mengyao was already at table nine.

She wore the green silk dress her mother had bought, with her red knit cardigan buttoned over the top of it.

When she saw Anqi walk in, her whole face changed.

Anqi felt the warmth of it reach her across forty feet of carpet.

"You came," Mengyao said, when she arrived at the chair.

"Nainai invited me."

"Nainai invites the postman."

"I came anyway."

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Moon Festival Cousin Switch from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.