Chapter 24: Works As Intended

The wedding tea was held in the courtyard on a Sunday in November, under a ginkgo that had gone entirely gold.

Tang Yu's mother arrived at ten with two bags of oranges and an opinion about the chairs.

"Too low," she said, inspecting them. "My knees."

"They're two hundred years old, Ma."

"Then they have bad knees too."

She sat in the best one anyway.

Mei took her a cup of tea and an orange and called her Auntie, and was forgiven everything.

Lin Jie had come in a suit that did not fit and stood at the gate holding a present and not daring to enter.

Granny Bai had taken the present, looked in the bag, and sent him to carry the stools.

Tang Yu knelt on the cushion in a red jacket with gold thread, her ponytail pinned up for once.

She held out the first cup with both hands.

Her mother took it.

She drank, and gave her a red envelope, and looked at her for a moment longer than the custom needed.

"You look happy," she said.

"I am."

"That's all I ever wanted for your birthdays, and you gave me laptops."

Then it was Jiang Lü's turn.

She knelt beside Tang Yu in a robe of pale green silk with embroidery at the hem.

Her auburn hair was done up in a loose coil that already wanted to come down.

She held out her cup, steady as a statue, and Tang Yu's mother took one slow sip.

"Your hands are cold," she said. "Eat something. You're too thin."

"I have a plan to eat all of it," said Jiang Lü gravely.

"Good. Granny Bai says you cook."

"I cook as if I were defending a city."

"Then you can stay," said Tang Yu's mother, and handed her an orange.

By the evening the guests had gone and the dishes had been washed in the stone sink.

The lanterns were lit one at a time along the eaves.

Tang Yu's boxes stood stacked at the foot of the low bed.

Her monitors stood on one side of the great desk.

Jiang Lü's paper stacks stood on the other, with the stone ladybug between them.

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