Chapter 16: Gao's Chart

The restaurant had a private room with a round table for ten and a lacquered screen painted with cranes.

Gao's mother had chosen it.

She had also chosen the seats, and she stood beside the table with a card in her hand.

Mengyao walked in wearing her red cardigan.

Her own mother, Fang Shuhua, stopped in the doorway in her plum jacket and looked at it.

"I said the green," Shuhua hissed.

"I know, Ma."

"Everyone is watching."

"Then they'll see I'm wearing what I like."

Anqi came in a step behind, in the cream blouse, because her sister had called and said Haoran would not come unless she did.

The sister and brother-in-law were behind her.

Haoran carried a paper bag with a pot of tea in it and avoided everyone's eye.

Gao's mother looked at the group at the door and her smile thinned.

"Miss Zhou," she said. "How kind. But I set the numbers for family only."

"I am family," Anqi said pleasantly. "By marriage. The grandmother says so."

There was a small silence.

Gao Chenyu rose from his chair in his navy suit and smiled the soft polite smile from the first night.

"Of course she's welcome," he said. "My mother only worries about the table."

"The table is round," Anning said. "It has no front."

The seating cards sat in a ring.

Mengyao's was between Gao's and his mother's.

Anqi's was at the far side by the door, beside a waiter's stand.

She picked it up, glanced at it, and put it in her jacket pocket.

Then she took the empty chair at Mengyao's other side, which belonged to no one's card, and sat down.

Gao's mother opened her mouth.

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