The Moon Festival Cousin Switch novel · Chapter 19 of 24
Chapter 19: Nainai's Orders
Anqi opened the door in a bathrobe with her hair in a towel.
The grandmother stood on the landing with her cane in one hand and a cat carrier in the other.
The orange cat inside looked out with deep personal offense.
"Six floors!" said the old woman. "Who builds a house like this? A heron?"
"Nainai, come in," Mengyao called, from somewhere behind Anqi's shoulder, in a different bathrobe. "Sit down. Please sit."
"I will sit when I have been given soup."
She came in, set the cat on the couch among the manuscripts, and lowered herself into the only upright chair with a grunt.
Her coat dripped rain onto the floor.
She looked at the two of them in their robes, then at the bed through the open door, and her face did not change in the least.
"Good," she said. "Warm. You will not get chills."
Mengyao went very red.
Anqi went to heat the soup.
When she returned with a bowl, the grandmother had unrolled a long paper scroll across the coffee table and weighed down the corners with a teapot, an ashtray and the cat.
It was the banquet menu from the Lakeview Hotel, with forty-two dishes in gold.
Half of them had been crossed through with thick red marker.
"Who did that?" Anqi asked.
"I did."
"With what hand?"
"With Haoran's marker. He held my arm. A shaking hand can still press down when someone steadies it." The old woman picked up the bowl and drank from it directly. "Now listen."
She put the bowl down.
"Gao's mother arranged the guest list. One hundred and ten guests. Ninety are Gao. Twenty are us."
"Twenty-one," Mengyao said. "With you."
"I am not a guest. I am the head of the bride's family, since her father's father is dead." The grandmother lifted her cane and pointed it at the ceiling. "Under the old rules, the bride's side may name the menu and the bride's table. They did not read the old rules. They read a contract."
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