Chapter 5: Qingming

My father's grave was on the east slope of Mountain View Cemetery, under a cedar that dripped on him all winter.

I knelt on a garbage bag in the rain and scrubbed the moss out of the letters of his name with an old toothbrush.

Mei had wanted to come. I'd told her no.

Holden had driven me, the way he had every Qingming since we married.

He always waited by the car for the first part. He said a man should get to talk to his daughter alone.

I set out four oranges and a paper cup of the cheap whisky my father drank on Fridays.

I lit three sticks of incense and cupped my hand over them against the rain.

"I got married again, Ba," I told him. "At city hall, last February, with Mei crying into her scarf. I never told you properly."

The smoke went straight up and then sideways.

"I'd have liked you to meet him, Ba. He'd have fixed your outboard for free and argued with you about salmon."

Footsteps came down the gravel path behind me.

I knew who it was without turning around.

Daniel stopped at the foot of the grave in a black coat with a bunch of white chrysanthemums, the cellophane beaded with rain.

"Hi," he said.

I stood up and dropped the toothbrush in my bucket.

He laid the flowers against the headstone, right on top of my oranges, and bowed three times with his hands together.

He did it well. His mother had taught him.

"I meant it," he said. "I come every year."

"I've come every year too. I've never seen you."

"I come early." He looked at the stone. "I couldn't face you."

"But this year you can."

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