Chapter 8: Auntie's Table

My aunt's house in Richmond had the same red front door it had when I was six, and the same brass lion knocker my father used to lift me up to bang.

I brought a box of egg tarts from the bakery under Mei's apartment, because my mother had raised me never to walk into a house with empty hands.

My mother's bangle was in its red box in my nightstand at home. I had left it there on purpose.

My aunt opened the door herself.

She was small and stout, with my father's nose and none of his softness.

"You came," she said, and took the egg tarts without looking at them.

The dining room was full.

Two uncles. Three cousins and their husbands. My grandmother's old lazy Susan in the middle of the table, loaded with soy chicken and steamed fish.

Vanessa sat at the far end in a pale pink sweater, with her hands folded.

Beside her, in the seat of honour, sat Margaret Zhang.

Nobody had told me Margaret would be there.

"Sit," my aunt said, and pointed at the one empty chair, alone on the near side of the table.

I sat.

Nobody passed me a bowl.

"We're not here to fight," my eldest uncle said. "We're family. We want to help you."

"Help me how?"

My aunt nodded at Vanessa.

Vanessa slid two photographs across the table, past the steamed fish, and they stopped in front of me.

The elevator. The flower market.

"Everyone's seen these," my aunt said. "Everyone in Richmond. My friends from church sent them to me. Do you know how that feels?"

"I can guess."

"A married man, Lena." One of my cousins said it like I'd tracked mud on the carpet. "At least the last one was your husband."

"He's a very powerful man," Margaret said mildly. "He'll be done with her by summer. Then where will she be?"

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