Chapter 13: Three Weeks

At ten past two in the morning the baby monitor crackled.

Su Yu stood up from the nursery floor with a folder in his hand.

He had not been sleeping.

For once there was a reason that was not laziness.

Su Lan was four weeks old, and he had slept in nine-minute pieces since dinner.

Su Yu had hired three night nurses from the best agency in the city.

Lu Chen had sent all three home before breakfast.

"Clause One," Lu Chen had said at the door, with a hand on the first nurse's elbow.

"Nothing for the family is delegated. Thank you for coming."

So it was Su Yu, a rocking chair and a very small furious person.

A book called The First Month lay open face down on the carpet.

The folder came from the study.

He had gone down for a bottle warmer and found Lu Chen's gala file open on the desk.

One page in it had a date at the top.

It was a sheet of notes about Shu Fan's bid, in Lu Chen's tiny square hand.

It was dated three weeks before the bid room.

In the margin, beside the list of supplier partners, Lu Chen had written:

Page 40 false. All three uncles. Do not tell S.Y. until certain.

Su Yu read the margin four times.

Then he carried it up the stairs and stood in the corridor outside the nursery.

Lu Chen came out in a grey sleep shirt, holding a burp cloth.

"You're awake," Lu Chen whispered.

"Do not tell S.Y.," Su Yu said. He held up the page.

Lu Chen looked at it.

His face did not change, and Su Yu knew him well enough by now to know that this was the worst sign.

"That is old."

"It's three weeks before the wedding. It's three weeks before I sat at that table and heard it with Shu Fan watching."

"Yes."

"You knew about my uncles. You knew before I did. You let me walk into that room blind."

"I did not know," Lu Chen whispered. "I suspected. I needed to be sure."

"You could have asked me."

"You would have called them."

"Of course I would have called them! They're my uncles!"

"And they would have called Shu Fan."

"He would have withdrawn the bid and fixed the letters. We would have had nothing."

"So I'm the leak."

"You are a man who solves problems with a phone call," Lu Chen said.

His whisper had gone thin and fast.

"I wanted this solved with paper and my own hands, in a room, once."

"I'm not a case file, Chen."

"No."

"I stood in front of my ex-husband and heard you say you'd been reading for three weeks."