Chapter 50: Mother's Letter

The executor came on the second Sunday in June, and he would not sit down.

He stood in the doorway of the nest, thin and grey, with his hat held against his chest.

Shen Yan lay propped on the long pillows, thirty-three weeks along and home from the hospital under orders.

The captain's call from the ward had stayed with Xiao Chen for days.

Somebody who heard him give an order.

He had gone through the files twice, and the list of people who had stood in a room with Gu was short and frightened.

He had written three names on a card, crossed out two, and left the card face down by the kettle.

"Your mother left a second letter," the executor said. "I was told to keep it until the first child was born."

He held out a small envelope of heavy cream paper, sealed with red wax.

The ink read: To be opened at the birth of my first grandchild.

Shen Yan took it in both hands.

He did not say anything.

The executor bowed to them and let himself out, and the front door clicked behind him.

"Not yet," Shen Yan said at last. "I want to read it with them here."

"Then we keep it."

Xiao Chen took the envelope and laid it in the drawer under the cradle's rockers.

Chi Feng's torn cream envelope lay there already.

He put the two side by side and slid the drawer shut.

"One of those is the right kind of letter," he said.

Shen Yan laughed shakily and wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand.

"I want them born into something she'd have been proud of."

"They will be."

"I know. I just. I wanted you to touch me, and I didn't want to ask because I'm so."

He broke off with a gasp, and the colour came up his throat.

Orange blossom, thick and wet, rolled off him into the room.

"Oh," he said. "Oh, there it is."

Xiao Chen knelt on the blanket and took his face in both hands.

"Lie back. You're not to move."

"I'm not allowed to do anything."

"Then I'll do it all."

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