“When will Ye Ye wake up from his nap?” She looked toward the back of the shop where Tao Ren’s bedroom, now an even bigger alcove than those early days, was still located.
“Soon. For now you go over and work on your penmanship. I want to see your lesson when you are finished.” He plopped her down on the floor, though not before kissing her on the forehead, a loud smacking noise that made her giggle.
He couldn’t believe his life.
For seven years now, he and Jingwei had been married, tying the knot only a month after courting. Once he’d realized his feelings for her, he could barely eat or sleep when they were apart. Luli also cried when she was pulled from Jingwei’s arms, and in a moment of despair at walking away from her one afternoon, he’d turned around and blurted out the proposal.
“Will you be my wife and help me raise Luli?” he asked, then held his breath as his face flamed.
Jingwei had hesitated. He knew she was afraid to believe that someone could actually care for her as he did. By then she’d told him of her earlier life, the isolation and abuse. And he knew of her condition on the ship from China—the devastating loss of her unborn child. She’d called herself soiled, but he planned to spend the rest of her life proving to her that she was perfect in every way. He’d told her that, and then she’d agreed to marry him and help raise Luli, as he’d put it.
Now they were a family. He no longer had contact with his brother, Wei, or his family in China, but Jingwei and Luli—and even the kindly Tao Ren—filled that empty place in his soul. The only issue that still niggled at him was the fact that Luli was undocumented. There was no record of her being born either in China or the States. What would happen to her when she grew older, he didn’t know. They’d been able to protect her thus far, but there was talk that soon every Chinese person would have to carry with them approved identification or be exiled.
That was the only thing that made him want to contact his brother, as Wei probably had contacts who could do the best counterfeiting. But Luli was young, and they still had some time. Min Kao didn’t want to admit his pride kept him from going to Wei for help.
Theirs was a silent battle of wills, each waiting for the other to make the first step toward reconciliation. Yet Wei was the one who had wronged him. Not the other way around. So Wei should be the one to fix it. And Wei lived a dangerous lifestyle, one that Min Kao didn’t want anywhere near Luli.
With Luli at her desk, Min Kao went back to work on filling the latest prescriptions. It hadn’t been easy, especially since other herbalists had come to America in the last few years to find their own fortunes. Competition could be good, though, and finally the store was doing well. These days, Tao Ren only supervised occasionally. Min Kao had learned from the master and felt he could handle almost any need or even emergency. That was why when the opportunity came up with an empty adjacent shop four years before, he and Tao Ren had become official business partners and bought it. They knocked out the joining wall and doubled the size of their shop, as well as the living quarters above them.
They’d kept the walls up there, dividing the space that they lived as a family from the temporary sanctuary for the girls and young women who Sun Ling rescued and brought to Jingwei for a safe place to decide their next steps.
However, a fake wall with a hidden door that led to the sanctuary was the only way that Jingwei was finally able to talk Min Kao into using the space to house those Sun Ling rescued. Their work was dangerous, as many of the women came from the most unsavory of tongs in Chinatown, but helping others was something that gave Jingwei the feeling she was giving back to the gods who had given her a chance at a happy life. He couldn’t take that away from her, but he still felt nervous each and every time a new girl was delivered. He rarely saw them, but the unease let him know they were there, on the other side of the wall.
The bell on the door rang, and Min Kao turned.
“Good afternoon, Lao Go,” he called out.
The old man shuffled toward the counter, his back bent lower than Min Kao had seen it yet. It was startling what grief could do to a person, and he thought briefly of his mother.
Lao Go held his hand up to return the greeting, mumbling under his breath.
“What can I get for you today?” Min Kao asked.
“I have a smashing headache right back here,” Lao Go said, pointing at his temple. “It won’t go away, and I can’t tolerate it a day longer. What can you fix me up with?”
He automatically held his hand out, and Min Kao took it, then pressed his fingers down to feel the man’s pulse. It was rapid. Much too swift for someone who moved as slow as Lao Go.
“Here, sit down,” he said, then pulled went around the counter and guided Lao Go onto one of the bamboo stools. “Do you have other symptoms?”
Lao Go shrugged. “I’m weary. Day in and day out—I am so tired but cannot get any rest. It’s like my soul is on fire!”
Min Kao studied the man, debating waking Tao Ren from his nap. Lao Go looked as though he was suffering from more than a headache and exhaustion.
Before he could decide, Luli raised her pencil into the air. “Lao Go, your wife said you are feeling poorly because you haven’t fulfilled your promise to her.”
The man turned, looking at Luli with a puzzled yet angry expression. “Watch your manners, miss. You don’t speak of the dead until enough time has passed.”
Luli’s expression crumbled.
Min Kao waved at her to get back to her studies, though he kept his eyes on Lao Go. “Dui bu qi, Lao Go,” he apologized. “She doesn’t know you are still mourning. She meant no harm.”
Lao Go grunted in reply, but he didn’t look appeased.
Luli pushed away from her desk, then came to stand before them. “I am sorry, Lao Go. But she won’t stop talking to me until I tell you that she said you must hurry and send her bones back to her homeland.”
Lao Go gasped. “Well, I’ve never—”
Min Kao grabbed Luli by the shoulders and guided her around the counter. “You run and wake Ye Ye,” he said, hoping she’d stay out of sight until Lao Go left. “Tell him he needs to examine a patient.”
“Hao le, Baba,” Luli said, looking somewhere over Min Kao’s shoulders. “But Madame is waving her arms at me. She said her husband is not to send her bones to their marital home. She wants them taken to Foochow and buried next to her mother.”
Lao Go stood so abruptly that the bamboo stool he’d sat upon flipped back, clattering to the floor. “Wait,” he said, holding his hand up. He’d gone pale, and Min Kao felt a ball of dread lying low in his belly.
Lao Go beckoned Luli to come closer. Reluctantly, Min Kao let her go.
She stopped at the counter, keeping it between her and the old man. He stared down hard at her, scrutinizing her for what felt like hours before he finally spoke.
“How did you know that my wife is from Foochow? We have not spoken of her hometown since the very day she was brought to me in Nanking at the age of fifteen. It’s not possible that you should know that information,” Lao Go said, his voice slow and disbelieving. “What trick is it that you play?”
“I just repeated what she said,” Luli said, her face suddenly fearful.
Lao Go looked at Min Kao, his expression disbelieving. “On her deathbed, my wife asked that I send her bones home. I just assumed she meant to the home we had together, but the bone collector hasn’t yet been by.”