I did as he asked, but my hands shook and the glaring lights made me blink at all the wrong times. My smiles felt forced.
“Don’t look at the strobes,” called Gary. “Ignore me.”
How could I ignore the camera? It was pointed at me like a gun and captured my every flinch. Worse yet was Director Fung, standing in the corner with his arms crossed, his hawk-sharp eyes unreadable.
Tommy sensed my discomfort. “Can you put on some music?” he asked Joan.
Some minutes later, “The Evening Primrose” filled the room. It was a popular song that I recognized right away, and it was nothing short of magic, at least to me, how the mood in the studio shifted—becoming resonant and alive. I focused on the familiar chirp of the flutes, the lulling beat of the drums. When Ye Lai Xiang’s voice arrived, saturating the air, I relaxed and forgot about the camera. I sang along with her, quietly under my breath at first, then, hearing Tommy whistle along, mimicking a hwamei, I glanced over my shoulder and gifted him a small smile.
The camera lights flashed.
My voice gained confidence. Soon I was singing over Ye Lai Xiang, making the song my own. I pretended the bottle of soymilk was my microphone, and I held it close as I sang, my voice gliding with an acrobat’s precision across each leap in the melody, fraught with the emotion and intimacy of a secret love. When I reached the highest note—the climax—I held it an extra tremulous beat before I finished the phrase all in one breath. A little thrill coursed inside me when Gary and Joan burst into applause.
Director Fung signaled the barest nod to Gary, and I knew that I’d done it. The session was a success.
As I lowered my bottle of Peaksoy, Tommy planted a kiss on my cheek.
I glanced up at him, startled.
He looked away as if nothing had happened. We were still under his grandfather’s gaze. But behind my skirt, his handreached for mine, fingers interlacing, and a happiness I’d never known bubbled up inside me. I couldn’t help it, my heart sang and all of me beamed like sunshine.
It was simply a smile, the crumb of a fairy tale that had been told a thousand times—when a girl discovered she was in love. I didn’t hear the click of the camera that would immortalize it and turn it into my legacy.
Chapter Eighteen
My good mood disappeared when I saw Prince Cannonball. He was perched on top of a black Renault 4CV parked outside the gate. The car was one I’d seen all over Hong Kong, stout like a cockroach, with two hooded hind wheels and silver stripes on the bumper. Its presence didn’t bother me—Gu Ma frequently had visitors late at night. What did bother me was that her beloved DeSoto was nowhere in sight.
“Gu Ma went out for the night?” I asked the cat. “Baba and Sai Ma too?”
Prince Cannonball glowered with his yellow eyes, then leapt into the garden.
I’d taken to hiding a plain and shapeless shift under the myrtle bushes for when I sneaked back home. I slipped it over my dress before I went into the house.
Only the lanterns outside the windows were lit, and the night air was warm and syrupy. Under the moonlight I started up the stairs for my room, when I noticed the parlor door was open.
Goosebumps prickled my skin. “Susu?” I called out. “Tingting?”
I padded toward the parlor just to close the door. As I grasped the doorknob, I spied Tingting on the floor, unconscious underneath the sighing hem of the curtains.
I didn’t get a chance to scream.
From the dark of the parlor, someone grabbed me by the neck. His hand clamped over my mouth, the cold kiss of a metal ring against my teeth.
I didn’t fight. I didn’t think. I simply vanished.
My intruder gasped. That was enough. I squirmed free and ran to the other side of the parlor. He was blocking the door, which left me with only one choice: the gun.
It had been pecking at the back of my mind ever since I found it behind Sai Ma’s records.
When next I exhaled, I had it. I pointed it high—at Mr. Zhou.
“Well, well,” he said, putting his hands up in mock surrender. Moonlight from outside the window illuminated his face. “This is quite the curiosity. Who knew there was a little devil in the Chan family?”
“I’m not a Chan.” A ridiculous thing to correct at a time like this, but I wasn’t thinking straight. “Get away from the door.”
“And if I don’t, will you do that trick of yours again? Will you... vanish?”
The space between heartbeats suddenly became an eternity. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
