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The only one who did dare question her right to exist was her own father.
“Don’t think about it,” Kathleen muttered to herself. “Stop thinking about it.”
She was already thinking about it. About the first argument they had when her father arrived in Paris, summoned because one of his three children had fallen ill.
It’s influenza, the doctors had said. She might not recover.
Her father’s temper was already at its breaking point, his French too elementary to understand the doctors. And when Kathleen tried to help, pulled him out into the hallway after the doctors left to make sure her father understood their options…
“I can’t even listen to you right now,” he sneered. He looked her up and down, eyeing her dress, the inspection dripping with distaste. “Not until you stop wearing such—”
“Don’t,” Kathleen cut in.
Her father reared back. Perhaps it had been the interruption that was more offensive. Perhaps it had been her tone, certain in her command without wavering.
“What have the tutors been teaching you?” he snapped. “You do not talk back to me—”
“Or what, Bàba?” she said evenly. “What will you do?”
For thousands of years, the worst crime in China was a lack of filial piety. Having children with no xiàoshùn was a fate worse than death. It meant being forgotten in the afterlife, a wandering ghost doomed to starve when no offerings came in from irreverent descendants.
But it was her father who had sent them out here, who had thinned the string that China tied around their wrists. He had sent them to the West, where they were taught different ideas, taught about a different afterlife that had nothing to do with burning paper money. The West had corrupted them—and whose fault was that?
Her father had nothing more to say. “Go,” he snapped. “Go back into the room and join your sisters. I will speak to the doctors.”
Kathleen did not protest. She had wondered in that moment, peering over her shoulder as her father stood there, if he ever cursed the universe for taking his wife in childbirth, if he regretted losing her in exchange for three strangers. For Kathleen, Rosalind, and Celia.
A girl who had been sickly all her life.
A girl who was in training to be Shanghai’s dazzling star.
And a girl who just wanted to be left alone to live as she was.
Kathleen closed her fist tightly, her teeth gritted hard, forcing the memories back. Her father would have forced her into hiding if he’d had his way. He would have rather disowned her than let her back in Shanghai wearing a qipao, and Kathleen would have rather packed her bags and made her own way across Europe than go on being her father’s prodigal son.
She supposed it was fortunate that Kathleen Lang—the real Kathleen—died of influenza two weeks after falling sick, her fourteen years of life coming to a close with no real friends, having been distant from her two sisters all her life. How were you supposed to mourn someone you never really knew? It was empty expressions under black veils and cold stares at the cremation vase. Even the thickest blood from the womb could run thin if given the empty space to bleed.
“I won’t call you Celia,” her father said at the port, lifting their suitcases. “That’s not the name I gave you at birth.” He cast her a glance askew. “But I will call you Kathleen. And save for Rosalind, you may tell no one. It’s for your own safety. You must realize that.”
She did. She had fought so hard all her life just to be called Celia, and now her father wanted to give her a different name and… she could accept it. The Lang triplets had been away from Shanghai for so long that not a soul had questioned Kathleen’s changed face when they finally returned. Except Juliette—Juliette noticed everything, but their cousin had been quick to nod along, making the switch from Celia to Kathleen as quickly as she had made the switch to Celia.
Now Kathleen responded to this name as if it were her own, as if it were the only name she had ever known, and it was a comfort, no matter how strange.
“Hello.”
Kathleen jumped at Da Nao’s sudden appearance in the break room, her hand flying to her heart.
“Are you quite all right?” Da Nao asked.
“Perfectly,” Kathleen breathed. She squared her shoulders, recovering back into business mode. “I need a favor. I’m after Zhang Gutai’s personal address.”
Though her cousin didn’t know it, Juliette was actually familiar with Da Nao—whose name translated literally to Big Brain. He spent some hours working at this cotton mill and some as a fisherman along the Bund, retrieving fresh stock for the Scarlet Gang. He had been around during their childhood and had dropped by the Scarlet residence at least three times since Juliette’s return. The Scarlet Gang liked their fish fresh. But they didn’t need to know that their primary supplier was also their eyes and ears within the Party.
“Zhang Gutai,” Da Nao echoed. “You want… the Secretary-General’s personal address.”
“Indeed.”
Da Nao was pulling a face that said What the hell do you need that for? But he didn’t ask and Kathleen didn’t tell, so the fisherman tapped his chin in thought and said, “I can find it for you. But our next meeting is not until Saturday. It may have to wait until then.”
