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She still couldn’t decide who she was more upset with about that—her mother or herself. Clearly her mom wasn’t entirely to blame. Yeah, Zoe had gotten a different version of her mom’s weird guilt-trippy style of parenting, considering how much younger she’d been than her siblings when their father died. But Han and Lian—they were doing what they wanted to do. Or at least some variation on it. They were happy.
“Something on your mind?” her mother asked, not looking up from her paper.
So many things.
But the one she ended up blurting out was, “How come you always rode me so much harder than Han and Lian?”
Her mother’s rapid blinking was the only sign that the question took her by surprise. With deliberate slowness, she set her teacup down and dabbed at the corner of her mouth with a napkin.
Stalling. Zoe was used to it.
That didn’t make it any easier to wait her mother out. Chewing on the inside of her lip, she put her hands under her thighs, literally sitting on them to try to give herself patience.
Finally, her mom put the napkin down. She fixed Zoe with an appraising stare that lasted way too long for comfort. Inside, Zoe squirmed a little, but she remained firm.
Shaking her head, her mother let out a breath and looked away. “I ever tell you about the first day I picked you up from nursery school?”
Zoe deflated. She pulled her hands out from under her legs. “Probably.”
“You were a mess. Glitter everywhere. Your teacher apologized, but I knew. It wasn’t her fault.”
Great, so Zoe had been a disaster since she was four. Good to know. “Look—”
Her mom talked right over her, slow and steady. Like a Zamboni. “Whole ride home, you never stopped talking. Told me all the friends you made, everything you did. You couldn’t decide if you liked Joey best or Kim. Or costume party or building with blocks. Everything was your favorite.”
“Right, right. I was a happy kid. I know.”
Her mom’s lips curled into a smile. “Ray of sunshine.” She turned her gaze from the past and back to the woman in front of her. Her smile faded. “You remember what you told me you wanted to be when you grew up?”
Had she ever known? “No.”
“I remember. Clear as yesterday. ‘Princess astronaut veterinarian ballerina.’”
Zoe’s face flushed warm. “I mean, I was, what? Four?”
“But you believed it. With all your heart.”
“Mom…” She was beginning to lose her patience.
Her mother’s voice rose by a fraction, her tone growing serious. “Your brother, Han. Only thing he cares about besides his family is cooking.” Her mother jabbed her pointer finger into the table. “Han is easy.”
Zoe frowned. She wasn’t so sure about all that.
But her mom was on a roll now. She tapped the table hard again. “Lian wanted to be a teacher since she was six. Easy.”
“But what about all the stuff you told me?” Zoe asked. Bitterness seeped into her tone. “Pick any career you want, just make sure it’s comfortably middle class.”
How many times had Zoe come home from school excited about some project in her communications elective or jazzed about a fundraiser Uncle Arthur was going to let her help out with at Harvest Home, only to be met with her mother’s dismissivetut-tutting?
“You.” Her mother shoved that finger in Zoe’s direction this time. “You were never easy.”
“Great,” Zoe grumbled.
“You weren’t. Still aren’t.”
Zoe’s cheeks warmed, and she squirmed inside. Clearly she’d been selling her mom’s passive-aggressive streak short, because this direct insult approach was no peach. “Okay, okay, I get it.”
Her mother shook her head. She was fluent in English, but she still muttered a few words to herself in Mandarin. It was one of her only tells that she was getting flustered.
