Chapter Fifty-Six
The air in the house was musty. The wallpaper was peeling, dust powdered the intricate carvings of the rosewood furniture, and the piano keys had turned yellow. This much Marigold glimpsed while peering past the octogenarian maid blocking the door.
The maid scowled at Marigold. “How did you get up here?”
“The gate was . . . open,” Marigold explained, still winded from the stairs. “I’m here to see Seet Ling. She’s my . . .” Marigold faltered, not knowing what to call her. “My grandmother.”
“Ma’am doesn’t have any grandchildren.”
“Wait!” Marigold put out her foot before the door shut in her face. “I’m Yut Ying’s daughter.”
Upon hearing the name, the maid gave Marigold a funny look. She let go of the door. “Take off your shoes and follow me. Ma’am is in the parlor.”
Marigold wove through the house, carefully brushing the backs of her hands across the staircase, the walls, the cabinets, to assemble a mental map of the house’s four levels.
There was no warmth at 12 Harbourage. Everything felt cold, leaking gusts of bygone fears and pains.
As she approached the parlor, music resonated through the open door and lavender infused the air.
The barest brush of the doorknob triggered the ghost of a gunshot in her ear.
With a sharp gasp, Marigold stumbled, nearly colliding with the maid.
She glared at Marigold darkly. “Don’t touch anything without permission.”
Marigold was still catching her breath. She’d forgotten how to speak.
“You’ll have to excuse Susu,” spoke a voice from within. “She’s been with us forever. The house is like her own child.”
There, on a rosewood settee, lounged a woman in her mid-sixties.
She looked as if she’d been sitting there all day posing for a portrait: Her gray hair was pinned into the perfect architecture of a bun, her legs gathered to the side with a pair of silken house slippers parked in front of her chair.
She balanced a long cigarette holder between her fingers, the sort Marigold had only seen in movies.
So this was Seet Ling.
She had pictured Helen’s stepmother to be a Miss Havisham sort of character, aggrieved and eccentric. Not this.
“Are you just going to stare?” Seet Ling drawled, sounding amused. She sat up, swaying as she put on her shoes. “Introduce yourself.”
She was drunk, Marigold realized, and it wasn’t even noon yet.
“I’m Marigold,” she responded. She extended a hand, bracing herself to read Seet Ling’s memories. “Yut Ying’s daughter.”
“You’re shorter than her.” Seet Ling ignored Marigold’s proffered hand. “American?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t think she would go so far,” Seet Ling murmured. “Good for her. It’s just a pity she isn’t here with you.”
Marigold drew back her hand. “My mother?”
“Yes. I should have liked to reconcile with her.” Seet Ling poured a liberal splash of whiskey into her glass. “Are you old enough to drink? This is straight from Scotland, very expensive.”
“No—I mean, yes I’m old enough, but no—no thank you.”
Seet Ling gave the whiskey a lazy swirl, then leaned back.
“Yut Ying must have told you, we didn’t part on good terms. I still remember the day she arrived in Hong Kong.
Thirty-five years ago, can you believe it?
She sat in that chair there with the green brocade, fidgeting with the tassels.
That was the day I gained a second daughter.
” Seet Ling took a lengthy drag from her cigarette, and her voice turned hoarse.
“I was a jealous young wife back then. I should have treated her better.”
She twisted the ends of her shawl, suddenly looking small and defeated, not unlike the cigarette in her hand. All smoke and no fire.
Seet Ling sighed. “Listen to me, an elderly lady reminiscing. Don’t ever get old, Marigold.
You’ll be buried in regrets.” She set down her cigarette as the maid reappeared with tea.
“Come, sit while it steeps. I want to hear about your life in the States. What does your mother do, who’s your father, where do you live? ”
Marigold took Helen’s chair, stealing a glimpse at the door where Susu now stood, blocking her way out.
She wished Yuk Fong had been able to show her more about Helen’s stepmother; something about this entire place put her on edge.
“There’s not much to tell,” she started.
“My parents own a bakery in California, and I have two sisters. The oldest is pregnant with twins.”
“Twins!” Seet Ling tapped her nails against her glass. “My my, little Yut Ying is going to be a grandmother. Good for her. What a happy, beautiful life she’s made.”
Marigold forced a smile. She needed to get out of here. “I still have nausea from the ride up the hills,” she lied, clearing her throat. “Do you mind if I freshen up in the—”
“You poor darling, did your driver take the windy way in? They always say it’s shorter, but it isn’t.
Here, the tea’s ready—let me pour you a cup.
” Seet Ling’s aim was shaky; it was a miracle nothing spilled onto the table.
“Extra sugar? It’ll help with the nausea.
” Seet Ling placed the cup on a matching saucer and blew at the steam. “Careful, it’s hot.”
“Thank you, but—”
“No need to be shy with family.” Seet Ling folded her legs back onto the divan. “You know, my daughter suffered the same sort of ailment. The sun made her weak, and she’d faint after too long in the car. You remind me of her, with the glasses.”
“Lily.”
“Yes. She and your mother were close.”
Marigold’s fingertips tingled. She needed to find a way to Lily’s room.
“If you have an altar,” she said, “I’d like to pray to her.”
Seet Ling looked pleased. “You can pray to your grandfather as well. He died in ’67—it’s too bad, you could’ve met him. We wanted to invite your mother to the funeral, but she vanished without a trace.”
Vanished without a trace. A muscle twitched in Marigold’s jaw. “I’m sorry to hear that. We didn’t know.”
“Of course you didn’t.” Seet Ling rose. “Bring your tea, the altar’s upstairs. How about I show you around the house on the way?”
Marigold couldn’t believe her luck. She reached for her tea, but as her fingers rounded over the porcelain cup, a crushing tide of lethargy overcame her, threatening to immobilize her. She grabbed at the table, toppling the teacup as her muscles went slack.
“Aiya!” cried Seet Ling. “Are you quite all right?”
The tea spilled, a gray-brown puddle sliding across the table. Marigold stared listlessly, still recovering from what she’d seen. She knelt to pick up the teacup—the very one that had once poisoned her mother—and schooled her face into an apologetic mask.
“I’m so sorry. I’ll clean it up.”
“Don’t bother, Susu can do it.” Seet Ling waved. “Susu!”
As the maid left her post by the door and charged toward them, Marigold rose to her feet. This was her chance. She coughed, covering her mouth and making an uncomfortable gargling sound.
“Where’s the washroom?” she asked. “I’m feeling sick again . . . might need to—”
Seet Ling waved an urgent hand at the door. “Out past the den to the left of the piano. Heavens, don’t do it on my rugs!”
Marigold had no intention of going to the bathroom. The second she left the parlor she hurried up the stairs, taking two steps at a time. Third floor, third floor. Lily’s room was on the third floor.
At the top of the house, Marigold arrived in a wide and unlit hall. It smelled of incense, and the curtains were drawn, every door closed. The only light came from a red table at the end of the hallway, candles still burning.
Lily’s altar.
This was it. Lily’s door was double-locked: latched with a bolt on top and the knob required a key to open.
Luckily, Marigold had come prepared. The knob was a simple lock like the ones she used to practice on when she was a kid.
Within a minute, she picked it with the paperclips in her pocket, slid the bolt open, and crept inside.
No one had entered Lily’s bedroom in decades; it hadn’t even been wired for electricity. Marigold parted the curtains, letting in a fan of gray light, and lifted the white sheets covering the furniture. She suppressed a cough as clouds of dust swirled up into the air.
“Shadow?” she whispered. “It’s Yut Ying’s daughter. I’ve come to fetch you.”
She peered under the desk, behind the bookshelves, and in the closet. There was no shadow to be found. She checked the bed next, lifting the pink sheet covering the mattress. Something flickered behind the headboard—
Marigold froze. Footsteps were approaching, light yet unsteady.
She rolled under Lily’s bed, hiding behind the pink dust ruffle. And that was when she found Helen’s shadow.
It was dark against the wall, clinging to a broken porcelain doll that had fallen under the bed. Marigold reached to grab the doll by its tangled hair. The shadow darted away, slipping past her fingers.
What was she thinking? A shadow was light and darkness. It couldn’t be picked up. Yet as she’d brushed her fingers across it, she thought she felt a trace of longing. An ache that came from the shadow itself—for her mother.
Could that be possible?
Helen’s shadow returned to the doll, slipping under its cracks and casting over its broken face like an eclipse. The doll was her mother’s favorite toy, Marigold gleaned, one of the few possessions Yut Ying had brought from Tunglam.
Marigold reached for it again, only for the shadow to skitter away a second time.
She was scaring it. I need to persuade it to me, she thought. I need it to trust me.
The only thing she had of her mother’s was the wooden comb. Marigold put on her gloves, about to reach into her pocket—when the footsteps came to a halt. Right in front of Lily’s door.
“She went in there, ma’am,” Susu was saying from the hallway. The maid sounded spooked. “Yes, that room. The last time Madam Chan went inside, she . . . she . . .”