Chapter 7 Growing Up Different #3
He frowned.
"Maybe."
Terrence didn't pressure him.
They continued walking.
At a booth selling traditional pastries, an elderly Chinese woman looked at Tan for a long time.
Her eyes dropped to the pendant.
Then returned to his face.
She froze.
Tan smiled politely.
"Hi."
The woman's hands trembled.
She said something rapidly in Mandarin.
Tan looked confused.
"I don't understand."
Terrence stepped closer.
"Ma'am?"
The woman looked at him.
Then Eva.
Then Travis and Ella.
Her expression changed from surprise to fear.
She grabbed the arm of an older man beside her and whispered urgently.
The man looked toward Tan.
His face went pale.
Terrence's instincts sharpened.
"Do you know him?"
The man shook his head immediately.
"No English."
Terrence had heard him speaking English to another customer seconds earlier.
He stepped closer.
"I'm Officer Terrence David."
The man's jaw tightened.
"I know."
That surprised him.
"You know me?"
The older man looked toward Tan again.
"Take boy home."
Terrence frowned.
"What?"
"Take your family and go."
Eva moved beside her husband.
"Why?"
The woman whispered something else.
The man sharply told her to stop.
Tan watched, confused.
Terrence lowered his voice.
"You recognize his necklace."
Silence.
"Don't you?"
The man's face hardened.
"You should not ask questions."
Terrence felt every police instinct awaken.
"Why?"
The man stared directly into his eyes.
"Because some answers bring trouble."
Then he turned away.
Conversation over.
Tan tugged Terrence's hand.
"Dad?"
Terrence looked down.
"Yeah?"
"What he mean?"
Terrence forced a smile.
"I'm not sure."
But he was lying.
Not completely.
He didn't know exactly what the man meant.
But he knew one thing.
Someone knew Tan Lee.
And whoever they were afraid of had managed to keep an entire community silent for years.
Later that night, after the children were asleep, Terrence sat at the dining room table.
Tan's adoption file lay open before him.
Eva entered carrying two cups of tea.
"You're still thinking about it."
"Can't stop."
She placed a cup beside him.
"You were off duty today."
"I'm a father every day."
Eva sat across from him.
Terrence pulled out a notebook.
"I've asked myself for years why nobody came looking for him."
"Maybe they couldn't."
"That's what I assumed."
He tapped the page.
"But today changed something."
"What?"
"Those people didn't react like they vaguely recognized the name Lee."
"They reacted like they recognized him."
Eva folded her arms.
"He was five when he disappeared."
"Kids change."
"The pendant didn't."
Silence.
Terrence opened an old photograph from Tan's original CPS intake.
The jade pendant was clearly visible.
Eva stared at it.
"Do you think it's important?"
"I think it means something."
"Tan said Jin told him never to remove it."
"Exactly."
Terrence leaned back.
"If that family was just another immigrant family caught in a raid, why are grown adults scared to talk about them years later?"
Eva didn't answer.
Neither could Terrence.
But somewhere deep inside him, the concern he'd carried since his nightmare years earlier returned.
Different now.
Sharper.
Something about Tan's past had never added up.
Terrence looked toward the hallway leading to his children's bedrooms.
"I promised him I'd help him find where he came from."
Eva reached across the table and covered his hand.
"And you will."
Terrence looked at his wife.
"But whatever I find..."
His voice lowered.
"...I have a feeling we're not dealing with an ordinary family."
Upstairs, Tan wasn't asleep.
He sat near his bedroom window with Panda beside him.
The festival had awakened memories he'd thought were gone.
Not clear ones.
Fragments.
His mother brushing his hair.
His father arguing with someone behind a closed door.
Jin standing outside their apartment talking to men in expensive suits.
A black car parked behind the market.
His grandmother fastening the jade pendant around his neck.
Her voice speaking words he'd forgotten.
Then another memory surfaced.
A man.
Older.
Powerful.
People moved out of his way when he entered a room.
Tan couldn't remember his name.
But he remembered the ring.
A gold dragon wrapped around a dark green stone.
The man had crouched in front of him once.
He had touched the jade pendant and smiled.
Then he said something in Mandarin.
Tan couldn't remember the words.
But for some reason, the memory frightened him.
He climbed beneath the blankets and pulled Panda close.
Across the hall, Travis snored loudly enough to be heard through the wall.
Tan smiled.
The fear eased.
This was home.
Terrence was Dad.
Eva was Mama.
Travis was his annoying older brother.
Ella was his even more annoying little sister.
Gloria and Harold were Grandma and Grandpa.
Nothing from his past could change that.
At least...
That was what ten-year-old Tan believed.
He had no way of knowing that thousands of miles of hidden history were slowly beginning to move toward him.
And somewhere beyond the warm safety of the David home, the name Tan Lee had never truly been forgotten.