Chapter 8 Questions Without Answers #3
"If you find out?"
"Still no."
Ella folded her arms.
"That's selfish."
Travis leaned toward Tan.
"Five hundred dollars and I'll help investigate."
"Five hundred?"
"I'm offering the family discount."
Terrence shook his head.
"I'm raising criminals."
Eva smiled.
"You're the police officer."
"Exactly. Embarrassing."
The humor helped.
Then Travis became serious.
"So... you really think his family might've been into crime?"
Terrence answered.
"I think there's more to the Lee family than we knew."
"Does that put Tan in danger?"
The question changed everything.
Eva looked at Terrence.
He couldn't dismiss it.
"I don't know."
Tan rubbed the jade pendant.
"So should I stop wearing this?"
Eva's face filled with sadness.
Terrence thought carefully.
"That's your decision."
"What would you do?"
"I'd probably tuck it under my shirt when we're in Little Chinatown."
Tan nodded.
"But at home?"
"Wear it."
"At school?"
"If you want."
Tan looked around the table.
"Am I putting y'all in danger?"
"No."
Terrence's answer came immediately.
"But if—"
"No."
His voice grew firmer.
"Don't start thinking like that."
"What if somebody comes here because of me?"
"Then they came to the wrong house."
Eva touched Terrence's arm.
"Baby."
"I'm serious."
He looked at all three children.
"This family doesn't operate on blame."
"If trouble comes because of my police work, does that mean it's my fault we're family?"
"No," Travis said.
"If somebody at the hospital gets angry with your mama, does that mean she has to leave us?"
Ella shook her head.
"No."
"Then Tan doesn't become less ours because somebody from his past might be dangerous."
Tan stared at him.
Terrence leaned back.
"We use wisdom."
"We pay attention."
"We protect each other."
"But nobody runs."
Harold, who had quietly entered through the back door midway through the conversation, spoke from the kitchen.
"That's right."
Everyone turned.
Gloria stepped in behind him carrying a pie.
Terrence blinked.
"Do y'all knock anymore?"
Gloria looked offended.
"I have a key."
"That wasn't my question."
"Boy, hush."
She placed the pie on the counter.
Tan smiled.
"Grandma."
"I heard my grandson is having one of his thinking-too-hard nights."
"Who told you?"
Eva raised her hand.
"Traitor," Tan muttered.
Gloria pulled him into a hug.
"Listen to me."
Tan looked up.
"I don't care if your biological family owns half of China."
Terrence smiled.
"That's geographically ambitious, Mama."
"I said what I said."
She continued.
"Or if they didn't have two nickels to rub together."
"You are ours."
"And if somebody has something to say about it, they can come talk to me."
Harold looked at Tan.
"You'd better pray they choose Terrence instead."
The room erupted.
Even Eva couldn't stop laughing.
Years moved differently after that night.
Tan's childhood gradually surrendered to adolescence.
At fifteen, he shot up several inches and became leaner, faster, quieter.
At sixteen, he obtained his driver's license and Terrence immediately developed several new gray hairs.
At seventeen, he became captain of his high school basketball team.
He maintained strong grades, worked weekends at Raymond's barbershop sweeping floors and answering phones, and spent Sunday mornings beside his family at New Covenant Baptist Church.
His faith became personal.
Not perfect.
Not unquestioning.
But his own.
He still occasionally sat in the sanctuary wondering why God had allowed his family to disappear.
Yet he also couldn't deny the family he'd received afterward.
Sometimes gratitude and grief lived inside him at the same time.
He learned that one didn't have to destroy the other.
Terrence continued investigating the Lees quietly.
He found property records connecting Bao Lee to several restaurants, markets, warehouses, import companies, and real-estate holdings stretching back decades.
Some businesses had disappeared.
Others changed names.
A few were now owned through corporations so layered that tracing the actual ownership became nearly impossible.
Then he found something that bothered him.
Bao Lee had apparently died several years before the immigration raid.
Yet several properties associated with him transferred shortly afterward to a company controlled by a Jin Lee.
Terrence stared at the computer screen.
There were hundreds of Jin Lees in California.
The name alone proved nothing.
But the age attached to one corporate filing was close.
Too close.
Terrence printed the document.
He didn't tell Tan.
Not yet.
Because the company had been dissolved.
The listed address led to an empty warehouse.
The phone numbers were disconnected.
The trail ended again.
But for the first time, Terrence believed something he'd never allowed himself to say aloud.
Jin might be alive.
The summer after high school graduation, Tan and Terrence returned to the same intersection where they'd first met.
Tan stood on the sidewalk staring across the traffic.
Cars rushed past.
A city bus groaned to a stop nearby.
People hurried through crosswalks carrying groceries, briefcases, backpacks, and phones.
Nothing about the intersection looked important.
Yet for Tan, everything had started there.
"I was really standing in the street?"
Terrence nodded.
"Right about there."
"You almost hit me?"
"I did not almost hit you."
"You slammed your brakes."
"Because somebody else almost hit you."
"Sounds suspicious."
Terrence laughed.
Tan smiled.
He was eighteen now.
Tall.
Athletic.
His black hair was neatly cut.
The jade pendant remained beneath his shirt.