I wanted to take her to the hospital right away, but it would have been exhausting for her to move. Astonishingly, my stepfather voiced the same concerns. He sat next to her and took her hand. “Let me know if you don’t feel well.”
I’d never heard him speak so intimately to her before, but she didn’t seem surprised, and I wondered whether this was the way he occasionally treated her in the privacy of their bedroom, when the doors were closed. Maybe that was enough to keep her foolishly hopeful. But I still hated him, I decided. Nothing would change my mind about that.
Later, Ah Kum came and sat in the kitchen as I boiled pork bone soup, to which I’d added dried red dates to build up my mother’s yang energy.
Ah Kum said, “Your father’s really worried about her. That’s so sweet.”
I nodded. Ah Kum had only moved to Falim this past year and was perhaps unaware that we weren’t related at all.
“Did your brother go back already?”
“Yes, last night.”
Ah Kum sighed and I remembered how she’d been all over Shin last time he was home. At the time I hadn’t cared much: strange how only ten days had made such a difference.
“Does he have a girlfriend?” she asked.
Shin hadn’t announced anything to our parents but that wasn’t surprising, either. “I think so,” I said, recalling Koh Beng’s well-meaning warning to me in the hospital. “Down in Singapore.”
“Oh, Singapore is far away! Perhaps he’ll change his mind and pick me.”
“Perhaps.” I admired her single-minded determination.
“We’ll have six children,” Ah Kum said jokingly. “And they’ll all be beautiful.”
I forced myself to smile. “What makes you think so?”
“Just look at you and your brother—such a handsome family!”
Embarrassed, I hung my head. There’d be trouble if anyone knew how my feelings had changed towards Shin. I could imagine my stepfather’s rage, my mother’s shame. The whispers from the neighbors that there must have been something improper going on in our house.
“You’ll cheer me on with your brother, won’t you?” said Ah Kum. “Especially since you’ve got a rich boyfriend. I heard he sent you home last night in a big car.”
I’d completely forgotten about Robert, but I ought to thank him. Write him a note, though I wasn’t sure how to get in touch with him. My problem was solved, however, when Robert stopped by that afternoon, and then again the next morning. The first time he brought dried Chinese herbs. The second time, he brought chicken soup in a blue-and-white porcelain tureen. It had been made, he explained, by his family cook, using the silky-feathered, black-skinned chicken that was especially good for invalids.
It was all very thoughtful of him, and I felt guilty, especially after seeing how the soup had sloshed onto the soft leather of his car seat. Robert’s atrocious driving must have contributed to it, but I didn’t mention that as I rushed to blot the stain. He spent some time chatting with my stepfather. I’d no idea what they talked about, but my mother, who had recovered enough to sit up in the family room and greet him, was pleased.
“Such a nice young man!” she said as I reheated the chicken soup for her. I kept quiet. I hadn’t been able to remove the soup stains from Robert’s car seat. It gave me an uneasy feeling. One more thing that I owed him.
* * *
It was now Friday, and I’d been back in Falim for three days. Three days in which the color had returned to my mother’s face and she’d moved back upstairs to the bedroom she shared with my stepfather. I wouldn’t let her do any housework, despite her insistence she was fine.
“What’s the point of my being here?” I said, reminding her that Mrs. Tham had given me the week off. I’d have to return to Ipoh tomorrow, however, because of the private party on Saturday.
In these three days, I’d had no word from Shin. If he’d been run over by a lorry or eaten by a tiger, the police would surely have contacted us by now. Still, I couldn’t help glancing at the clock as the long, hot Friday afternoon advanced, expecting him to return for the weekend.
I’d hidden the brown paper packet with its severed thumb in Shin’s empty room. I knew where he used to keep his treasures, under a loosened floorboard in the corner, and I pried it up and slid the paper packet in. Standing in Shin’s room, the smooth wooden floorboards under my bare feet, I found it hard to believe that he’d occupied it for so many years. It was completely empty.
When he’d left for medical school, he’d sorted his belongings in a frenzy of activity. I’d watched silently from the doorway as he’d systematically cleared everything out, even the cheaply printed kungfu novels that we’d both collected.
“Can I have these?” I’d asked.
He’d nodded, barely turning his head. And I’d known then that Shin never meant to come home again.
Traitor, I thought. Deserter.
I threw myself on the neatly stripped bed, wondering if Fong Lan had lain here with Shin, and what they had done together. Whether he had unbuttoned her blouse slowly, and bent to kiss her, his hand sliding up to cup her breast. Had he smiled lazily at her the way he had at me, looking down through his lashes? Lying there in the darkness, I squeezed my eyes shut. I must kill it quickly: this raw, newborn emotion that fluttered in my chest.
* * *
So when Friday afternoon came round and I heard my stepfather’s voice raised in greeting in the front of the shophouse, I told myself that I mustn’t run out to greet Shin like a loyal dog. Still, my pulse quickened as footsteps made their way down the long passageway, all the way to the back kitchen where I was chopping up a steamed chicken. It was best to look cheerful, I decided. Not as though I’d stayed up half the night catching up on ten years’ worth of jealousy in one fell swoop. Cheerful and brisk, that was the way to go.
“Back again?” I said. “I was afraid you got squashed by a lorry.”
Turning, I was mortified to discover that it wasn’t Shin, but Robert who stood behind me.
“Is my driving really that bad?” he asked in surprise.
“I’m sorry—I thought you were Shin.”
Robert’s eye brightened at my flustered expression. “I don’t mind,” he said. “I like it when you talk to me like that, Ji Lin.” This wasn’t good. The way he said my name, shyly yet with pleasure, had all the hallmarks of infatuation. I’d seen it before at the dance hall, though it was easier to shrug off while being smoky-eyed Louise.
“I always envied Shin and Ming,” said Robert. “And how the three of you were so close growing up.”
I tried to laugh it off. “You have sisters, don’t you?”
“It’s not the same.” He drew closer, and I glanced at him in alarm. If he tried to go in for a kiss again, I might end up flinging the chicken at him. I wondered why I was so resistant to him. After all, he was a good catch. Not knowing what else to do, I served him some steamed sweet rice cakes, the kind that were puffy like clouds.
“Did you say that your father is on the board of the Batu Gajah District Hospital?” I asked casually.
He nodded through a mouthful of cake.
I took out the copy I’d made of the lists in Pei Ling’s package. It was worth a try, if he had any information that could shed light on them. “Do you recognize any of these names?”
Robert studied it for a long moment. “Lytton Rawlings—he’s the pathologist. And this one, William Acton, is a general surgeon.”
“What about J. MacFarlane?”
“I don’t think he’s on staff.” Robert frowned. “But I’ve heard that name before. There was an odd story going around, something to do with a woman’s death up in Kamunting. Where did you get these lists from—the hospital?”
A chill shadow swam below me. I regretted asking Robert, with his blundering, well-meaning ways.
“It’s nothing,” I said.
“You look so sad, Ji Lin,” said Robert. “Are you worried about anything? Because if you are, you should tell me.”
His face with its silly, fashionably thin mustache peered anxiously at me. Of course I had worries. Worries about mahjong debts, loan sharks, and losing my part-time job. Plus the small matter of severed fingers and falling in love with my stepbrother, but I couldn’t possibly tell Robert any of this. At that moment, Ah Kum walked in. Finding us gazing at each other over the kitchen table, she backtracked with a congratulatory smirk.
My mother pressed Robert to stay for dinner, but he had a previous engagement. I was relieved. Shin still hadn’t arrived, and it was better if they didn’t meet. He had a bristling antagonism towards Robert that was part envy and part I didn’t know what—natural dislike, I supposed.
To my surprise, my stepfather came out to see Robert off with me. After his sleek, cream-colored behemoth had taken off with a squeal of brakes, leaving a skid mark on the edge of the curb, the two of us were left standing on the street. My stepfather, chewing on a toothpick, was expressionless as ever, but I felt his mood soften, which gave me the courage to say, “Robert’s father is on the board at the Batu Gajah Hospital.”
He grunted.