Xie Huaixia blinked too, then murmured, “My aunt hit you?”
Chen Li said, “Hm?”
She wasn’t hurt, and she wasn’t angry. How had Xie Huaixia come to that conclusion?
Xie Huaixia scrambled up using both hands and feet, then patted Chen Li’s shoulder as if trying to soothe her. “My aunt must’ve mistaken you for me. I’m little, so of course I need someone to sleep with me. Mom’s hardly ever home, so I’m always climbing into my aunt’s bed. It’s too hot in summer and too cold in winter, and sometimes Auntie gets fed up with me. She just grabs me by the scruff and tosses me onto the floor. She does it so often, she doesn’t even have to open her eyes. She had a fever today, too, and she was all muddled. She must’ve thought you were me and hit you by mistake. Don’t be mad at her. When she’s better, I’ll make her apologize.”
Xie Huaixia’s explanation was so convincing, with a clear cause and effect, that Chen Li might have believed it if she hadn’t been there herself.
“You’ve got it wrong,” Chen Li said.
Xie Huaixia ignored her and called out to the person who had just answered her call. “Mom, Auntie’s almost done with her IV.”
“Keep an eye on your aunt. I’m on my way,” Xie Yun said.
“Okay, Mom. I haven’t blinked once all night.”
Chen Li: “…”
Hadn’t opened her eyes once, more like.
Chen Li didn’t want to explain to Xie Yun why she’d been in Xie Anqing’s room in the middle of the night, so she left Xie Huaixia to take the credit and went back to her own room before Xie Yun arrived.
Xie Yun was a meticulous woman with a temper. First, it took her nearly half an hour to send Xie Huaixia home to sleep. Then she spent another half hour cleaning Xie Anqing up.
When the second floor finally fell quiet, Chen Li lit up her phone and checked the time.
3:39 a.m.
The night was almost over. There was no chance she’d wake at her usual hour.
As the sunlight grew hotter, Chen Li rolled over, turning her back to the window, and drifted off again.
She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep when a shout rose from the courtyard.
“Qingwa!”
“Qingwa!”
A frog?
Chen Li’s arm shifted where it lay beside her pillow, then tucked beneath it.
“Qing, are you home?”
Oh. Someone was looking for Secretary Xie.
Chen Li drew her arm back. Her long fingers curled slightly, wrist bones prominent as she rested her hand on a shoulder damp with sweat. She heard the door open, followed by slow, heavy footsteps that soon gave way to the murmur of voices.
“Grandma.”
“Oh, Qingwa, why are you so pale? Are you feeling sick?”
“Yeah. I’ve got a bit of a fever. What brings you over so early?”
“I’m divorcing your grandpa!”
Chen Li’s fingers twitched, but her eyelids were too heavy to lift.
Dogs. Pigs. Proof of electricity meter installation. Evacuating residents. Clearing roads. And now divorce proceedings.
At twenty-nine, Chen Li had never realized a village Party Secretary’s job could be so complicated.
Suddenly wide awake, she curled her fingers against the warmth the sunlight had baked into them, then got out of bed.
Upstairs, the two bedrooms stood at opposite ends of the house, with a hallway between them almost as wide as a room. It held a three-drawer console, a six-drawer cabinet, an open curio shelf, a southern-style armchair…
And potted plants of every height.
At the north end, the hallway opened onto the veranda where Chen Li had sat for a while the night before, a perfect spot for moon-gazing and stargazing. Four windows lined the south wall. All four stood open.
Chen Li crossed over and leaned against the windowsill.
The wood didn’t hold heat the way metal did, and shade from the pomegranate tree fell across the window. The heat drained from Chen Li’s skin, and the sweat slowly dried. In a good mood, she tilted her head and rested her temple against the frame. Through the branches, she spotted Xie Anqing and a white-haired grandmother seated beneath the tree.
The grandmother smacked a palm down on the wooden table, seething. “I’m divorcing him! I can’t live with him another day!”
“All right,” Xie Anqing said.
Chen Li blinked.
Wasn’t she supposed to talk her out of it?
Not that it was strange. What was strange was that the grandmother clearly only wanted to vent and be persuaded to stay, and the Party Secretary wasn’t giving her so much as a handhold.
Amused, Chen Li shifted her gaze to Xie Anqing.
The Party Secretary had only just recovered from a serious illness and still looked weak. She sagged in her chair, head resting against the back, eyes closed, her body dappled with shifting light and shadow.
The grandmother fell silent for a moment, then asked uncertainly, “You really think Grandma should get divorced?”
“Yeah.” Xie Anqing didn’t move, her eyes still closed. “Your whole life, you’ve worried about him for as long as he’s smoked. Now the doctors have found more than twenty nodules in his lungs, and he still won’t listen. You might as well divorce him. Then you won’t spend every day worrying yourself sick.”
“But, Qing—”
“It’s all right, Grandma. Divorce is common these days. No one will say anything.”
“I—”
“I don’t feel well, but I can push through and get you and Grandpa safely to the civil affairs bureau.”
“There’s no need to rush.”
“We should rush. You’ve worked hard your whole life. The sooner you divorce, the sooner you can have peace of mind.”
As she spoke, Xie Anqing pulled a ring of keys from her pocket. “Let’s go.”
Then she opened her eyes.
Chen Li was still leaning at the upstairs window, watching Xie Anqing with keen interest.
After witnessing the whole exchange, she thought she finally understood why the Secretary was encouraging a divorce instead of talking the grandmother out of it. People could be perverse. The more you coddled them, the more they pushed their luck. Xie Anqing had taken the opposite approach, and it was working perfectly.
The only problem was that she’d opened her eyes so suddenly.
Chen Li didn’t have time to look away. Their gazes collided.
The angle was pure commercial photography.
Several talent managers had once asked Chen Li to shoot their celebrities from above, rambling about “the boyfriend’s point of view” and “the girlfriend’s point of view.” Chen Li had always found the whole thing cheesy and objectifying. But with a different subject and a different setting, inspiration struck. Now she knew how she’d shoot that kind of picture next time.
First, the setting had to be lush and green, with petals and leaves the wind had shaken loose the night before scattered across the table and ground. The subject should look calm and thoughtful, not deliberately cool or greasy. And the photographer had to be unselfconscious, openhearted, and wholly sincere, looking for the subject’s natural beauty with an equally natural warmth.
In the courtyard, fish swished their tails through the water, and birds chirped in the trees.
Xie Anqing frowned, as though that upstairs gaze had singed her.
The movement broke Chen Li’s train of thought. She watched Xie Anqing deliberately look away, then get to her feet.
“Do you want to wait here, or come with me to get Grandpa?”
The grandmother hurried to stand. “Maybe I should think about it some more?”
“You’ve thought about it your whole life. If you were going to make up your mind, you’d have done it already. Come on. I’m not going to hurt you.”
The grandmother stamped her foot, flustered as a cat on a hot tin roof.
Leaning on the windowsill, Chen Li reached over and pulled down a small branch.
A house key opening a car door? And the door she was about to open was Chen Li’s? It was the first time she’d noticed what keys had in common.
Just as Xie Anqing reached the car, another white-haired grandfather hurried over.
The grandmother’s anxiety turned instantly to anger. She strode to the gate and demanded, “What are you doing here? Qingwa and I were just coming to take you to the civil affairs bureau!”
“What for?” Grandpa asked.
“For a divorce! I can’t make you listen to me, so I might as well divorce you and have some peace!”
Grandpa’s eyes widened. “Zhang Guifen, have you lost your mind?”
“I have!”
“Don’t you push me too far!”
“Who’s pushing whom too far?”
“You are! If you keep this up, I’ll get down on my knees and tell you I love you in front of Qingwa!”
The grandmother froze, then, blushing furiously, started hitting him with her fists. One of them struck so lightly it was more like a tickle; the other yelled as though he’d been stabbed.
Xie Anqing knew the divorce was off the table. She leaned against the doorframe, shoulders still hunched with weakness, her expression hidden. The only thing Chen Li could see clearly was Xie Anqing’s left hand resting on her right arm.
To cheer the grandmother up, Grandpa borrowed flowers from beside the entrance—the apricot-pink roses on the bay window in Chen Li’s room. Each time another bloom was clipped, Xie Anqing’s left hand tightened a little more.
Before the prettiest flowers were completely shorn away, Chen Li clearly saw Xie Anqing’s right knee bend. In the end, though, she didn’t step forward to stop him.
Thud. Chen Li’s shoe tapped the wooden wall.
Secretary Xie was willing to sacrifice herself for the people. She had to admire that.
Chen Li suddenly wondered if Xie Anqing had felt just as conflicted when she’d cut the bouquet of roses from Chen Li’s windowsill.
She’d cut them herself.
Then she’d picked off every thorn herself.
That must have hurt.
Chen Li released the twig she’d been twirling around her finger and turned away.
At the entrance, under Xie Anqing’s guidance, Grandpa finished removing the thorns and gave the flowers to Grandma. The two of them walked off hand in hand.
Xie Anqing was the only one who’d been hurt that morning.
After a moment, she collected herself and headed back. The instant she turned, she found herself face-to-face with Chen Li again.
Chen Li still wore a long slip dress, though she’d traded the bold red for soft white. She held out a fully opened apricot-pink rose. “A borrowed bloom for you.”
Xie Anqing lowered her eyes. The stem had been cut at a slant.
Three days earlier, she’d clipped it herself to welcome Chen Li.
Now Chen Li was offering it back with that familiar, blunt frankness. “Why aren’t you taking it? Weren’t you just clenching your hand because you couldn’t bear to let the flowers go? Don’t you like them now?”
Xie Anqing looked down at the rose, her eyes dark. “I like it better growing in the garden.”
“Then why cut it and put it in my room?”
Xie Anqing fell silent.
Chen Li lowered her wrist, letting the rose brush softly against Xie Anqing’s clothes. “Did it hurt to cut it for me?”
The gesture was sudden, and Chen Li’s approach was far too confident.
Just like the gaze from the upstairs window, it felt like a boundary crossed.
Xie Anqing reacted instinctively, grabbing Chen Li’s hand. “Miss Chen…”
“Auntie, you’re up!”
Xie Huaixia’s voice cut her off. Xie Anqing startled, then seemed to come back to herself and let go of Chen Li’s hand. At almost the same moment, Xie Huaixia ran over and wrapped her arms around her.
“I bought you breakfast! All your favorites!”
“You bought it?” Xie Yun asked. “With what money?”
“I’ll have money someday.”
Xie Yun turned Xie Huaixia’s head toward the side. “Say hello.”
Only then did Xie Huaixia notice Chen Li. “Good morning, Auntie!”
Chen Li’s hand, holding the rose, dropped to her side. She tapped it lightly against her thigh. “Good morning.”
Xie Yun peeled her daughter off Xie Anqing and asked, “How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine.”
Without looking at Chen Li, Xie Anqing walked around her and headed back inside.
Xie Huaixia dashed ahead to clear the way for her.
Xie Yun walked beside Chen Li for a few steps before speaking. “Miss Chen, things were hectic yesterday, and I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself properly. I’m Xie Yun, the Party Secretary of Dongxie Village. Anqing has told me about you. Thank you for coming. We’ll be counting on you from here on out.”
“Please don’t mention it, Secretary Xie. I’ve been working for months and was ready for a change of scenery. Your village is beautiful.”
“Anqing’s home is the prettiest. She planted all those flowers and plants herself. They’ve been growing for years.”
Chen Li smiled without replying. The rose in her hand, cut off from water, was already wilting faster.
What a shame.
Secretary Xie would be heartbroken if she saw it.
Chen Li tapped the rose against her thigh again. Then she twirled her slender wrist, raised her arm, and tucked the stem into her hair. Slowly, she wound and threaded it through the chestnut strands, gathering her hair at the back of her head.
When Xie Anqing turned to look for Xie Yun, she caught just the right moment: Chen Li tilting her head as she slipped the rose into her hair.
Breakfast was served beneath the banyan tree in the back courtyard.
The stone table was the same one where Xie Anqing had eaten fried rice with egg. Two long stone benches stood on either side. Xie Huaixia had claimed Xie Anqing, so Chen Li naturally ended up sitting beside Xie Yun.
“Miss Chen, before you arrived, Anqing had already put together a detailed shooting plan,” Xie Yun said. “Whenever you have time, we can go over it and see if you have any other ideas.”
“I don’t like plans. The best scenery turns up when you stumble across it.”
Xie Yun glanced at Xie Anqing, who was drinking soy milk without seeming to object, then went along with Chen Li. “All right, we’ll do it your way. We’ll help however we can. But since you’ve only just arrived and don’t know the area, I doubt you’d find your way back if you went out alone.”
Xie Yun glanced at Xie Huaixia, who was wolfing down her breakfast. “Summer vacation has already started for her. If you don’t mind, she can show you around. Anqing and I will be busy for the next few days. The landslide destroyed several homes, so we need to get approval for replacement housing and have the new homes built before winter.”
“I understand. I’ll explore on my own first. If I need anything, I’ll get in touch with you or Secretary Xie.”
“All right.” Xie Yun turned and caught Xie Huaixia reaching for one of Xie Anqing’s eggs. She pushed her back toward her own bowl. “Keep your eyes on your own food.”
Xie Huaixia protested, “Whatever belongs to my aunt belongs to me!”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Xie Anqing said. “What’s mine is mine.”
Xie Huaixia looked ready to cry. “Auntie, where’s the love?”
Xie Anqing held out her bruised hand, blue and purple in places. “Maybe you kicked it out of me.”
Xie Huaixia didn’t understand.
“Did you kick my hand in your sleep last night?” Xie Anqing asked.
She couldn’t think of anything else that might explain why last night’s needle prick had hurt even more than the previous two.
Xie Huaixia glared at her. “I didn’t! I curled up so small, I couldn’t even reach you!”
“Really?”
“I was curled up tighter than a needle!” Xie Huaixia snapped. “You’re accusing me for nothing. Apologize!”
“I’m sorry.”
Xie Huaixia’s anger vanished in an instant. She leaned over, took Xie Anqing’s hand in both of hers, and blew on the back of it. “Did it really hurt that much?”
“It hurt a lot.”
Xie Huaixia’s lip trembled. Her eyes reddened.
“I’m lying,” Xie Anqing said.
Xie Huaixia was so mad she tried to flip the table. She couldn’t budge it, so she picked up her bowl and went up to the terrace, sulking.
The bathroom in Xie Anqing’s house stood beside a large kitchen, and above them was a terrace with a small awning.
Chen Li didn’t know what the terrace looked like from above, but she knew Xie Anqing’s hand really did hurt. She’d already been jabbed hard with a needle, and then the blood had backed up into the line while Chen Li was there. Xie Anqing had told Xie Huaixia she was lying because she didn’t want the girl to worry.
A snail on the outside, soft on the inside.
Chen Li let her gaze pass over the face of the person who hadn’t looked at her once since she’d sat down, then picked up her soy milk and took a sip.
After breakfast, Xie Anqing changed clothes and got ready to bike to the village office.
Xie Huaixia was waiting downstairs in Xie Anqing’s sun hat, backpack and water bottle ready. Before long, the three of them headed out together.
Xie Anqing sat on the bicycle with one foot on a pedal and reminded Xie Huaixia, “Drink some water every half hour. Don’t wander off, and stay away from dangerous places.”
Xie Huaixia nodded so vigorously her head nearly bobbed off.
Xie Anqing tugged the brim of her hat lower, then turned to Chen Li. “Miss Chen, it’s going to be hot today. Sorry to put you through this.”
“I like it here. How could I mind?” Chen Li said, looking straight at Xie Anqing.
Xie Anqing pressed her lips together but said nothing.
As she released the brake and prepared to leave, Xie Huaixia’s eyes darted around. “Auntie, come here a second.”
“What for?”
Xie Anqing sounded wary, but moved without hesitation. By the time she’d finished asking, she’d already bent down to Xie Huaixia’s level.
Xie Huaixia quickly took Chen Li’s hand and pressed it to Xie Anqing’s cheek. “Auntie, be good and hold still. Let Auntie touch your face properly.”
