Paper Daughter

by Jeanette Ingold

  "That for those same reasons, Mr. Li—" She paused. "That's the name of the old man you talked to, right? The one who still lives in the area?"

  I nodded. I'd told her about him while we were working at the library.

  "So my idea is that there couldn't have been that many teenagers in Chinatown when he was a kid. They probably at least knew each other. So I think you should ask Mr. Li if he remembers Mr. Huang's daughter, and if he knows if any of her family still lives in the area. Because if they do, and your father had found that out, then—"

  I stopped her. "I can't go back there," I said.

  "Why not?"

  "Because I can't." To my horror, I felt the tears well up again. "Because I don't want to."

  "I don't understand," Jillian said.

  I looked down, trying to think how I could explain a truth that I was ashamed of.

  Finally I said, "Do you remember our first day here, how you took me for an ethnic pick?"

  "One of my better blunders, huh?" Jillian said with a little laugh. "And you gave me a look that froze me out."

  "That's because that's not how I think of myself. I have a heritage, sure—everyone has that, and I'm proud of mine. But it doesn't make me foreign, and it doesn't mean I have to take on the problems of a bunch of people I don't understand."

  Jillian waited, her face difficult to read.

  I said, "I don't want to change who I am, even if sometimes I'm not sure who that is."

  Jillian still didn't respond.

  I tried again, hearing a plea creep into my voice and feeling my face go hot. "Seeing An Huang's picture, knowing we have to be related, made me realize that if I keep up this hunt, I might find a family I don't want. And then, even if I never see them again, I'll know about them, and that will make me different."

  I groped for a better way to explain. "It's like when somebody dies. Nothing changes for you unless you know."

  "So?" Jillian finally said.

  "So," I said, "I don't want to see Mr. Li or his sister again, because I don't want to know more about An Huang."

  Jillian took a moment to think about that. Then, "Got it," she said. "You'd rather leave your dad to whatever stories people make up about him than take a chance on finding a truth you might not like. That's cool."

  I felt like I'd been slapped. "You don't mean that."

  She got up. "No, I don't. If I had a father who came anywhere close to being as great as you say yours was, I'd do everything I could to take care of him."

  "Look," I said. "Wait. It's not as though it's very likely that Mr. Li would know anybody who—"

  "You're right," she said. "The possibility that you might learn anything useful from him is probably so remote it's not worth upsetting yourself over. But I'm glad I brought it up, because now we're even."

  "What do you mean?"

  "We've each had to let go of some ideas. You were wrong about me, thinking I didn't have a brain in my head, right up till you read my writing. And I was wrong, right up till now, thinking I'd like to be like you."

  ***

  Fran wasn't around to ask if I could leave early, so I asked Deena, who seemed relieved not to have to find another task to keep me busy.

  On my way out of the newsroom I detoured by Photo. Jillian was working at a computer monitor that displayed several almost-identical pictures of kids playing under a lawn sprinkler.

  "I see what you meant about changing the depth of field," she said, turning. Then, "Oh! I thought you were Lynch."

  "About our talk. I just wanted to let you know I heard what you said. I'm going out there now."

  CHAPTER 27

  Mr. Li's sister answered their door. "Now is not good for a visit," she said.

  But he'd come to the door also, and he invited me into their small living room, where a chess game was in progress. "You remember my nephew, Ian? You have come at a fine time. He was about to say checkmate."

  Mr. Li reached across the board, his fingers brushing the outlines of pieces until he found Ian's white queen. He moved her diagonally, tipped over his own black king, and said, "There, nephew. I have saved you having to embarrass me."

  They both laughed easily, although Sucheng Li, looking on, did not join in.

  "Please," Mr. Li said to me, "do sit down. I heard you tell my sister you have thought of another question for us. Are you still searching for the people your father might have come to see in this neighborhood?"

  "I think I may have found the family," I said.

  I was interrupted by my cell phone, its ringtone jarring in that setting. Apologizing, I ended the call without looking to see who it was from, switched the phone to silent, and laid it on the table.

  "The reason I've come back," I said, "is that the names I have are from a long time ago, from about when you came over from China. I know the people are no longer here, but I hope you might remember them and know of any relatives or descendents."

  "And their names?" Mr. Li asked.

  "Huping Huang and his daughter, An. He was an herbalist, and she—"

  I broke off, stopped by Mr. Li's sudden stillness, so complete it seemed unnatural.

  "Are you all right?" I asked.

  He brought himself to with a small jerk. "I do remember them," he said, "but I know nothing that can help you."

  His manner had become even more formal, as though he was being careful not to say too much.

  I thought of my guess that he and his sister had come to this country illegally. Perhaps he was reluctant to talk about any part of that time.

  "Please," I said, "I won't cause you trouble. I just need to find somebody who can say why my father was in this area the day he was killed. Otherwise he may always be suspected of doing something really wrong."

  "I do not understand," Mr. Li said.

  "My father was a journalist, and the police think he may have taken money for hushing up a crime he'd learned about. They think that might be why he came here. But Dad wasn't like that. I'm sure the only dishonest thing he ever did was make up a story about where he'd come from, and he only kept that going because he loved my mother and me."

  Mr. Li closed his eyes briefly before saying, "I would help you if I could, Miss Chen. But I know nothing of your father. Sucheng, do you?"

  "No." Her hand pushed on my shoulder. "You go now."

  I'd known, of course, that Mr. Li and his sister weren't likely to be able to help me. That's what I'd told Jillian. But now I realized how much I was counting on them to have some answers, anyway. And I was surprised at how let down I felt.

  As I stood, I made one last try. Taking the copy of An's picture from my bag, I said to Sucheng Li, "Would you please just look at this picture of An Huang? Maybe then you might remember something."

  She barely glanced at it. "No," she said.

  But Ian, who'd stood up with me, was staring first at it and then at me. "She looks just like you!" he exclaimed. And then, "Auntie! Look again!"

  "I saw. It means nothing." Sucheng Li gave me a little shove. "Now you leave!"

  "No!" Mr. Li said. His voice strained, he asked, "Nephew, is what you say true?"

  "Absolutely," Ian answered. "It's like they could be the same person."

  Mr. Li turned away then, but I could still see his profile and the emotions playing across his face. I saw him go from uncertain to sad, to angry, and then to ... A word came to mind that I knew but had never used:implacable.

  "And you said it means nothing? What else have you lied about, Sucheng?" he asked quietly. "Perhaps about Miss Chen's father? Was he here after all?"

  Then it was his sister's face that emotions raced across, stretching and deepening its pitted crevasses.

  She cackled suddenly. "Yes, and I sent him away. Sent him and sent her. I told her to have her brat on the street, and you never knew. You never knew anything I didn't want you to. Did you?"

  She laughed again, an ugly laugh like a crow's cry. "Did you?"

  Ian, appearing bewildered, asked,
"Who?" He turned to me. "Did you come here another time and see my aunt? Are you—?"

  But Mr. Li understood that his sister wasn't talking about me.

  "An?" he asked. "An came to us for help and you sent her away? And she was with child? When?"

  A smile curved Sucheng Li's mouth. "When do you think? While you were off running after her. You should not have left me. I told you that then."

  Another call made my cell phone flash. I quickly stopped it.

  "Who is An?" Ian asked.

  Mr. Li answered, "An was my ... I thought at one time that she was my wife."

  He stopped then and didn't continue until I finally said, "But she wasn't?"

  "I was told she was not," he said. "That our marriage was illegal and that I would not see her again. Even so, I looked for her. But when I heard her father had taken her to China, then I knew—" He frowned and corrected himself. "Then I believed that she was gone forever. I have always believed it, until now."

  "Fool, you!" said his sister, and making a spitting sound, she left the room.

  She could just as well not have been in the house, for all the attention Mr. Li and Ian gave her departure.

  "I had thought never to tell this," Mr. Li said to Ian. "I had thought that all the harm that could be done already had been done, long ago." He turned to me. "It seems I was wrong about that, also."

  "I don't get it," Ian said. "I'm sorry about what happened to you and that girl, An, but it was so long ago. How can that hurt anyone now?"

  Mr. Li sighed. "There are incorrect things that you have believed about me," he said. "About what I am to you and your father. Or, I should say, about what I am not."

  For a moment he appeared to drift into some private byway of thoughts. Then, with a small flutter of his hands, he said, "But you have a right to know. And Miss Chen?"

  "Yes?" I said.

  "I think perhaps you have even more of a right. I think it will explain what brought your father to this house and why my sister lied about that."

  Once more my phone flashed. The screen said, "Call me now! J."

  Another message flashed. "NOW!"

  Apologizing to Mr. Li, I said, "I keep getting urgent telephone messages from work. Do you mind if I—"

  "Please," he said. "What I have to say has waited many years. Make your call, and then we will talk."

  Jillian answered at once. "It's about time!" she said. "And after the hassle I had digging up a cell number for you. You really ought to—"

  "Jillian!" I said. "What?"

  "Oh! I called to say that you can stop. Getting involved, I mean. Harrison just now came in with Gary Maitlen, all excited, and they got Fran, and I just had a feeling it was about the Galinger story and all, so I followed them right to Mr. Braden's office and—"

  "Please," I said. "Just tell me!"

  "I am. I told them that if that was what they were working on, and if they'd learned something about your dad, then it was only fair—"

  "Now!"

  "Okay! If you don't want context. The news person who got paid off? It was a woman from a TV station, and she's turned herself in. She got scared that if she didn't come forward and admit to taking money, the police might think she was into even more of the bad stuff."

  "So...?" I said, needing Jillian to spell it out, afraid I'd understood wrong.

  "So everyone knows it wasn't your dad who Yeager paid off."

  I disconnected, feeling as though all the air had been knocked from me. Dad was okay. His name had been cleared without my help, and now it didn't matter what had brought him to the International District the day he was killed.

  Relief flooded through me as I also realized I didn't need to learn more about Mr. Li or An Huang, either. Didn't need to take them any further into my life.

  "That was the newspaper," I told Mr. Li. "The authorities have the journalist who was taking bribes, so now everyone knows it wasn't my father. It's no longer important why Dad came to this part of town."

  With a glance at Ian, who looked braced for something he didn't want to hear, I added, "I'm really sorry for the trouble I've caused. I'll go now."

  "Of course. If that is what you wish," Mr. Li said.

  But he made it a question, and he waited.

  He was giving me a choice. I could stay to hear, for a different reason now, what he had to say, or I could decide not to.

  I knew what I wanted to do.

  I wanted to go out the door and go back to being the daughter of the Steven Chen I'd known growing up—no more than that, and no less. Except for Mom, no one other than the people in this house knew that the past he had claimed was a lie, and she wanted to forget.

  And of course Jillian knew, but she, I thought, would keep my secret.

  I could do it—could leave—as easily as I'd torn up the notebook page where Dad had written "Progress on family project, finally?"

  Or this time I could choose to look beyond, to the truths of people I knew and people I didn't. It was what Dad would have expected of his daughter and the way I would like to think of myself.

  And so, though I felt scared, I sat down. "I think," I told Mr. Li, "I'd like to stay."

  No one said anything for several moments while Mr. Li seemed to be gathering his thoughts.

  Then, "You must understand," he began, "this story starts not here but across the ocean, in the place where Sucheng and I were born."

  CHAPTER 28

  Mom called, "Maggie! Haven't you left yet? I think we need more chips."

  "I'm going. I'll pick some up."

  It was a Saturday, a few weeks after that late afternoon when the pieces of who I was had rearranged themselves. Mom was in a company's-coming tizzy, even though we'd already cleaned the house, set the table, and gotten most of the cooking done.

  We wouldn't put the salmon on the grill until Mr. Li and Ian and Ian's parents arrived.

  That wouldn't be for several more hours, and meanwhile I'd promised Jillian to meet her at the mall. We planned to buy new swimsuits for our trip to the San Juans the next day. We were going to catch the first ferry, so that by midmorning we'd be with Bett and Aimee. I hoped my friends would like one another. I thought they would.

  Actually, a couple of things Jillian had said made me think they'd all already gotten in touch with one another and that they were conniving to run a line of potential boyfriends by me. Which was okay. I was ready to try a new one.

  "And maybe get crackers and a wedge of cheese," Mom called.

  "I'm on it."

  As I drove, I thought how impossible it seemed that just a couple of months earlier, I hadn't known Mr. Li or Jillian.

  Hadn't even been inside the Herald, and now I felt at home there and knew that I belonged.

  I was still learning the work, of course. Still making mistakes. Still shifting from job to job, helping out where I was needed. Jake had asked for me back on Sports. Fran had me doing rewrites. Harrison occasionally took me out on assignments.

  He was still tracking the Galinger story, but there probably weren't any surprises left. Of the people who had been involved in the crime, only J. A. Garcia remained unaccounted for. One theory was that he was an undocumented worker who'd slipped back into the shadow world of illegals.

  Ralph Galinger was in jail, having been picked up at the Los Angeles airport trying to catch an overseas flight. He was charged with deliberate homicide, and the corruption story that had emerged from his mostly unsuccessful plea-bargaining was pretty much exactly as we'd figured, right up to the murder part, which we hadn't foreseen.

  Or perhaps Harrison and the others had recognized that possibility, too, and it was another reason they'd taken me off the story.

  Anyway, the Galinger-Yeager scheme had started to unravel when the TV reporter stumbled onto it and demanded money for keeping it to herself. Tobias Yeager had paid, but he told Donald Landin about it.

  And then, after Yeager's death, Landin had appropriated the blackmailing idea, threatening Galing
er with giving the whole story to the Herald.

  "But why did he call you to actually arrange a meeting?" I asked when Harrison was explaining it.

  "Maybe he thought Galinger might try to find out if the threat was real. Or maybe Landin had some cockeyed idea that if Galinger didn't come through with money to keep him quiet, the Herald would pay him to talk."

  "Stupid," I said.

  "Yeah, and suicidal," Harrison agreed.

  Because Galinger, an expert marksman in his army days, had gone to where Landin lived and shot him in front of his apartment.

  But then, as Galinger was leaving the area, he saw my father, recognizing him from business meetings Dad had covered. And he panicked, afraid Landin had already talked. That time the weapon Galinger aimed was his car.

  I could hardly bear to think about it.

  But I was very glad I'd had a part in bringing him to justice.

  And glad, too, that because of the story Harrison and I found, the Eastside town that was at the center of it had begun inching toward positive change.

  Its mayor, though, remained angry with the Herald over the bad publicity. Former Galinger Construction employees were now looking for jobs. And people who'd had building projects under way with Galinger Construction were wondering how the work was going to get finished.

  "So our story mattered, but it wasn't good for everyone," I said.

  "No," Harrison agreed. "News often is a mixed bag, just like the truth can be. All we can do is report what we know and have faith that in the long run, our readers will be better off for being informed."

  ***

  Seeing the mall entrance ahead, I refocused my attention on parking and finding Jillian.

  She was already in the store where we'd agreed to meet, and she already had her arms full of swimsuits for us to try on. They involved every color of the rainbow.

  ***

  Later on, Mom raised her eyebrows when I showed her the one I picked out. There wasn't time to discuss it, because our dinner guests were pulling into the driveway.

  I ran out to meet them. This was the first time they'd come to our home, though I'd often been back to Mr. Li's.

  Actually, recently I'd begun to call him Grandfather Li. I'd thought that would be hard, but it had turned out to feel good. Great-grandfather Li seemed too much to say, although we were both sure that's what he was to me.