by Anne R. Tan
“You’ll need a dose that could drop an elephant,” he mumbled, pulling a notebook from his back pocket. “Tell me what happened.”
Raina told him everything that happened after Sui Yuk’s disappearance from Bullseye. He made notes and asked her the same questions in several creative ways as if to trip her up. “What happens now?”
“I need to get Wong Po Po’s statement,” he said, flipping to a blank page on his notebook.
“No. I mean what happens after this.”
“The social worker picks up the baby. And we’ll try to find the mother and Aaron Wheeler.”
“Oh, I don’t get to keep the baby for a bit?”
He narrowed his eyes as if studying her. “Is your biological clock speeding up?”
Raina flushed but lifted her chin. “Those are fighting words. They sound as bad as asking if I’m on my period. But I’m going to be the bigger person here and ignore them.”
“Why would you want a baby hanging around here?”
“Why not? It’s Christmas—the season to apply for sainthood. I feel a certain responsibility toward the little guy.”
“Ah,” he said. “Your mother’s Chinese superstition.”
Raina stiffened and gave him the evil eye. He was probably right. Her mom’s teachings came out at the oddest moments. It was strange how her grandma embraced all things American while her mom seemed to continually search for her roots.
“You really don’t want to get involved in this. Sometimes we find the mother, and sometimes we don’t. I know you’re looking for a project to get over us, but this is not it.”
“I’m surprise your head doesn’t pop off at times. Not everything is about you.” Raina grabbed the diaper bag and stalked into her bedroom.
Po Po handed her the baby. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. It’s your turn,” Raina said.
Po Po opened her mouth but changed her mind and left, closing the bedroom door behind her.
Raina cuddled the soft body close. All milk and innocence. The baby’s little hand grabbed a strand of her hair and stuffed it into his mouth. She was a sucker for round chubby cheeks and crankles.
They needed to give the child a temporary name. It was awkward using baby or infant when addressing him. Maybe Baby Liang. Or BL. She shook her head. No, naming him would be like feeding a stray kitten. Once she named him, he’d keep reappearing in her life.
She checked his diaper, but he was still dry. He gave her a gummy smile, drool trickling off the side of his mouth. She wiped it with her finger and wiped it on her shirt.
With BL resting on her shoulders, she went back to the living room and handed him to her grandma. Po Po was in the middle of describing her fight with her hand poised in front of Matthew as if she were about to blast him with an imaginary pepper spray.
“Sorry for interrupting, but does anyone want any Ramen?” Raina asked. “I haven’t had lunch yet.”
Po Po made a face and shook her head. Matthew also declined.
Raina shrugged. More food for her. These two would come sniffing around like stray cats once she got around to filling her pantry. While she waited for the water to boil, she made up a bottle of formula and handed it to her grandma. On the way back into the kitchen, she grabbed her cell phone.
It powered on and the screen lit up. Woo-hoo! She found the recent call list and studied Aaron’s phone number. It looked familiar, but she couldn’t place where she’d seen it before. A few minutes later she was on her Goodwill dining room table, slurping noodles and searching for a reverse phone number site on her laptop.
Matthew finished up his statement with Po Po and joined her. He turned a chair around and straddled it. “Still not touching the inheritance from your grandfather?”
Raina shook her head. “He wanted to use the money to support his other family in China. Until I figure out if I want to honor his wishes, the money is off-limits.”
“At least your cousins are no longer contesting the will. What are their opinions of the situation?”
Raina glanced at the living room. Her grandma bounced BL on her lap, cooing at him as if he were one of her grandsons. “Po Po wants to keep Ah Gong’s disgrace from the rest of the family a little longer.”
“But that’s not fair to you. Everyone thinks you influenced your granddad to disinherit them.”
Raina shrugged with a nonchalance she didn’t feel. As long as her grandma wasn’t weeping from the discovery that her marriage was a sham, what did it matter how her cousins treated her? “They’ll apologize when they find out.”
Matthew gave her a doubtful look but smiled to lighten the mood. “A lot of women would be embarrassed to be chowing noodles like this in front of a man.”
Raina attempted to roll her eyes at his bantering to show her appreciation, but only managed to blink instead. “We’ve known each other too long for me to care. Besides, we’re not together anymore. You should be happy I’m not picking my nose.”
“Now that’s an attractive image.”
Raina swiped at the soup dripping down her chin with the back of her hand. “I’m glad you approve. You treat your buddies better than you do your girlfriend.” Too bad it took her ten years to figure this out.
“I spent a month tracking down used car parts for your totaled car. I wouldn’t do that for a friend.”
Her father had taught her how to drive in the old Honda Accord. It was the only thing she’d inherited from him. Matthew was one of the few people who knew how much the car meant to her. “You just wanted to get in my pants again.”
“You’re giving me a bad rep here. After all I’ve done, that’s my agenda, huh?”
It might not be his agenda, but he was going to take a shot at it anyway. Typical.
She typed in Aaron’s phone number on the search bar. Not that she was bored with their conversation, but the comfortable familiarity made her heart ache. This was what happened when she’d spent her entire life chasing a man who didn’t want to be caught.
“Rainy?”
She glanced at Matthew. “Sorry, what did you say?”
“I’m your knight in shining armor. Don’t I deserve a kiss for fixing your car?”
“I would rather pick your belly lint. I made you dinner. We’re squared.”
Matthew threw back his head and laughed. “This is why I love you.”
Raina ignored his comment. She already knew he loved her. That wasn’t their problem. “Sui Yuk Liang had to be desperate if she was willing to leave her baby with a stranger.”
“You are over thinking this. Doesn’t postpartum depression make women do crazy things like howl at the moon?”
“You really don’t know anything about pregnancy or babies, do you?”
“So I’m a man.”
She sat back in her chair and studied him. “But don’t you want a baby and wife someday?”
He stared back into the living room where Po Po was now singing a Chinese lullaby to the child. The koi clock ticked, filling the silence between them. Raina held her breath, knowing what the answer would be, but hoping all the same.
After what seemed like an eternity, he glanced back at her. “No.”
His parents’ marriage was a series of slammed doors and fists on soft flesh. When his father finally left, his mother only hung around long enough to make sure her mom would take Matthew in. And then one day, poof, she was gone too. Though Matthew might love Raina in the best way he knew how, it wasn't enough anymore.
She swallowed her disappointment. “Then stop bringing sexy back. If you care for me, you should let me go.”
“Sorry. This is the first time we have spoken in months. I thought we were at the friends’ stage by now.”
Right. As if he flirted this outrageously with his buddies. “I’m not there yet. I need more space.”
“How about dinner tomorrow night? Entirely platonic. Just friends hanging out.”
“Changing subjects. Do you think Aaron had anything to do with Sui Yuk’s disappe
arance?”
He shook his head. “It’s probably the hormones.”
She gave him a disgusted look. “At least you’re not blaming her disappearance on PMS.”
“There’s no winning no matter what I say. I can't launch an investigation on nothing more substantial than your suspicion. She hasn’t even disappeared for more than twenty-four hours. For all we know, she could report a kidnapping later. Why don’t you just wait and see what turns up? I’ll run her name through the databases when I get a chance. Besides, I have more urgent cases on my desk right at the moment.”
Raina blushed. Of course he had other important cases. He was a grown-up with a career job while she was floundering as a pretend graduate student after giving up her promising career as a civil engineer.
She glanced at the laptop screen and her eyes widened. She gasped and sucked soup down the wrong pipe. Her eyes filled up with tears, and she couldn’t stop coughing. Matthew rushed around the table and patted her on the back.
“Are you okay, Rainy?” Po Po called out from the living room.
Raina waved and whispered, “Fine. I’m fine.” When she finally was able to talk without coughing, she pointed at her laptop screen. “Aaron called from the Gold Springs Birth Resort.”
Matthew glanced at the laptop and then back at her. “Didn’t I tell you to leave the detective work to me?”
Po Po rushed into the dining nook with the baby. “I don’t like the idea of you working at the resort with Aaron hanging around there.”
Matthew glanced from her grandma to Raina, understanding spread across his face. “No. No. You’re going to quit this job and find something else. There are plenty of places looking for holiday help.”
Raina stiffened at the tone of his voice. “Are you going to pay my bills?” She paused as if waiting for an answer. “I didn’t think so.”
He clenched his jaw as if realizing he’d taken the wrong tactic with her.
“That was the perfect thing to say to Rainy,” Po Po said. “Since you’re neither her boyfriend nor her husband.”
He held up both hands as if he were surrendering. “I’m just worried.”
“Your concern is noted,” Raina said through clenched teeth, “but I’m filling in for my friend Sonia. If I just bail, it’d jeopardize her job.” Did Matthew think he had a right to boss her around?
She had no intention of wrangling with Aaron again, at least not without her grandma at her side. If Aaron worked at the resort, he might have met Sui Yuk Liang there.
Raina should sneak a peek at the guest list tomorrow. Was Sui Yuk dealing with postpartum depression and forgot her baby? If this were the case, Raina had to at least let her know the social worker took temporary custody of BL. “Don’t worry. I’ll have pepper spray in my pocket the entire time.”
4
MONEY, COME AWAY
The next morning, Raina rose when the sky was still in deep purple for her run. According to the forecast, today would be her last run for a few days before even heavier rainstorms moved into the area. She dressed in layers and set off for Hook Park, running around Mildred’s Pond and the winding path up to Lover's Lookout, the highest point in the park.
She’d tossed and turned the entire night. It didn't help that BL’s baby powder scent still clung to her sheets. She’d saved the baby yesterday from Aaron Wheeler. According to an old Chinese superstition, by changing his fate, she was now responsible for BL. Not that she was superstitious. Besides, BL was either with a foster family or with his mother and well beyond her reach. She’d done her duty, and his ancestors would have no reason to be upset with her.
Her best friend, Eden Small, would laugh if she knew what Raina was thinking. The hard-nosed reporter was out of town visiting family in Southern California. She’d left with the admonition to call if anything interesting were to happen. As the new Assistant Chief-in-Editor, Eden was on a mission to prove she could run the town's newspaper. But interesting was relative.
When Raina got home, she quickly showered and changed into the resort’s standard-issue black shirt with the baby bump logo. She was making her second cup of hazelnut coffee when the phone rang.
“Hi, is this Raina Sun?” said the unfamiliar voice. The voice was warm and relaxed, like sipping an iced mai tai under an umbrella.
The phone number on caller ID wasn’t one she recognized, and she doubted Aaron Wheeler could change his voice. “Yes?”
“Erm, your uncle gave me your phone number. He said you could show me a good time.”
“What?”
“No, no. Please don't hang up.” He sounded panicked. “Sorry, that didn't come out right. I'm not implying that you're a...”
Raina smiled in amusement. Normally she wouldn’t linger on the phone with a stranger, but she’d vowed to welcome new experiences into her life. She had to get over Matthew even if it killed her. “Which one?”
He cleared his throat. “Maybe a fancy one that a guy can take to a wedding?”
She imagined him tugging at the collar of his shirt. After yesterday, this bizarre conversation was fun. “I meant which uncle. I have six of them.”
“Oh.” He was silent for a heartbeat. “I should go.”
“No, no—”
The line went dead. First Sui Yuk handed her a baby, next Aaron Wheeler tried to snatch BL away. And now this. Who said there wasn’t a life after Matthew?
It wasn’t lost on her that she put her life into two categories—Before Matthew and After Matthew. She needed to take up knitting or something. Her nightly dates with Ben and Jerry weren’t doing much for her waistline. Their repeated litany to eat them kept her mood swinging from guilt to pleasure too many times a night for her comfort.
During the short drive to the Gold Country Birth Resort, Raina kept glancing at her rearview mirror, expecting Aaron Wheeler to pop up. Her shoulders were tensed by the time she parked her car behind the large community room. The man didn’t intimidate her, but she slipped her pepper spray into her pockets before getting out of the car, just in case.
Raina hunched her shoulders against the chill and jogged to the large utility room. The room housed commercial washers and dryers, a small table, and two mismatched chairs. The radio on the table blared Spanish music as if it were in a room full of senior citizens with dead batteries in their hearing aids.
Lucille, a motherly looking Mexican woman in her mid-thirties, folded and stacked clean towels into the maid’s cart. She turned down the radio, and they exchanged greetings. Raina grabbed a towel and began folding it.
“It’s nice of you to fill in for Sonia,” Lucille said, wiggling the cigarette in the corner of her mouth. “But Mexico isn’t much of a honeymoon if you want my opinion. I would go to Hawaii. White sandy beaches and a cabana boy in a Speedo. Now that would be a honeymoon.”
“It’s not a problem. I need the money. How was Sonia supposed to have a honeymoon with her husband if there was a cabana boy hanging around?”
“Send the husband to pick up tampons at the convenience store.”
Raina laughed to show she got the joke. They worked quietly for a couple of minutes, before she casually asked, “Is there an Aaron Wheeler on the staff?”
“The name doesn’t sound familiar.”
“He’s about five foot ten and fifties with gray in his brown hair. And his teeth are yellowed from smoking.”
Lucille gave Raina a sharp look. “I hope you’re not going to give me a lecture on how smoking is going to kill me. You have that scrawny look that tells me you’re a health nut.”
Raina shook her head. “I’m not a health nut. I’m only skinny because I don’t have money to buy good food.” Which wasn’t strictly true.
Lucille chuckled. “As long as you pull your own weight when we clean, I don’t care if you’re a wet noodle.”
Once the cart was loaded, Lucille pulled out a list from her pocket and studied it. “We are cleaning the bungalows on the southern end of the property today.”
> Raina eyed the guest list. Would it look suspicious if she asked to take a look at it? Guests normally ignored the housekeeping staff as if they were part of the furniture. Lucille might know the goings on at the resort, but how to bring up Sui Yuk Liang without looking like Raina was fishing?
Lucille stuffed the list back into her pocket. “Let’s hope the guests are busy eating lunch at the community rooms. I hate it when they sit in the rooms, watching me like I’m a freak show.”
“I thought we were invisible to hotel guests.”
“It’s a different clientele here.”
“Paranoid, maybe?”
Lucille shrugged her amply padded shoulders. “Pregnancy makes some women crazy.”
“What is a birth resort? Is it like spa resort catering to pregnant women?”
“Foreign pregnant women. Sometimes they have someone with them to take care of them during their stay. Like a family member or a personal maid.”
“What—”
Lucille knocked on Suite Fifteen’s door. “Housekeeping!”
The individual one or two-bedroom bungalow suites were scattered among the landscaped trees. There was just enough breathing room to make Raina feel like the guests were staying in the granny flat of a friend.
Soon the two of them settled into a rhythm. Lucille would gather the dirty sheets while Raina put on clean ones. They alternated turns at cleaning the kitchenette and the bathroom.
Raina picked up where they had left off earlier. “Do the guests stay until they give birth?”
“Smart girl.”
“And they return to their countries after labor and delivery,” Raina said, thinking out loud. If they had stayed, Eden would have sniffed this story out. As it was, these guests were like other foreign tourists in the country for an extended stay.
Lucille nodded. “These aren't anchor babies.”
Raina frowned. The only advantage to giving birth in the U.S. was the automatic citizenship granted to the child. Why go through all this trouble if the women return home with their babies? She’d always taken her citizenship for granted, sometimes even with annoyance when the jury duty notice showed up in the mail.
