A Thread of Sky by Deanna Fei

Author:Deanna Fei
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

12

In bed, Nora cupped her breasts. They felt inflamed, a little tingly. Through her thin silk nightgown, the hotel sheets were coarse. In the dark, she rummaged through her suitcase for something cozy, and came upon the balled-up jeans with a lump in the pocket. She hit the light and grabbed one of Kay’s T-shirts.

Kay stirred. “Jet lag?”

After a minute, Nora told her the news about their grandfather. She’d wanted to sort it out for herself first, but she didn’t know what to sort.

Kay bolted upright. “It’s like he read my mind. How could that have been good-bye?”

“What?”

“When I saw him in Taiwan.”

Carefully, Nora said, “According to Aunt Susan, he wants to see Grandma. It’ll be their first chance to see each other in twenty years, and it might be their last. And they have a lot of unfinished business. He was unfaithful, and she’s never forgiven him.”

“Still, he must want to reconnect with all of us.”

Kay didn’t understand that hurt, how it blotted out everything else, and Nora couldn’t spell it out for her. She’d told Kay the same reason for her own breakup that she’d told her mother—her aversion to marriage and children.

Kay dug into her backpack. “Look at the card he sent me.”

Nora opened the card, red with gold embossing. “I can’t read this.”

“Just look at how fragile and beautiful those characters are. Think how long they took him to write.”

To Nora, they just looked wobbly. “You carry this around?”

“I keep meaning to write back, but I don’t know what to say.”

“Well, you hardly know him.”

“He’s our grandfather. I’m the only one who seems to care.” Kay grabbed the card and slid it into her backpack again.

Nora decided to change the subject. “How do you feel about leaving Beijing?”

Kay shrugged.

“Seems you and that guy Rick became more than friends.”

Kay nodded, a little sheepishly. “It wasn’t serious.”

“He seemed serious about you.”

Kay blurted, “I hooked up with my other guy friends, too.”

Nora stared. “Rick didn’t mind?”

“He didn’t know.”

“So you were cheating?”

“Like I said, we weren’t serious.”

Could Kay really be so impervious? Suddenly Rick’s chiseled, genial face seemed tragic.

Nora asked, “Do you remember Grandma lecturing us, when we were little, about the kind of women we should be?”

“I wish I did. What did she say?”

In the face of Kay’s eagerness, Nora found herself mumbling, “Strong or weak, great or ordinary—that kind of thing. That’s all I remember.”

“I wish I remembered,” Kay said again. “So when should we tell her about Grandpa?”

Nora said she needed a few days to form a plan. After all, only she truly understood the question her grandmother would confront: If she agreed to see him, if she finally forgave him, what kind of woman would she be then?

Nora turned out the light. In an instant, Kay was snoring.

Two nights ago, Nora hadn’t been able to stop herself from stepping into a phone booth in the hotel lobby and dialing Jesse’s cell phone.

“Where are you?” he’d asked.

“Where are you?” It was quiet where he was—inside somewhere, someone’s apartment.

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