“Please Nick, get me out of here,” she pleaded weakly. She had never wanted to leave someplace more desperately in her life. Nick scooped her into his arms and carried her toward the door.
“You can’t leave now, Nicky! It’s too dark to drive down the mountain, lah!” Eleanor called after them.
“You should have thought of that before you decided to play God with Rachel’s life,” Nick said through clenched teeth.
As they drove down the winding road away from the lodge, Rachel said, “You don’t have to drive down the mountain tonight. Just drop me off at that town we passed through.”
“We can go anywhere you want to, Rachel. Why don’t we get off this mountain and spend the night in K.L.? We can get there by ten.”
“No, Nick. I don’t want to drive anymore. I need some time on my own. Just drop me off in town.”
Nick was silent for a moment, thinking carefully before he responded.
“What are you going to do?”
“I want to check into a motel and go to sleep, that’s all. I just want to be away from everyone.”
“I’m not sure you should be alone right now.”
“For God’s sake, Nick, I’m not some basket case, I’m not going to slit my wrists or take a million Seconals. I just need some time to think,” Rachel answered sharply.
“Let me be with you.”
“I really need to be alone, Nick.” Her eyes seemed glazed over.
Nick knew that she was in a deep state of shock — he was shocked himself, so he could scarcely imagine what she was going through. At the same time, he was racked with guilt, feeling responsible for the damage that had been done. It was his fault again. Intent on finding Rachel a tranquil haven, he had inadvertently led her right into a viper’s nest. He even pulled her hand in to be bitten. His fucking mother! Maybe one night alone would do her no harm. “There’s a little inn down in the lower valley called the Lakehouse. Why don’t I drive you there and check you into a room?”
“That’s fine,” she responded numbly.
They drove in silence for the next half hour, Nick never taking his eyes off the treacherous curves, while Rachel stared at the rush of blackness out her window. They pulled up to the Lakehouse shortly after eight. It was a charming, thatched-roof house that looked like it had been transported straight out of the Cotswolds, but Rachel was too numb to notice any of it.
After Nick had checked her into a plushly decorated bedroom, lit the logs in the stone fireplace, and kissed her goodbye, promising to return first thing in the morning, Rachel left the room and headed straight to the reception desk. “Can you please stop payment on that credit card?” she said to the night clerk. “I won’t be needing the room, but I will be needing a taxi.”
Three days after arriving at Peik Lin’s, Rachel crouched on the floor in the far corner of the bedroom and summoned the courage to call her mother in Cupertino.
“Aiyah, so many days I haven’t heard from you. You must be having such a good time!” Kerry Chu said cheerily.
“Like hell I am.”
“Why? What happened? Did you and Nick fight?” Kerry asked, worried by her daughter’s strange tone.
“I just need to know one thing, Mom: Is my father still alive?”
There was a fraction of a pause on the other end of the line. “What are you talking about, daughter? Your father died when you were a baby. You know that.”
Rachel dug her nails into the plush carpeting. “I’m going to ask you one more time: Is. My. Father. Alive?”
“I don’t understand. What have you heard?”
“Yes or no, Mom. Don’t waste my fucking time!” she spat out.
Kerry gasped at the force of Rachel’s anger. It sounded like she was in the next room. “Daughter, you need to calm down.”
“Who is Zhou Fang Min?” There. She had said it.
There was a long pause before her mother said nervously, “Daughter, you need to let me explain.”
She could feel her heart pounding in her temples. “So it’s true. He is alive.”
“Yes, but—”
“So everything you’ve told me my entire life has been a lie! A BIG FUCKING LIE!” Rachel held the phone away from her face and screamed into it, her hands shaking with rage.
“No, Rachel—”
“I’m going to hang up now, Mom.”
“No, no, don’t hang up!” Kerry pleaded.
“You’re a liar! A kidnapper! You’ve deprived me from knowing my father, my real family. How could you, Mom?”
“You don’t know what a hateful man he was. You don’t understand what I went through.”
“That’s not the point, Mom. You lied to me. About the most important thing in my life.” Rachel shuddered as she broke down in sobs.
“No, no! You don’t understand—”
“Maybe if you hadn’t kidnapped me, he wouldn’t have done all the horrible things he did. Maybe he wouldn’t be in jail now.” She looked down at her hand and realized she was pulling out tufts of the carpet.
“No, daughter. I had to save you from him, from his family.”
“I don’t know what to believe anymore, Mom. Who can I trust now? My name isn’t even real. WHAT’S MY REAL NAME?”
“I changed your name to protect you!”
“I don’t know who the fuck I am anymore.”
“You’re my daughter! My precious daughter!” Kerry cried, feeling utterly helpless standing in her kitchen in California while her daughter’s heart was breaking somewhere in Singapore.
“I need to go now, Mom.”
She hung up the phone and crawled onto the bed. She lay on her back, letting her head hang off the side. Maybe the rush of blood would stop the pounding, would end the pain.
The Goh family was just sitting down to some poh piah when Rachel entered the dining room.
“There she is!” Wye Mun called out jovially. “I told you Jane Ear would come down sooner or later.”
Peik Lin made a face at her father, while her brother Peik Wing said, “Jane Eyre was the nanny, Papa, not the woman who—”
“Ho lah, ho lah,[94] smart aleck, you get my point,” Wye Mun said dismissively.
“Rachel, if you don’t eat something you are going to deeesappear!” Neena chided. “Will you have one poh piah?”
Rachel glanced at the lazy Susan groaning with dozens of little plates of food that seemed completely random and wondered what they were having. “Sure, Auntie Neena. I’m absolutely starving!”
“That’s what I like to hear,” Neena said. “Come, come, let me make you one.” She placed a thin wheat-flour crepe on a gold-rimmed plate and scooped a big serving of meat-and-vegetable filling onto the middle. Next she slathered some sweet hoisin sauce on one side of the crepe and reached for the little dishes, scattering plump prawns, crab meat, fried omelet, shallots, cilantro, minced garlic, chili sauce, and ground peanuts over the filling. She finished this off with another generous drizzle of sweet hoisin and deftly folded the crepe into what looked like an enormous bulging burrito.
“Nah—ziak!” Peik Lin’s mother commanded.
Rachel began inhaling her poh piah ravenously, barely tasting the jicama and Chinese sausage in the filling. It had been a week since she had eaten much of anything.
“See? Look at her smile! There is nothing in the world that good food cannot fix,” Wye Mun said, helping himself to another crepe.
Peik Lin got up from her seat and gave Rachel a big hug from behind. “It’s good to have you back,” she said, her eyes getting moist.