Well, well. Straight-up suburban Jack, suddenly going all Chinese on us. He was smiling at Yang Yu-feng but the message was for Anna: If her mother’s presence wasn’t part of the plan and she didn’t want to discuss her troubles with her there, she should send up a flare. We’d make small talk and get back with her later.
“Jack.” Anna’s mother spoke with a calm that could equally have been born of confidence or despair. “Anna has a problem. She thinks you will be able to help her.”
Okay, so that was our answer. Jack glanced at Anna, and nodded. “I hope so.”
Yang Yu-feng didn’t respond. She waited until we all had our teacups—Bill came across the room, picked one up, and held it correctly, also, just like I’d taught him—and then she lifted her own. After we’d taken our ceremonial first sips—tea before trouble, oh, would my mother have approved—she put her cup on the table and turned to her daughter, waiting.
Anna looked at Jack, and then at Bill and me. She didn’t say anything, but her lip began to tremble.
Jack followed her gaze. “Lydia and Bill and I are working together on a case,” he said evenly. “It has to do with Chau Chun, new paintings that are supposed to be his. If the reason you called me has nothing to do with Chau, they’ll leave. If it does, you need them as much as you need me.” He added, “I promise you can trust them.”
I gave Anna what I hoped was a reassuring smile, Chinese woman to Chinese woman. Jack she already knew and trusted; her mother, she also knew, and had had twenty-two years to decide whether she could trust. That pretty much left Bill on his own, but sometimes he can be just a big, heartening presence. After hearing what Jack said, though, Anna suddenly seemed to stop caring about me and Bill, and even her mom. Pale, she was staring at Jack.
“You already know? Is that—that’s why you came to see Daddy yesterday? To ask him if he knew anything about the Chaus?”
“Sort of. Not really. Lydia and Bill are working for a collector who’s looking for them.”
“Someone’s looking for them already? Who?”
I wasn’t sure what that meant. They shouldn’t be looking for them yet? Later would be better? Later than what? Jack said, “It seems like a number of collectors are. This one hired Lydia to find them. I’m sorry, we can’t tell you his name, but it doesn’t matter. And I’m—I was—working for your dad.”
“What?” Momentarily, she was wordless. “Working for Daddy? He didn’t tell me. Working for him how?”
She hadn’t known that. She had the Chaus, her father wanted the Chaus, and no one in this family talks to each other? Well, almost no one. Either Jack’s client wasn’t news to Anna’s mother, or she had a good poker face.
“He’d heard rumors the paintings existed,” Jack said. “Like the other collectors. He hired me to find out whether it was true.”
“Where did he hear it? Why did he want to know?”
“I don’t know where he heard it. But Chau Chun was his friend.” Jack gave Anna and her mother the party line: “He thinks the paintings are phonies and this is all about someone trying to cash in on Chau’s reputation. He’s trying to protect his friend.”
Mrs. Yang’s gaze remained steady on her teacup. Anna opened her mouth, but covered it with her hand instead of speaking. Jack went on, “Your father’s very protective about Chau. I think they must have been pretty close. He was with Chau when he died.” Watching Anna, ashen and silent, Jack asked, “He’s never told you that story?”
She shook her head. “No. They were close? He was there? Daddy was at Tiananmen? Oh, my God. Mom, did you know that?”
“Yes.” Yang Yu-feng’s dark calm was unshaken. “I knew them both, when we were young.”
“Why didn’t I know? Why didn’t anyone ever tell me that?”
Mrs. Yang raised her eyes to her daughter. “The story of that night? A terrible night in terrible times. Your father and I left it behind us when we left China. You are an American child. A new land, a new life. Why should we burden you with such times?”
After a moment, Anna asked, “Did you know Daddy had hired Jack?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Anna, tell you what?” Her mother’s voice sharpened. “You were working again, you were eating, sleeping. For months you had been lost, so unhappy. Now you have been going to the studio eagerly, now you have…” She shook her head, said it in Mandarin, then switched back to English. “Come back to life, you have come back to life. Why would I tell you about your father’s troubles, your father’s anger? It had nothing to do with you. Or so I thought.”
Anna didn’t answer.
“Anna,” Jack said gently, after a few moments, “it might help if I tell you we already know you have them. The paintings, the Chaus.”
Anna shook her head without looking at him. “No, I don’t.”
Jack glanced at Bill, who walked over and handed Jack his phone. It took Jack about ten seconds to find Shayna’s photo and show it to Anna. She didn’t reach for the phone, just stared. In a voice almost too low to hear, she said, “What was I thinking? This whole thing, what was I thinking?”
“What were you thinking about what? Anna, are the paintings real? Where are they?”
For a moment, nothing. Then Anna stood unsteadily and began to wander around the room as though she were lost in a strange place. Her mother’s gaze followed her. “They’re not real,” Anna said softly. “I made them.”
Jack glanced at me and at Bill. “Okay.” He nodded. “So someone spotted them and the rumors started and the whole thing got out of hand. But that’s not your fault. I can’t imagine you claimed they were real, right? So what’s going on? What’s wrong?”
When Anna didn’t answer Jack looked to Mrs. Yang. She didn’t turn his way, just kept watching her daughter.
Anna stood at the window, fingering the curtain, gazing at a couple walking down the street. When she finally spoke I had to strain to hear her words. “I always loved Chau. He’s not really taught in art school but I grew up with him.”
Jack threw me a glance. “Does Dr. Yang have paintings? Is that what you mean?”
Anna nodded. “Three. Literally, I grew up with them—they were in my room.”
Paintings that valuable, in the nursery? Mrs. Yang must have spotted me trying to keep my jaw from dropping. She said, “We hung them there to remind us. What was really precious, what was valuable, what could be lost.”
“I see,” I said.
Anna flushed. “But no one ever said anything about him,” she went on. “Chau, I mean. Until I was old enough to go through Daddy’s books and start asking questions. That’s Daddy’s way anyhow, waiting for people to ask things. Then he told me Chau’s story, the outlines of it. And that he knew him, back in China. But that’s all. I never knew … Mom, why didn’t you tell me?”
Mrs. Yang stayed silent. Asked and answered already; Anna wouldn’t get a second response. I recognized that Chinese-mother policy.
Anna gave up, started again. “But always, as long as I can remember, I loved those paintings, and Chau’s other work in the books I found. It just … it spoke to me, in some special way. In art school I started copying it, over and over. Chau’s paintings are so beautiful. Do you know them? Graceful, controlled linework, and such precarious composition … and they’re so entirely political. Completely committed, but never at the expense of the art. I wanted to learn from that. I wanted my work to be like that.” She paused. “When I got back from China…” A catch in her voice; she went on, “When I had to leave without Mike, I was so angry, and so helpless. Daddy tried, and other people, and there’s the whole movement here, but it’s all about begging and waiting, isn’t it? It’s horrible.” Another pause, this time longer. “I didn’t know anything to do except make art out of it all. So I tried, but nothing worked out. It was all garbage and I threw it away.