He led her to a yellow satin couch and they sat side by side—he in silence. He reached for her hand, her left hand in his right, and he held it, a soft, narrow hand, a girl’s hand.
“I must not be left,” she whispered. She turned her eyes from her father to him.
“I shan’t leave you,” he said.
They did not speak again. The time seemed long, but it was short and the door opened. Sung stood there looking at them.
“Sung, Mr. Kung has—”
“I see for myself, sir,” Sung said. “Please, you both go some other room. I will do all.”
“There are servants—”
“I find everybody, Miss Kung. Please trust. I do all for your honored father like I do for my old master already. Please go, please rest. I will do.”
“He will, Stephanie. So come with me. Shall you go to your own rooms?”
“I can’t be alone.”
“I will sit in the next room.”
“I want to go into the shop.”
“The shop, Stephanie?”
“Yes. We worked there together. He placed each piece as he wished. If he is anywhere, he is there. People don’t go away at once, you know. They don’t know at first that they are dead. They linger in their favorite places, where their treasures are. Come—come quickly!”
She urged him, their hands still clasped, and he kept at her side down the narrow hall and into a vast lighted room filled with art treasures. Room led into room, all lighted.
“He is here, Rann. I can feel his presence.”
Rann looked around at the brightly lighted room, half expecting to see Mr. Kung, though he felt no such presence himself. An ancient altar table stood against the far wall, a small golden Quan Yin in the center of the table in front of a rosewood screen, with a bronze incense burner on each side. Stephanie lit incense and the familiar fragrance of sandalwood renewed itself in the air.
“He worked for a long time on this arrangement,” she said softly. “It became his favorite and he is here. He is displeased with me. He was unhappy with me when he died. Why was he angry, Rann?”
“He wanted us to marry, Stephanie. You know that. He questioned me about it and I told him the truth. I saw no reason to lie to him. I respected him too much.”
“You told him of my refusal and he became so agitated he had a heart attack. Oh, Rann, I have killed my father.”
“That is not true, Stephanie.” Rann led her to a comfortable love seat placed in the center of one wall so that one seated there could see all of the objects tastefully displayed on the remaining three walls. He sat beside her, his elbow resting on the back of the couch, and he turned to face her, lifting her chin with his forefinger.
“You must not blame yourself. Your father was eighty years old today and he has long had a problem with his heart. It was coincidence that the fatal attack came when it did.”
“And is it coincidental also that it came the first time I have ever defied him? My grandfather died of the same problem, but he lived to be ninety-five and my father’s life has been shortened. I have always done as he wished but in this one thing I could not, Rann. Marriage and motherhood are very personal to a woman and in these areas I must decide for myself. He made all other decisions and, alas, because he could not make this one he is gone.” Tears came to her eyes, spilling onto her cheeks, but in all other ways she maintained her composure.
“Nevertheless, I am right, Rann. Even though he did not agree with me and though he is now dead, I am right in my own decision.”
“We must not speak of it further now, Stephanie. Your father’s death is not your fault. You must know that.”
He took her right hand gently into both of his own and they sat in silence for a long time before Sung appeared.
“All is done, young master,” Sung told him. “The servants tell me there are no relatives to notify and so all is done.”
“Yes, it is true. There is no one to notify. Everyone we knew in this vast country was coming here tonight and so they must know by now. I wished you also to be surprised, Rann, and so I did not tell you that even your mother was coming. She must be in New York now.”
“It is true, young master,” Sung told him. “When your honored mother came and found— She is waiting in your apartment.”
Rann was pleased now to know his mother was near.
“Call her, Sung,” he said. “Ask her to come here.”
His mother arrived a short time later. “I am very sorry, Stephanie,” she said. “I was looking forward to meeting your father. Now you must rest and you, too, Rann. You go on home, son, and I will remain here with Stephanie.”
“I feel I wish to stay with Stephanie,” Rann said.
“No, Rann.” Stephanie was calm. “Your mother is right. All has been done here. Now you must rest. I will rest also. I have a sedative.”
Sung accompanied Rann back to his apartment and drew a bath for him and served a drink to him in the study and excused himself for the night.
Rann fell asleep sitting at his desk and was still there, his head resting on his folded arms, when his mother arrived in the morning. He was aware only that he was very tired as consciousness crept into him. When he opened his eyes to find her seated in the comfortable chair across from him, he was surprised to see her until his memory of the events of the evening before came to him.
“Oh, Mother, is Stephanie?…” His voice trailed into silence at the expression on his mother’s face.
“Rann, you must be very brave now.” His mother’s voice was solemn. “You must remember that all that happens has a reason. You must try to remember the things your father said after he knew he was dying.”
His alarm showed in his voice when he spoke. “Mother, what are you saying?”
“Stephanie is dead, son.”
For long moments he stared at her in disbelief, collapsing finally, his head on his arms, his body wracked with his own deep sobs as realization came to him.
“YOUR SON WILL BE ALL RIGHT, Mrs. Colfax,” the doctor told her.
She had called him when Rann’s sobbing seemed endless and uncontrollable. “I have given him a sedative and he must rest now. He will sleep for several hours and then he will be all right. He is young. He will take sorrow in his stride.”
“I KNOW WHY STEPHANIE DID what she has done, Mother. There was no accidental overdose of sedative—oh, let it go at that. There was no note—but I know and she knew that I would know. She always felt displaced because of her racial mixture. She even refused to marry me because of it. She did not wish to have children because they, too, would be racially mixed. I’m sure she saw herself in a hopeless situation and simply swallowed a few extra capsules. She was really quite Asian and would attach no particular disgrace to having the courage to do what she considered the only action she could take.
“The point I must reach now is simply that I, alone, can discover for myself a way in which I can go on. My life, as I had seen it before me, has changed irrevocably. It can never be the same again as life is never today as it seemed yesterday. Today there is no future ahead of me as I have seen it, and so I must create one.”
Rann sipped coffee from the cup on the desk in front of him.
In the two weeks since Stephanie and her father had died, he and his mother had come to the study each morning after breakfast for another cup of coffee and had talked each day, often for many hours, of events, and how haphazard events and their effects upon one another shaped one’s life. Mr. Kung and his beloved Stephanie had both been cremated as they wished, since the Communist regime had not yet ended in China and their bodies could not be returned to their homeland. Rann had inherited the entire Kung fortune from Mr. Kung. It was all entailed, of course, so that Stephanie would need nothing for the rest of her life should her husband not be Rann, but now that Stephanie was also gone, so was the entailment.