He should move back. This thought came to him often lately, but he never did much. What he had here was far too pleasing. At first Carey had seen only the obvious freedoms, the ones that had made Matt so wild so quickly. In time Carey understood that China would allow a man to re-create himself, from the inside out, as someone new. A foreigner could make of this world what he wanted. For some it was the unimaginable wealth one had in the local economy, for others the success with women. He’d even seen some who came to China as modern ascetics; those were the respectful ones who donned the shabby clothes of the scholar and disappeared into rented rooms in the hutongs, the back lanes, to learn Chinese. Whatever one’s dream picture, China, incessantly indulging Westerners even as it did not fundamentally welcome them, provided the frame.
The trouble was, eventually the dream was over. One woke up. Morosely he fiddled with his phone.
The receptionist called through to him to say Maggie was here. “Send her back,” he said.
As soon as she walked in, he saw that she looked different. Her eyes had been circled by care and sadness. Now she looked almost glad. “Congratulations,” he said. She had every reason to feel good.
“Thank you. Here are the permissions, signed.” She passed the pages across the desk. “I’ve kept copies. In six more days I’ll hear from the lab.”
“That’s quick!”
“I paid for rush service. And I shipped it from Hangzhou instead of bringing it back here.”
“Smart,” he said. “So.” He folded his hands. “Did you see her?”
“Yes.”
“Did she look like Matt?”
“That was a strange thing,” she said. “No. At least at first I didn’t think so. She’s a big-eyed, pretty little thing. She looks like an elf. None of the gravity Matt’s face had. But then – I couldn’t understand anything she said, of course – there’d be a certain light in her eyes, a way of turning her head and looking, and I’d be stabbed by this feeling, Carey, I mean stabbed. Really. Like it was him.”
He felt a bolt of sadness, listening to her. She could so easily have been imagining things. “Lucky you’re getting the results so fast.”
“Yes,” she said. “But talking about that – seeing Shuying did make me wonder. What did she look like, Gao Lan? Do you remember?”
“I think so,” he said. She may have sounded casual, but he was not fooled. Any wife would bide her time, pretend not to care, and then pounce when the moment was right to ask. “She had an old-fashioned kind of Chinese look, an oval face, like a woman in a painting.”
“What did she do?”
“If I remember correctly, she was a midlevel office worker. There are so many young women with modest English skills like her in Beijing. I didn’t know much about her.”
“How old?” said Maggie.
“Let me think. By now I suppose thirty, or thirty-two.”
He watched Maggie absorb this. Surely she must have guessed that Gao Lan was not as old as she.
“So,” said Maggie, “explain this to me. Why, all this time, has Shuying been raised by the grandparents?”
“Oh. That’s very common here. A lot of people do this. Historically all the generations lived together, in one compound – not now, now they live apart, but many grandparents still take care of the children. They say, if you need an ayi, why give away money to a stranger? Give to your own parents.”
“But Gao Lan works so far away.”
“Perhaps she can’t make a living in Shaoxing.”
“Her living – that’s another thing we learned. She’s working at a logistics company. We didn’t get the name. Just, logistics.”
He made a note. “That’s pretty broad. Find out anything else?”
“Yes. You sitting down? You ready?” She leaned forward. “Matt wasn’t the only man. Gao Lan was seeing another foreigner at the same time. The grandparents believe the chances of Shuying being Matt’s are only fifty-fifty.”
“How could you know that?”
“The grandparents said so.”
“I can’t believe they’d tell you that.”
“They didn’t know they were telling us. My friend pretended not to speak Chinese. They provided a translator – and then they spoke with complete freedom in front of us.”
“Oh.” He smiled at her, admiring. She had guts. “Your friend is Chinese? Or Western?”
“Half,” she said.
“Ah. A woman?”
“A man.”
“I see.” He looked Maggie over again. Maybe this was the reason for the lift of spirit he had noticed when she walked in. Good. He would like to see her get her soul back. Why? he wondered. Maggie was not really his friend. He had liked her when he met her three years before, but that was because she came with Matt, and Matt had become his friend in the course of the all-night rambles that had taken them to the very edges of what the Chinese called the guiding, the fixed rules. Don’t worry, I’ll keep your secrets, Carey had said to him. Naturally this meant he might someday have to lie to Matt’s wife, but since he didn’t know her back then, it was easy to promise. Now Matt was gone, and he was helping the wife – of course. It was his job. Shi wo yinggai-de, he thought, one of the first simple Chinese expressions he had learned, It’s what I should do.
He opened the file in front of him, slid the permissions into it. In the beginning and the end, he was a lawyer. He was always grateful for the way structure held things together. He drew out a sheet he’d prepared.
“I think you’ll feel better once you see this,” he said. “Maybe you’re right and there’s only a half-half chance the girl is his, but let’s just say she is. I figured out that your exposure isn’t as high as you think. Matt left you the house, right?”
“Yes – ”
“I hope you don’t mind that I looked all this up. It wasn’t hard. The firm handled the will, after all. So – the life insurance was enough to pay off the house. And you did that. Right? That’s what it says here. Paid off the house.”
“Yes – ”
“That means you’re in good shape. If you hadn’t paid off the house, I’d be worried. Where you’re exposed is in what’s liquid. See? Your primary residence is off-limits. So if everything he left you is invested there, you don’t have to worry, no matter what happens. They can’t touch it.”
“The house,” she said.
“Right.”
“I sold the house.”
A silence. “But you bought another,” he answered. It was one of those hopeful statements that stops just short of being a question.
“No.”
“Then where do you live?”
“A little place I rented.” How little, she knew he couldn’t imagine, so she left it at that.
“Where’s the money?” he said.
“In cash.”
His voice tightened up. “Then you can lose half of everything.”
“Clearly,” she said. “But first of all, that’s only if she’s his daughter. And if she’s his daughter, why is that losing? She should have it.”
“Half of everything? In cash?” He withdrew the spreadsheet and put it away, realizing she wasn’t even going to look at it. “I can’t believe you’re saying that.”
“Well, I am.”
“Am I wrong? Or do you sound like you actually wouldn’t mind a match from the lab too much?”
“It’s not like that. Some things you don’t get to mind or not mind. They just are. Maybe that’s what’s changed – I met Shuying. She’s not theoretical anymore. She’s a kid. If she’s Matt’s, I’ll take care of her. I can’t believe you’d even suggest I do anything else.”