He bristled faintly in response. “There are degrees, you know. Anyway. Maybe she’s his. And maybe she’s not. If she’s not, that’s it. We get rid of the claim and we’re done.”
“And Shuying?”
“Then Shuying is not our problem. They file against the other guy. At that point it’s none of your business.”
“What if they need help doing that?”
“Maggie,” he reproved her.
“I don’t want the kid left out in the cold.”
“Stop. Get the test back. Then we’ll talk.”
“All right,” she said, “but only for now. Until I hear.” She rummaged in her purse and came up with the newspaper clipping. “I brought this to show you. Did you ever see it? It was in the news after Matt died.”
Carey looked at it and felt his heart contract. There was Matt, the man by whose side he had prowled the magical night and returned, again and again, to the rigor of day. There was Matt on the ground, stilled, splayed. Purses and briefcases were scattered around. Carey had imagined Matt’s death so many times, seen it, thought of it. Now here it was, the street corner, the crowd. Pain crept up and stung at him. People clustered around Matt in the picture. A woman bent over him, caught by the camera looking up, eyes frightened wide.
The woman. He stopped. His skin felt like it was going to lift right off his body.
“What is it?” Maggie asked.
He pointed to the grainy, shaded picture. “That woman there? See?”
“I see,” said Maggie. The woman bending over Matt, yes, she had seen her a thousand times. Studied her face. “Nobody ever got her name. I’d have given anything to talk to her. Maybe he said something, at the end. If he did I’d like to know. But nobody knew who she was.”
“I may.”
His voice was a thin, hesitant thread, but it made her head snap up.
“It’s just possible – ”
“What?” Maggie felt all the air go out of her, leaving nothing.
“This is not a good picture. It’s not clear. Maybe I shouldn’t say anything. But.” He brought the tip of his finger to the grainy uplift of the woman’s face. “I think you should prepare yourself for the possibility that this could very well be…” He swallowed. “It looks like Gao Lan.”
Maggie burst out the front door of the building like somebody swimming up from the deep, holding it in, lungs screaming for air, her heart refusing, denying. On the sidewalk she could not get her breath. Everyone passing her was safe in a group, twos and threes and fours. She jostled and bumped among them, the only one alone. She’d had a pattern in her life once, a pattern of two. Her and Matt. No more.
If Gao Lan was with him the day he died, everything shifted. The wheel turned again. That meant they had a relationship. Then there was a much better chance Shuying was his, or at least that he believed she was his. If he even knew. Did he know? Maggie followed this scenario several moves down her mental game board. Matt may have known nothing of the other guy. He may have known only that his own timing had been right. That would have been enough. His generous nature, his goodness, would have done the rest. That and how much he was starting to want a child of his own. So maybe he knew, after all. Maybe he lied to Maggie more than she wanted to believe.
She felt she was falling down a dark hole. The man she’d always thought she’d known, who had lived in her memory all this past year, was ebbing. In his place there had materialized another, darker one, a shadow of her husband, a man who kept secrets and was divided. Ask me, he seemed to be saying to her. Ask me what really happened.
And yet she had known him, had she not? Was he not real then? He had been good. Remember that too.
She remembered the day she started bleeding mid-month, two years ago, a year before he died; she knew instantly something was not right. She called the doctor and they said to come in. She called Matt, just to let him know. He insisted that he would take her and she should wait there until he arrived.
He came in thirty minutes, calming her, encircling her, bundling her into the car. In the doctor’s office he stood next to her with his large-knuckled hand cupping her shoulder. She had fibroids, the doctor said. Bed rest until the heavy bleeding stopped. No getting up except to go to the bathroom.
“I’ll take care of her,” said Matt.
“It should stop within twelve hours, or call me. By the way, these don’t tend to get better. And they can complicate pregnancy. So if you’re going to have kids you might want to do it soon.” He glanced at the chart. “You’re thirty-eight,” he said to Maggie, and to Matt he said, “You’re…?”
“Forty-two.”
“I see,” said the doctor. “Well.”
Maggie felt she might cry.
Matt saw. “Thank you,” he said, his voice firm. “We appreciate what you said.” He talked the doctor out of the room, steered Maggie out the door and to the car, took her home, and put her to bed. For a long time, even though it was the middle of the afternoon, he lay on the bed beside her. “Don’t feel bad,” he said. “He doesn’t know us. Nothing matters but the two of us, what we think.”
“Everyone in the world is in league against me. They all think I should have your child.”
“None of that,” he said. He was serious. No more silly jokes. When they first started to wrestle with this she had often taken refuge behind amusing, deflective ironies – Children? But I can barely stand to have wineglasses! How could I have children? – but that time was past. “Listen to me,” he said that day on the bed. He laid his hand on her midsection. “You’re the one I want. That hasn’t changed. Yes, it’s true, I want a child too. But not as much as I want you. Even if you say no, never, out of the question – I might not like that too much, but I’m still not going anywhere. You’re my wife.”
She had cried then, letting out everything she’d held in before, seeing love, feeling it. And now she had Carey telling her Gao Lan might have been with Matt when he died. Maybe.
Anger rose in her, hissing through her brain. She snapped open her phone and dialed Zinnia. “We have to find Gao Lan,” she said.
“Something happen?” Zinnia was on the floor of her apartment, playing with her two-year-old son. At the sound of Maggie’s voice she sat straighter and pushed her hip black glasses higher up on the small, prim bridge of her nose. She held the boy loosely while she listened. When Maggie had finished she said, “Do you think it can be her?”
“How can I know? He thinks so – maybe – and he’s the only person I happen to know who’s ever seen her. We have to find someone else who knew her. We have to find her.”
“You’re right,” said Zinnia. “I will try even harder. Already I have been to many offices in the Sun Building, where Carey said she used to work.” Inside, Zinnia thought of Carey. He was going to have to help now. She had asked him to call one or two of his former female friends. Some were likely to know Gao Lan, and those who didn’t knew others, and somewhere on that chain was a Beijinger who knew where Gao Lan was right now. And knew why no one in her old work circle had seen her in the last three years. Logistics, was what Carey had passed on from Maggie. That could mean many things. It was not enough. They needed someone who knew.
Yet when she had pressed Carey about these women, he evaded her. “I’ve fallen out of touch with her,” he said of one, and “It was not good the last time we spoke; I can’t call her,” of another.
Zinnia was a composed professional who always observed propriety, and there were certain questions she would never ask of a man at work. His private life was not her business. Still, it was obvious something was wrong, for he was well past forty and not yet married. This was an aberration. She didn’t know why he remained this way. He was not an invert; he liked women. Maybe too much. Maybe that was the problem.