Red Skies (The Tales of the Scavenger's Daughters) (28 page)

Max had to smile at her excitement to share her memories. He supposed that she’d probably forgotten many things, but now, with it all suddenly in front of her, she was apparently washed in recollections. The entire last few hours were some he’d never forget in his lifetime. He’d mostly been a silent witness to the reunion, watching as the grandfather grabbed Mei and set her on his lap and then, as plump tears ran through the deep crags and wrinkles of his face, had begged her forgiveness for allowing her to be taken from them.

“My
pínggu
o
z
i
,
” the old man had affectionately murmured as Mei had taken him through the shop and helped him start all of his clocks back. It was clear from her confident touch that that she’d handled the clocks before, and it was all familiar to her. That gave Max another bit of reassurance that they’d returned her to her rightful place. Now the loud ticking of the clocks settled around them, bringing even more life to the tiny shop.

Max was pleased, too, that he hadn’t gotten as lost in their language as he’d thought he would. He’d come a long way, and his daughter would be proud. He didn’t understand everything, but facial expressions, gestures, and emotions conveyed what the scattered unknown words hadn’t. Most of all, as a stranger and even a foreigner, he knew he was blessed to be allowed to be a part of the magic of the moment, and he was thankful. But now he worried about An Ni.

Earlier Mei’s mother had gestured for Mari to join her outside, and she had beckoned him to come too. Once away from the crowd, the woman thanked Mari again and promised her that An Ni definitely had a home with them. They hadn’t told An Ni yet.

But their afternoon was wrapping up, and some family members had already left to go home, reminding Max that they needed to say their good-byes.

“Mari?” he called out.

Mari looked his way, and he tapped his watch. She nodded. It was their signal that it was time to tell An Ni. Mari gestured toward the staircase that ran along the far wall and Max stood to join them. He crossed the room, looking to see if Mari’s parents had reemerged yet.

Mari’s mother had disappeared with a few other older women, headed to clean up the dishes from the feast they’d prepared for Mei’s arrival. Conveniently, her grandfather had a small kitchen in the back of the shop, as well as a small living area on the upper floor. Max had been surprised when family members started carrying out steaming dishes of vegetables, buns, and treats, laying them out all along the shop’s glass counters. They’d eaten buffet style, with Mei and An Ni at the front of the line, symbolizing that they were the guests of honor.

Mari’s father now sat outside with a few of the men—exchanging stories and anecdotes, no doubt. Max would’ve loved to sit with them and listen to their stories and memories, but something told him his foreign ears wouldn’t be welcome, despite their attempt to be polite. So he’d stayed indoors, watching from his perch well out of the way.

Max saw Mari send Mei across the room to her parents, and she led An Ni to the old wooden staircase. They took a seat on the last step, sitting side by side. Max joined them and climbed to the step over An Ni, then sat down.

“An Ni, we have some good news for you,” Mari started.

Max nodded, silently giving Mari the go-ahead to do all the talking.

“
Shenme
?” An Ni asked what the news was.

“Mei’s family wants you to live with them and stay in Mei’s life.” Mari held her hand, peering into her face as she gave her the news.

“Stay with Mei? And her family?” An Ni asked.

Mari nodded, smiling at An Ni. Max reached out and rubbed An Ni’s back, encouraging her to take in the news.

But An Ni didn’t smile. She looked confused. “But what about you?”

“What about me, An Ni?”

Max watched the two of them, something unspoken lingering in their words.

An Ni finally nodded. “
Hao le
, I’ll stay with Mei,” she somberly agreed.

Mari turned and looked at Max, her eyebrows rising together.

“Aren’t you happy about staying with Mei, An Ni? Her family will be your family,” Max said.

An Ni stared out over the shop, her eyes falling on Mei and her parents. “I’m happy enough. I just hope they can afford another daughter.”

Mari hugged her close, and Max had to restrain from joining them. He felt so bad for An Ni. She was obviously confused and maybe feeling left out. Even though Mei’s parents had agreed to take her in, they’d not shown much interest in her.
Fair enough
, thought Max.
After all, they’re just getting back the daughter they thought lost to them forever. Who can blame them if they only have eyes for her?

“An Ni, give them some time. Once they’re over their relief at getting Mei back, they’ll want to know more about you. They’re so thankful for you keeping their daughter safe—I promise you that.”

An Ni nodded, but Max wasn’t so sure she was agreeing. Before they could question her more, Mei and her parents approached.

“You’re getting ready to go home?” Mari asked, and they confirmed.

Max stood and helped An Ni to her feet. He put his arm around her for support, and they followed Mei and her parents to the door.

Mari knelt down and put her hands on each of Mei’s shoulders. “Mei, I’ll be in touch, but I want you to be a good girl, and be careful not to wander around alone.
Hao le
?”

Mei nodded. Her eyes filled with tears. Mari hugged her, then stepped back, making room for Max.

He took her place. “Mei, it was so nice to meet you, and I want to thank you for coming to me in the train station—thank you for trusting me. You were very brave, and you probably saved An Ni’s life.”

Mei smiled. Max looked at An Ni, and she looked away. Was she mad at him?

He stood and touched Mei’s nose, made a small clicking sound. “Cute as a button.”

With their good-byes said, they all went out the door. Mei’s Ye Ye approached Mari and handed her a small wooden clock, the front of it exquisitely carved into the shape of a dragon. “
Xiao liwu
.”

A small gift. Mari smiled and nodded. “
Xie xie
.”

“You will come home with us?” Mei’s mother asked An Ni, beckoning her to come closer.

Max watched as An Ni hesitated and readjusted her hold on her cricket cage, tightening the fingers on her hand that also wrapped around the grip of one of the crutches. He’d brought the cage to her when Mei began showing hers to her parents. He didn’t want An Ni to leave hers behind and then regret it later. After he’d explained to them about setting the crickets free, they’d both appeared to look forward to doing it. Now he watched An Ni’s face, trying to decipher what she was thinking. When Mari didn’t respond, An Ni moved toward Mei and her parents.

The driver had brought the van down to the shop, and now there was nothing left to do but to climb in and head back to Mari’s apartment. Still, they lingered.

After a bit more conversation and talk of Mei and An Ni starting school, Mari turned to her baba. “Are we ready to go?”

Max knew that leaving the girls behind was killing Mari, but she was holding up well. Either that or she was just bankrupt of emotion. They went to the van, and after they unloaded the suitcases and bags from the back, they climbed in, leaving the girls and Mei’s parents standing at the curb, waving good-bye.

Mei looked so happy, flanked by both her parents. She smiled and waved, even blew kisses. But An Ni—she wore one of the saddest looks Max had ever seen. It broke his heart to have to remember her that way, so he waved once more and averted his eyes.

Mari kept her gaze on the back window, waving gently. When she turned just enough for Max to see her face, he saw that the emotion had broken through, and her cheeks were wet with tears.

“She asked me to keep her cricket safe,” Mari said quietly. She held the cage on her lap.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Empty,” she replied as she stared out the back window. “As though I’m leaving behind a piece of myself.”

“Mari?” her baba called out to her from the middle seat where he and Mari’s mama sat, both of them amazingly composed.

Mari turned to him, finally taking her eyes from An Ni.

“Maybe you are,” her baba said softly.

Max watched Mari and saw the anguish in her eyes change to a spark of realization. She sat up straighter, turning to look behind her at An Ni again. Max followed her gaze and saw that Mei and her parents had gone back into the store, but An Ni had turned over a suitcase and sat perched atop it. She looked still as a statue, her proud chin in the air as she watched them drive away.

Max couldn’t bear it—he had to stop looking. Already the haunting image would be burned into his memory forever.

“
Ting le
—stop, driver,” Mari called out and stood, bracing herself against the seat.

The driver looked into the rearview mirror, questioning, yet he didn’t slow down.

“My daughter said to stop this vehicle,” Lao Zheng said, the authority in his voice causing the driver to hit his brakes too suddenly, thrusting Mari forward.

Max caught her and held her steady. “What are you doing?”

Mari smiled down at him. “I’m doing what I should’ve done the first second I ever saw An Ni. I’m going back, and this time, I’m doing what fate had in store for me all along—I’m bringing An Ni home.”

He didn’t respond, even though he saw that she hesitated as if she were waiting for him to try to talk her out of it. When he didn’t, she pulled her shoulders back and took a deep breath. “For good, this time.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

T
hree weeks later, Mari and An Ni were in the backseat of a rented car, headed toward the main highway that would take them out of Beijing and to Wuxi for an extended stay. This time Mari knew she was doing the right thing. She wanted An Ni to have the chance to get to know the rest of her forever family, and the only way to do that was to plop her down right in the middle of them and let them love her to pieces. And now it didn’t feel as if she were running from her problems. An Ni’s cast was removed and she was doing so well with her leg. They’d spent some glorious weeks together, interspersed with Max’s company as they visited sites around Beijing and even popped in to check on Mei a few times.

In those weeks, Mari still mourned, and many things reminded her of Bolin, but she thought he’d be happy to know that she’d started to laugh again. Maybe not ‘laugh like music’—but at least with the new and intoxicating feelings of mothering An Ni, she felt her personality was returning to close to what it used to be, before life had beaten her down.

And An Ni wasn’t like any other child Mari had ever known. She was sharp—even overly intelligent for her years. Together, as a team, they’d brainstormed several possible ways to make a living. Mari was sure she’d be able to succeed when they were ready, but it had taken the death of her husband and the dramatic meeting of her new daughter to realize family should always come first. She’d have the rest of her life to make a living—the details could wait.

“You’re sure you want to leave Beijing without saying more to Max?” An Ni said, her voice low and quiet—and more grown up than Mari had heard in the entire time she’d known her.

“What do you mean?”

An Ni shrugged. “I don’t know what I mean exactly. But I do know we were meant to find him and that he was meant to find us. Saying good-bye yesterday didn’t feel right—it was as though we left something behind. Something unfinished.”

Mari chuckled. Since the afternoon in front of Mei’s family when Mari had asked An Ni to be her daughter, the girl had really come out of her shell. She’d turned a corner, and now she spoke her mind, instead of keeping it bottled up inside. Mari was glad—that told her that An Ni was comfortable with her.

And she had a point about Max. His coming into her life and helping her find An Ni had a supernatural feel to it. But that wasn’t something she wanted An Ni to dwell on. And Max had said his good-byes only the day before, keeping it short after he told them he was flying out the next day. Mari had been so sad to see him go, but knew he needed to get back to his real life.

An Ni nudged her. “Well?”

She smiled and nudged An Ni back. “Yes, it is sort of strange that first I saw and spoke to you on the street, then more than a month later, Mei finds Max and me in the train station and leads us to you. But there are such things as coincidences, An Ni. Even miracles. Sometimes—things are just unexplainable.”

An Ni stared out the window, the bag she and Mei had shared when Mari and Max had found them still propped on her lap. At the last minute, Mei had shoved it into An Ni’s arms, telling her she still needed protection. How a bag could protect a girl, Mari didn’t know, but the scene was emotional enough without her questioning them.

An Ni turned back to her. “Oh, I know how it’s explained.”

“How?” Mari humored her. She leaned into An Ni as the driver took a turn too fast. Using the handle over her head, she pulled herself upright.

“Our Guanyin led Mei to him.”

Mari was surprised she even knew what Guanyin was. “You have your own Guanyin?”

An Ni unzipped the purse and dug in it for a second, then her hand emerged with a photo. She handed it to Mari.

Mari held the photo, gazing down at the girl with deep brown eyes and an impish smile. She looked happy—satisfied, even. In her pink Hello Kitty shirt, she could’ve blended in with any of a million girls that Mari had seen in her life. “Who is this?”

“I found Max’s wallet on the train, and this photo of a Chinese girl was in it. Mei was afraid because I kept slipping in and out of sleep, so I told her it was our Guanyin. I didn’t really believe it at first, but now I do.”

Then it hit Mari.

It was Max’s daughter. The aura of happiness shining off the face and out of the photo made sense then, because she knew without a doubt in her mind that Max loved his daughter. And this girl—her look of contentment rivaled any she’d seen.

“An Ni! Why didn’t you give him this photo like you gave him the paper? This is his daughter.”

“His daughter is Chinese? How?” An Ni looked dumbfounded.

“She’s adopted.” Mari could see by the confusion on An Ni’s face that she didn’t understand Chinese children could be adopted by foreigners.

“There’s a program called International Adoption,” Mari said. “Max and his wife were matched up with their daughter when she was just a baby. They flew to China and picked her up.”

Mari didn’t mention that Max and his wife were no longer together. She doubted that An Ni would understand divorce. She waited until her words sunk in, then finally An Ni started to look as if she understood.

An Ni turned to Mari. “We have to give him this picture back.”

Mari shook her head. “It’s too late. He’s already gone.”

An Ni face filled with guilt, then crumpled.

Mari didn’t know what to do. Max had already turned the keys in for his apartment. He was scheduled to fly out of China, and as far as she knew, he could be halfway to the airport.

“Please, Mari,” An Ni pleaded. “She helped me to find you. I have to tell him.”

Mari could feel her resolve slipping. “But I don’t even know where to look.”

That wasn’t completely true. She had a gut feeling where she might find him. They could at least try one place. If she was wrong, they’d only be out a bit more of a fare than she’d expected. And if she were right—well, she didn’t know. But the look on An Ni’s face told her she needed to try. She let her heart make the decision.

“Turn around,” Mari said, pecking on the glass that separated the driver from her and An Ni.

The driver jerked his head to the side, barking out what amounted to him asking her if she was crazy. “
Ni shuo shenme
?”

“I said, turn around,” she repeated. “I need to make another stop before we leave town. I forgot something important.”

The driver shook his head no and kept going.

“I’m not paying you if you don’t turn this car around,” Mari said, then told him where she wanted him to reroute to.

He took his foot off the gas, cursing again as he looked for a place to turn around.

Mari looked over at An Ni and winked. The smile that lit up her face was worth any extra fare the driver might try to tack on. Even so, he kept up his long string of curse words, but he obediently pulled into the next parking lot and turned the car around. Within seconds, they were headed back in the direction they’d come from. In defiance, the driver lit up a dirty brown cigarette, going back on his original promise to Mari not to smoke on the trip.

She decided she’d let him go as soon as he stopped—she wouldn’t let An Ni breathe his poison all the way to Wuxi. But she’d let him get them to the next stop. They rode in silence, Mari sort of hoping Max would be there and sort of hoping he wouldn’t. She didn’t want him to think she was too forward, or that she didn’t want to say good-bye. She did have her pride, after all.

Even if she
didn’t
want to say good-bye.

Ten minutes later, the driver pulled the car up to the curb in front of the old hutong. Mari looked but didn’t see Max anywhere.

“Come on. Let’s go in. If he’s here, he’ll be this way.” She hurried An Ni out of the car and onto the sidewalk. After telling the driver to open the trunk, she pulled their luggage out and then returned and tossed a bill into the front seat. As she backed away, she mumbled to him what he could do with his thick cloud of nicotine.

Then she led the way quietly, both of them lost in their own thoughts. As they walked up to the place she and Max had visited what felt like only days before, she saw him.

He knelt in the mulched beds between the two trees, on his knees with his shoulders hunched and his head bowed. Mari held her finger to her lips, signaling An Ni to be quiet. They softly approached, giving him time to finish doing whatever it was he was doing.

When they were just behind him and he still hadn’t risen, Mari called out to him. “Max?”

He turned, and the look on his face struck straight to her heart. Gone was the easygoing smile she’d grown accustomed to, and in its place was a ravaged man. Tears ran down his face, and he rubbed at them, obviously embarrassed.

“Mari? An Ni?” He stood, clasping a small jar to his chest. “What are you doing here?”

Mari gave An Ni a small nudge. “Go give him the photo.”

An Ni took a step forward, suddenly cautious in front of this new, vulnerable Max that neither of them had seen before. Mari watched her closely as she rummaged in the bag and brought out the photo, then took another few steps until she was close enough to hand it to him.

“What’s this?” He took it from her, and with one look, his silent tears turned into muffled sobs. He looked at An Ni. “You had this? All along?”

An Ni nodded.

Mari stepped forward and put her arm around her shoulders, giving her reassurance. “She said the photo was her and Mei’s Guanyin—that she led Mei to you.”

Max sat down abruptly between the trees. Suddenly he nodded, laughing through his tears. “Yep, that’s her. My daughter—always trying to help people.”

Mari sat down next to Max and pulled An Ni down too. “Why are you crying, Max?”

Max pulled a tattered piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. He handed it to Mari. “This is a list she made a long time ago. She called it her ‘bucket list’, but every item on it is something she and I planned to do in China together.”

Mari scanned the list, seeing things like the Great Wall and the antique market. Each item had a number and most of them had been checked off.

“Look at the last thing on the list,” Max said.

Mari read down through the items, seeing tasks that she’d even helped Max to do, before her eyes came to rest on the last ones.

10. Watch a cricket fight

11. See my Finding Place

12.
Help someone like me.

Now she understood his passion to see and do so much in China. And Max
had
helped someone like his daughter, at least in the coincidence that the girls were all Chinese and had been separated from their families. Still, Mari was confused. “But why didn’t she come with you?”

Max looked down at the ground, then he met Mari’s eyes. In them, she saw the deepest pool of sadness she’d ever seen in a person.

“She did.” He held her photo to his heart and, with the other hand, held up the small, empty jar.

Mari didn’t want to understand. She suddenly knew exactly why she couldn’t meet his daughter face to face. But she wouldn’t make him say it.

Max swiped at another tear. “These were her ashes—what was left of them. She always said that, when she died, she wanted part of her to be laid to rest in her homeland. Leukemia took her from me last year.”

Mari looked at the jar, noticing the remnants of a fine brown powder smeared across the glass. She put her hand to her mouth, and she suddenly knew. All the sadness he’d been carrying, that something mysterious he’d kept hidden, the questions he’d evaded—all of it was his reticence to admit his daughter had died. She felt so stupid, so uncaring that she hadn’t figured it out. Here he’d been helping her through her tragedy as he carried his own grief alone. Sadness overwhelmed her. “I’m so sorry, Max.”

He shook his head. “Don’t be. She led me to you two. When she was at her sickest, she made me promise to come to China and do the things on her list. I came, hoping that once fulfilled, I’d find peace or I’d be able to end everything. But in the process I found something else I never expected. I found a friend in you, Mari. And I found you, An Ni. Both of you have brought me out of the darkness and given me hope that I can go on in this world without her. And that—well, that’s more than enough.”

Mari fought to control her own tears as she watched Max stare down at the photo. Not having a child had always been hard for her, but having one, then
losing
your child—that was worse. Even unimaginable. “What was her name, Max?”

He looked up slowly, locking eyes with An Ni. Then he smiled, the lines around his eyes crinkling with true mirth, and there Mari thought she saw the first real spark of serenity she’d seen in him since the day they’d met. He straightened his shoulders, and as if a weight had been lifted, he suddenly appeared lighter.

“Well, girls, that’s the best part of this whole crazy adventure. Her name was Annie.”