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Now Ling reached for the ringing phone, balancing the basket of laundry on her hip. The house felt empty without the children, but at least she could catch up on some of the chores while they were gone. And then, when this load was on, she would make a cup of fragrant ginger tea and sit down for a while. She’d bought a new magazine on the way home from work and hadn’t opened it yet. The glossy pictures called to her; she loved looking at the celebrities with their pretty dresses and glossy hair.
Her hair was glossy too, of course. She’d washed it just that morning, and that was what she was thinking about when she reached for the phone to answer it. That when she’d married Gage, she’d felt like she was marrying a movie star, and even if her hair was glossy and still dark, hardly a grey hair, and she plucked out the ones she found, she should have known better to think Gage was a good man, and that someone like her, a little Chinese girl, could be a celebrity.
‘Hello?’ she asked, mind changing gears to the children. If the phone rang when they were with Gage, she was always afraid it would be news that one of them was hurt. Perhaps just a fall from a tree and a broken arm, perhaps something worse. Gage drove fast; maybe there had been a car accident, and this was the police calling to tell her. She dropped the laundry basket, heart beating too fast.
No, if it was the police, they would come to the door. Wasn’t that how it happened on the television? She glanced at the front door but it stayed closed. No police officer stood on the other side, stolid and apologetic in a dark blue uniform.
Or would a plain clothes officer come to the door to tell her? No. That was only if there’d been a murder. The children hadn’t been murdered. Gage had been an awful husband, but he loved his children in his own way. He wouldn’t put them in danger.
Ling gazed down at the clothes spilling over the floor, Karel’s rugby jersey, a grass stain she was going to have to soak out, one of Bree’s frilly princess dresses, and the hem was torn. Maybe instead of the magazine, she would get out her needle and thread and stitch that back up.
And Jordan’s best pair of jeans. Those should have gone to her father’s place with her. What if they went out somewhere fancy for lunch? Gage liked fancy. Take the new girlfriend, for example...but Ling didn’t want to go there, wouldn’t go there. But the woman better be nice to the children. Hell, the girl was barely more than a child herself!
She grasped the phone, thoughts taking a last jump to Jordan. Would it be her wanting to come home early? She did that sometimes, rang up and asked her mother to come get her, but Ling always refused, even though she wanted nothing more than to come scoop them all up and bring them home where she could tuck them under her wing and keep them safe. But Gage was their father, and he had visitation rights, and Jordan had to be grown up about it, and anyway Gage would never put the children in harm’s way.
‘Ling?’
‘Mother?’ She was confused for a moment, then all her worried thoughts evaporated like steam from cooking, and she thought she’d have that ginger tea and time with the magazine after all. Didn’t she deserve such a simple pleasure? Working all week as a receptionist in a doctor’s office, worrying after three children, being a single parent to them.
‘Ling,’ her mother said, voice low, urgent, interrupting the constant ebb and flow of her daughter’s thoughts. ‘Where are the children?’
Blinking, Ling stared down at the spilled clothes, and the grass stain on Karel’s jersey looked like a big, yellow-green bruise.
‘Where are the children? I want to speak to Jordan.’
‘Jordan? She’s with her father. With Gage. He has them all this weekend.’ In fact, he’d asked for longer than that. ‘He’s got them until Thursday, since it’s the holidays.’ An edge of angry, helpless hurt entered her voice. ‘He wants them to get to know his new fiancée.’
She stopped talking and could hear her own breathing, but there was nothing from the other end of the line.
‘Mother? Did you hear me?’
‘I heard you, Ling. And now you must hear me. Do you promise?’
Ling’s brow creased, a pleasant wrinkling that made her even more attractive.
‘I don’t know what you mean, Mother,’ she said.
‘Listen!’ the old woman hissed. ‘I need you to listen – with your mind wide open. Will you do that?’
Heart falling, Ling knew what this was about now. It was more of her mother’s superstition. She was calling to warn her of something – the vacuum cleaner breaking perhaps, or that silly, fat, old Taffy was going to eat something nasty and cost her a trip to the vet.
Well, Taffy wasn’t here to get into trouble. Gage had given into Bree’s pleading to bring the dog with them, which had surprised Ling very much – left her near speechless, in fact – and the old dog was loaded into the back of the car where she’d sat on top of an unimpressed Jordan, and hung her head out the window, tongue flapping as Gage accelerated away.
‘I’m listening, Mother,’ she said on a sigh.
There was a slight pause, and an answering sigh. ‘Your mind is not open,’ the old woman said. ‘But I have to speak anyway, because there is not time to lose.’
‘I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about,’ Ling said, and now she was thinking about the tea, and the magazine again. She deserved to put her feet up for ten minutes.
‘The children are in danger,’ her mother said.
Ling spluttered. ‘What?’ She turned to look at the wall. ‘The kids are fine. They’re with Gage. Even Taffy is with them.’ She shifted to grip the phone with both hands. It was an old one, came with the rented house, even had a curly wire that made Bree giggle and want to play with it. ‘I know you’ve had your issues with Gage, and heaven knows I have too – but he is their father, and he wouldn’t put them in harm’s way.’
‘That is exactly what he’s done!’ The elderly woman’s voice rose almost to a shriek in Ling’s ear.
Squeezing her eyes shut, Ling felt a first tremor of unease. She leaned against the wall now and licked dry lips.
‘If this is another one of your silly stories...’ she said.
Her mother’s voice was impatient. ‘Ling, we do not have time for your disbelief. Trust your mother. If you never do anything ever again – trust me this once.’
Now her whole body was feeling it, legs weak, stomach flip-flopping inside her, head light. She reached out and pressed a palm against the wall to stop it trembling.
‘This better not be something the spirits told you,’ she said, and there were tears in her voice. How dare her mother ring and upset her like this!
‘It is time you believed what has been right in front of you this whole time,’ her mother said. ‘Now get in your car and come here. We must go and go quickly.’
‘Wait!’ Ling was afraid her mother was going to hang up – her voice had held that tone of final command. ‘Wait,’ she said, growing limp. ‘They are in danger?’ she whispered.
‘The biggest danger of their lives.’
‘But they are all so little. Even Jordan...’
‘Jordan is keeping them alive,’ her mother said, voice matter of fact. ‘Now come.’
Ling closed her eyes. ‘Yes, Mother,’ she said. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
‘Come now,’ Chenguang – whose own mother had named her for the morning light – said, and then there was just the dial tone.