Lies and Weddings(128)
At the mention of these names that Eden remembered from the press clippings in Arabella’s blue folder, her eyes began to brim with tears. So it was all true. Thomas paused, looking at her in concern. “Shall we take a break? I know this is a lot for you all at once…”
“No, please go on,” Eden insisted.
“Roger Gao, Mary’s older brother, knew that his sister was pregnant. She had told Roger that Henry was going to marry her, so you can imagine his shock when Henry suddenly got down on his knee and proposed to Gabby Soong. We later found out that Henry had no clue that Mary was pregnant. She had actually been planning to tell him after he returned from that trip to Macau, but she never got the chance. It was all very bad timing. Roger felt that his sister had been dishonored and went after Henry in a fit of rage fueled by alcohol. And the unthinkable happened, a freak accident. Roger lunged at Henry at a precise angle that sent Henry tipping over the balcony, and he landed on a dining table below, impaled on a glass candelabra. If that candelabra hadn’t been there, my brother would surely have survived.”
“How terrible. So Henry…was my biological father?”
“He was. I’m sorry I never told you about him, but your mother swore me to secrecy.”
“Do you think—” Eden broke off. “Do you think your brother would have married her had he known she was pregnant?”
Thomas paused for a moment to ponder the question. “I like to think he would have. My brother, rascal that he was, was never a mean person. And Hong Kong society was much more conservative at the time; he would have felt obligated to do right by her. But unfortunately he didn’t survive, and now there was tremendous pressure from her family not to disgrace their good name. They demanded that she not keep the baby.” Thomas’s voice suddenly cracked and he began to weep. “I’m so sorry…,” he said, trying to keep going, “I just can’t imagine…if she had listened to them.”
Eden began to cry as well. She got up from her chair and hugged her father tight. “Daddy! I’m sorry you’ve had to keep these secrets all to yourself for so long. I can’t begin to imagine the burden it’s been on you all these years…”
“It’s fine, I simply buried it all away somewhere.”
“You’re the only father I’ve ever known, and you’ll always be my one and only darling father!”
“I know…I know,” Thomas said, feeling an indescribable sense of relief. He had always known in his heart his daughter would understand, that she would never hold it against him that he’d kept these terrible secrets for so long.
After they had recovered themselves, Thomas continued his story. “Your poor mother, now shunned by her own family and deserted by her posh friends, felt like she had no good options left in Hong Kong, so she decided to tell her parents that she was going to Australia to have an abortion. In reality, she went to Vancouver, where her friend from her school days, Pia, took her in.”
“Auntie Pia!” Eden exclaimed.
“Yes, your godmother.”
“So Mum faked her own death?”
“It didn’t happen quite that way. She didn’t have any intention of faking anything, but after she went to Vancouver and you were born, she realized how much she loved her new life there. She was making new friends, people who were so supportive of her and her baby, and she realized that she never wanted to return to her old life in Hong Kong. She wanted a fresh start, unburdened by her fame. So she had her old friend Nury Vittachi, who was a columnist for the South China Morning Post at the time, plant a little story that she’d had complications from the abortion and had disappeared. The story spread and took on a life of its own, the wildest version being that she had died. No one in her family confirmed or denied it, and your mother’s intention was always to return to Hong Kong in a few years when her life was more settled and she could say, ‘Look, I have a beautiful child and a beautiful life, so sod off!’?”
“But then she got sick…,” Eden said, putting together the pieces now, as her face clouded over again.
“Yes. She got sick. Now, after my brother’s death, I took up my oncology fellowship in Houston. One day, who should walk into my clinic but your mother?”
“Did she come to find you?”
“Heavens, no. Remember, we had never met before and I was probably the last person on earth she wanted to run into, but she had no choice. She was at the best cancer center in the world, and I was randomly assigned to her. It was a complete coincidence. Serendipity, actually.”
“She must have been so afraid…”
“Not in the least. She was so very brave, your mother. I pretended not to know who she was—I sensed this was what she wanted—but after a few weeks she suddenly announced that she needed to go back to Vancouver and couldn’t finish her course of chemo and radiation. I pressed her to stay, seeing that the treatments were working, and that’s when she broke down and confessed to me that she needed to return because she had been away far too long from her child. My brother’s child. And that’s when I told her I had known all along who she was and would keep her secret safe. I convinced her to remain in Houston and to send for you.”
“So you didn’t actually meet me until I was two years old?”
“That’s correct. You were so cute and so knowing even at that age; I adored you immediately. I could see that your mother was in desperate need of the help. She had metastatic breast cancer, she was a single mother, and she was running out of funds, so I told her to move in with me. This is how we became a family. I married your mother so she could stay in the country and receive the treatment she needed. I was completely honest with her from the very start—her cancer had progressed to a point where we both knew she couldn’t be cured, but I promised her I’d do everything I could to buy her more time. She wanted to have as long as she could with you, and we managed to give her three extra years.”