“I only dated guys because I didn’t want you to even suspect that I might be into you,” Jackie cries. “I didn’t want you to get scared. I thought you were straight.”
She and Maureen laugh, then they fall into each other’s arms. Jacqueline’s chin tips up, Maureen lowers her head, and finally, their mouths meet in a heart-stopping kiss that makes my eyes well up. I look away to give them some semblance of privacy and see that Ma and my aunties are just sitting there, openly staring and smiling, not even pretending to look away or anything.
“Tsk,” I tut at them, and they look sliiightly abashed. I stand there awkwardly, staring at the ceiling while my family steals glances at them. After what seems like an eternity, the two finally break apart, breathless and grinning.
“Look, her lipstick still stay on,” Second Aunt says.
“Yes, your makeup number one. Excuse me, sorry to bother, but can untie us or not?” Big Aunt says. “My hands very painful.”
“Oh! Yeah, of course. I’m so sorry,” Maureen cries, and we all hurry to the beds to help untie the wrist bindings.
I kneel down in front of Ma and start working at the knots around her wrists. Now that I’m crouched so close to her, I can see every line on her face, every familiar crease and fold, all of the laugh lines and the worry lines, the pathways of her life so clearly written across her features. “You okay?” I say softly. There’s so much I want to say to her, but at the same time, it feels like in this moment, she knows everything, every secret I’ve kept buried in my heart.
“Yes,” she says, smiling at me. Her eyes are bright with unshed tears. “I so proud of you, Meddy.”
And in that moment, I’ve never felt prouder of myself and my family.
34
“So let me get this straight,” Sheriff McConnell says. “The dead guy’s dead because . . . wait, why?”
It takes everything inside me not to leap out of my chair and throttle the guy. Luckily, I’m surrounded by my family, plus Jacqueline and Maureen. Jacqueline squeezes my shoulder and gives me one of her encouraging smiles. I can do this. I can spin a story to fool this man and let us all off the hook. “It’s really all quite simple, Sheriff. You see, Ah Guan—that’s the deceased—he wanted to steal the tea ceremony gifts—”
“That’s them gifts you people get before the wedding ceremony?”
I wince at the words “you people,” but keep going.
“Yes, in Chinese tradition, we usually have a tea ceremony, where the bride and groom’s relatives give them money or jewelry and so on. After the tea ceremony, Maureen and I took the gifts back to the bridal suite.”
“Hang on, aren’t you the lawyer?” Sheriff McConnell says. Good grief, did he just notice that? I suppose I have changed into dry clothes, but still. As though reading my mind, he shakes his head and mutters, “You all look very similar to me.”
“Yes, because we are all family,” Ma says, beaming proudly.
“What, you’re all related?”
“No, she meant a few of us are,” I say quickly. “And I’m sort of . . . a lawyer-ish type of person.” In that I watched every season of The Good Fight. “Anyway, so Maureen and I took the gifts back to the bridal suite and rejoined the procession, and that was when Ah Guan took the gifts. He must have been there all along, disguised as one of the groomsmen. I don’t think he expected the bride and groom to discover that the gifts were missing so early; usually, they don’t look at the gifts until the next day, but—I don’t know, maybe Tom wanted to look at what kind of Patek Philippe he got. When Ah Guan heard that they were conducting a search, he must’ve panicked and stashed the gifts in Maureen’s room. She’s the likeliest suspect because she was the last one with the gifts.”
Sheriff McConnell nods slowly, frowning at us the whole time.
“And then he needed a place to hide, and where else to hide but within plain sight?” I say, moving my hands animatedly. “He was disguised as a groomsman anyway, and the other groomsmen were drunk and weren’t really aware of what was going on, plus they don’t even know one another.”
“Yes, wah, they are so drunk. One of them—I don’t know who, but one of them”—Ma says meaningfully—“bring, you know, that alcohol, the very bad one. I think it is called ‘abstinence.’”
“Well, I heard that one of them brought weed,” Fourth Aunt says.