Paper Daughter (20 page)

Ian, appearing bewildered, asked, "Who?" He turned to me. "Did you come here another time and see my aunt? Are you—?"

But Mr. Li understood that his sister wasn't talking about me.

"An?" he asked. "An came to us for help and you sent her away? And she was with child? When?"

A smile curved Sucheng Li's mouth. "When do you think? While you were off running after her. You should not have left me. I told you that then."

Another call made my cell phone flash. I quickly stopped it.

"Who is An?" Ian asked.

Mr. Li answered, "An was my ... I thought at one time that she was my wife."

He stopped then and didn't continue until I finally said, "But she wasn't?"

"I was told she was not," he said. "That our marriage was illegal and that I would not see her again. Even so, I looked for her. But when I heard her father had taken her to China, then I knew—" He frowned and corrected himself. "Then I
believed
that she was gone forever. I have always believed it, until now."

"Fool, you!" said his sister, and making a spitting sound, she left the room.

She could just as well not have been in the house, for all the attention Mr. Li and Ian gave her departure.

"I had thought never to tell this," Mr. Li said to Ian. "I had thought that all the harm that could be done already had been done, long ago." He turned to me. "It seems I was wrong about that, also."

"I don't get it," Ian said. "I'm sorry about what happened to you and that girl, An, but it
was
so long ago. How can that hurt anyone now?"

Mr. Li sighed. "There are incorrect things that you have believed about me," he said. "About what I am to you and your father. Or, I should say, about what I am not."

For a moment he appeared to drift into some private byway of thoughts. Then, with a small flutter of his hands, he said, "But you have a right to know. And Miss Chen?"

"Yes?" I said.

"I think perhaps you have even more of a right. I think it will explain what brought your father to this house and why my sister lied about that."

Once more my phone flashed. The screen said, "Call me now! J."

Another message flashed. "NOW!"

Apologizing to Mr. Li, I said, "I keep getting urgent telephone messages from work. Do you mind if I—"

"Please," he said. "What I have to say has waited many years. Make your call, and then we will talk."

Jillian answered at once. "It's about time!" she said. "And after the hassle I had digging up a cell number for you. You really ought to—"

"Jillian!" I said. "What?"

"Oh! I called to say that you can stop. Getting involved, I mean. Harrison just now came in with Gary Maitlen, all excited, and they got Fran, and I just had a feeling it was about the Galinger story and all, so I followed them right to Mr. Braden's office and—"

"Please," I said. "Just tell me!"

"I am. I told them that if that
was
what they were working on, and if they'd learned something about your dad, then it was only fair—"

"Now!"

"Okay! If you don't want context. The news person who got paid off? It was a woman from a TV station, and she's turned herself in. She got scared that if she didn't come forward and admit to taking money, the police might think she was into even more of the bad stuff."

"So...?" I said, needing Jillian to spell it out, afraid I'd understood wrong.

"So everyone knows it wasn't your dad who Yeager paid off."

I disconnected, feeling as though all the air had been knocked from me. Dad was okay. His name had been cleared without my help, and now it didn't matter what had brought him to the International District the day he was killed.

Relief flooded through me as I also realized I didn't need to learn more about Mr. Li or An Huang, either. Didn't need to take them any further into my life.

"That was the newspaper," I told Mr. Li. "The authorities have the journalist who was taking bribes, so now everyone knows it wasn't my father. It's no longer important why Dad came to this part of town."

With a glance at Ian, who looked braced for something he didn't want to hear, I added, "I'm really sorry for the trouble I've caused. I'll go now."

"Of course. If that is what you wish," Mr. Li said.

But he made it a question, and he waited.

He was giving me a choice. I could stay to hear, for a different reason now, what he had to say, or I could decide not to.

I knew what I wanted to do.

I wanted to go out the door and go back to being the daughter of the Steven Chen I'd known growing up—no more than that, and no less. Except for Mom, no one other than the people in this house knew that the past he had claimed was a lie, and she wanted to forget.

And of course Jillian knew, but she, I thought, would keep my secret.

I could do it—could leave—as easily as I'd torn up the notebook page where Dad had written "Progress on family project, finally?"

Or this time I could choose to look beyond, to the truths of people I knew and people I didn't. It was what Dad would have expected of his daughter and the way I would like to think of myself.

And so, though I felt scared, I sat down. "I think," I told Mr. Li, "I'd like to stay."

No one said anything for several moments while Mr. Li seemed to be gathering his thoughts.

Then, "You must understand," he began, "this story starts not here but across the ocean, in the place where Sucheng and I were born."

Mom called, "Maggie! Haven't you left yet? I think we need more chips."

"I'm going. I'll pick some up."

It was a Saturday, a few weeks after that late afternoon when the pieces of who I was had rearranged themselves. Mom was in a company's-coming tizzy, even though we'd already cleaned the house, set the table, and gotten most of the cooking done.

We wouldn't put the salmon on the grill until Mr. Li and Ian and Ian's parents arrived.

That wouldn't be for several more hours, and meanwhile I'd promised Jillian to meet her at the mall. We planned to buy new swimsuits for our trip to the San Juans the next day. We were going to catch the first ferry, so that by midmorning we'd be with Bett and Aimee. I hoped my friends would like one another. I thought they would.

Actually, a couple of things Jillian had said made me think they'd all already gotten in touch with one another and that they were conniving to run a line of potential boyfriends by me. Which was okay. I was ready to try a new one.

"And maybe get crackers and a wedge of cheese," Mom called.

"I'm on it."

As I drove, I thought how impossible it seemed that just a couple of months earlier, I hadn't known Mr. Li or Jillian.

Hadn't even been inside the
Herald,
and now I felt at home there and knew that I belonged.

I was still learning the work, of course. Still making mistakes. Still shifting from job to job, helping out where I was needed. Jake had asked for me back on Sports. Fran had me doing rewrites. Harrison occasionally took me out on assignments.

He was still tracking the Galinger story, but there probably weren't any surprises left. Of the people who had been involved in the crime, only J. A. Garcia remained unaccounted for. One theory was that he was an undocumented worker who'd slipped back into the shadow world of illegals.

Ralph Galinger was in jail, having been picked up at the Los Angeles airport trying to catch an overseas flight. He was charged with deliberate homicide, and the corruption story that had emerged from his mostly unsuccessful plea-bargaining was pretty much exactly as we'd figured, right up to the murder part, which we hadn't foreseen.

Or perhaps Harrison and the others had recognized that possibility, too, and it was another reason they'd taken me off the story.

Anyway, the Galinger-Yeager scheme had started to unravel when the TV reporter stumbled onto it and demanded money for keeping it to herself. Tobias Yeager had paid, but he told Donald Landin about it.

And then, after Yeager's death, Landin had appropriated the blackmailing idea, threatening Galinger with giving the whole story to the
Herald.

"But why did he call you to actually arrange a meeting?" I asked when Harrison was explaining it.

"Maybe he thought Galinger might try to find out if the threat was real. Or maybe Landin had some cockeyed idea that if Galinger didn't come through with money to keep him quiet, the
Herald
would pay him to talk."

"Stupid," I said.

"Yeah, and suicidal," Harrison agreed.

Because Galinger, an expert marksman in his army days, had gone to where Landin lived and shot him in front of his apartment.

But then, as Galinger was leaving the area, he saw my father, recognizing him from business meetings Dad had covered. And he panicked, afraid Landin had already talked. That time the weapon Galinger aimed was his car.

I could hardly bear to think about it.

But I was very glad I'd had a part in bringing him to justice.

And glad, too, that because of the story Harrison and I found, the Eastside town that was at the center of it had begun inching toward positive change.

Its mayor, though, remained angry with the
Herald
over the bad publicity. Former Galinger Construction employees were now looking for jobs. And people who'd had building projects under way with Galinger Construction were wondering how the work was going to get finished.

"So our story mattered, but it wasn't good for everyone," I said.

"No," Harrison agreed. "News often is a mixed bag, just like the truth can be. All we can do is report what we know and have faith that in the long run, our readers will be better off for being informed."

***

Seeing the mall entrance ahead, I refocused my attention on parking and finding Jillian.

She was already in the store where we'd agreed to meet, and she already had her arms full of swimsuits for us to try on. They involved every color of the rainbow.

***

Later on, Mom raised her eyebrows when I showed her the one I picked out. There wasn't time to discuss it, because our dinner guests were pulling into the driveway.

I ran out to meet them. This was the first time they'd come to our home, though I'd often been back to Mr. Li's.

Actually, recently I'd begun to call him Grandfather Li. I'd thought that would be hard, but it had turned out to feel good.
Great-grandfather Li
seemed too much to say, although we were both sure that's what he was to me.

Maybe one day we'd have proof. With Mom's permission, we'd begun contacting agencies that might have information about Dad's birth parents. All we needed to find was the one missing generation. And since he was never adopted, we were hopeful that his name might lead us to his father and mother.

Meanwhile, Mr. Li, Mom and me, and Ian and his folks were all readjusting our notions of family.

It had been hardest on Ian, I thought, finding out that his beloved great-uncle wasn't a real relative. Not by blood.

But the last time I went over, they had the chessboard out again and were saying "Uncle watch your pawn," and "Nephew, your move."

Mr. Li's paper son status—and Sucheng Li's, as a paper daughter—were legal matters out in the open now. Mr. Li, accompanied by Ian's dad, who was a lawyer, had gone to Immigration Services and given their real names.

No one was certain what the outcome would be, but I wasn't too worried. I couldn't believe anyone would spend time pursuing an illegal entry made more than seventy-five years ago by a man now so elderly.

And I was sure no one would go after Sucheng Li, who lived in her own shadow world of madness.

***

Our dinner party was a success, and after our guests left, Mom and I sank gratefully into chairs to talk it over.

We were talking a lot these days. And we were remembering and bringing Dad back into our lives, where he'd gone missing.

Sometimes we speculated about how and when he began trying to be someone he wasn't. I thought perhaps he had started by deceiving himself, when being a lonely heart had got to be too hard.

Mom thought his complicated lie might have started by accident. "That first time I brought him home to meet my parents, he mentioned a summer job he'd had in the public relations office of a Boston museum. They knew the museum because its Thomas and Adele Chen Memorial Fund had supported some of their research. I think they may have just jumped to the conclusion that was his family."

"Did he tell them it wasn't?" I asked.

"Maybe he tried. I don't know if they gave him a chance."

"But he never tried to tell you the truth?"

"Maybe, early on," she said. "I might not have given him a chance, either. Or maybe he did tell me, but using words I wouldn't hear."

Now, sitting there with Mom, that's what I kept returning to. Even if we could somehow have Dad back and ask him what happened, he might not have a black-and-white answer to give. More likely, even for him, the answer would be in shades of gray.

But even though I realized that, I also knew it had been Dad's choice to live with his lies. Just as, finally, I believed, Dad had chosen to find the truth about who Steven Chen really was.

It would have been a choice not all that different, I thought, from the one I made when I stayed to hear Mr. Li's story, the part beyond what I already knew, whatever it might mean for me.

A FINAL WORD

I promised to tell you what I know about Fai-yi Li, and I have done that, though perhaps you know more. Perhaps you have heard his voice, perhaps been brushed by other whispers, too.

I also promised to tell you about myself. And although I have done so truthfully, I think I began with a statement that was only partly right. I said the important thing to know about me is that I am Steven's Chen's daughter.

I am, of course. His and Mom's.

But the important thing to know is that I'm more than that.

I think I understand what Dad meant, saying that at sixteen I don't need to decide who I want to be for the rest of my life.