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Jane tried not to cringe at the thought. “I’ll talk it over with her and Rebecca. I’ll get back to you when I can.”

“I appreciate it, Ms. Wong.’

“Christ.” Jane appreciated the silence of her office when she hung up again. “What oh what do I do about this?”

Try not to answer herpersonalphone, for one thing.

Granted, her phone wasn’t ringing. It was merely an assertive text alert that made her hair stand on end.

All the message contained was an address for a local restaurant and the words“Meet me now. Do not tell Cecelia.”

Nothing made the blood drain from Jane’s face faster than that.

“No,” she proclaimed when the maître d’ confirmed the worst of her suspicions. “Absolutely not? This is my personal nightmare, I hope you know that.”

The woman sitting at the table scoffed in contempt, but Willow Wong was not a woman known for making a scene whenever she could help it. “The longer you are in this country, the more incorrigible you become.” She gestured to the only other chair at her table. “Sit.”

“Why?”

“Unbelievable,” Willow said in her baby tongue of Mandarin. “My daughter talks to me like this.”

“I am not sitting until you tell me why the hell you’re here, Ma,” Jane spat back in the same language, a firm reminder that Willow couldn’t pull any wool overhereyes.I know every proverb, every insult you can hurl in Mandarin.The same was true in Cantonese and English.This is my home base, Ma.If only Jane had the nerve to say that out loud.

“Please,” Willow more softly bade. “Sit. I’ve already ordered a dish for us to share.”

Although Jane completed the corporeal slog to the chair, she said, “I’ve already had lunch. Even if I hadn’t, you know I don’t like to eat heavy meals before dinner.”

“I taught you that.”

“The bloody hell you did,” Jane spat in English.

Willow sniffed as she stole a sip of her sparkling water. “You may be shorter than me, but you have my natural figure. We both get it from my mother. Ah, such a delicate woman,” she reminisced. “None of us are big eaters. But I still eat more than a grapefruit for breakfast.”

“Who said I still did that?”

“Caitlyn. I’ve asked.”

Don’t tell her that Cecelia eats the same breakfast as me.At first, Jane didn’t know where her grapefruits were disappearingso quickly. Then she caught her niece red-handed.Cutting it all wrong, no less!Jane never thought she’d see the day when she had to teach someone how to properly cut fruit, but there she was, at six in the morning in her kitchen while wearing her pajamas. After that day, she asked Rebecca to buy double the number of grapefruits when ordering their weekly groceries.

“Your grandparents would reincarnate to smack you on the head to hear that you didn’t eat more than…”

“Ma.” Jane didn’t have time for this. She barely had time for the heart attack still gearing up to take her out over this shock.Am I really that shocked, though? This woman is always in my business.It had been two years since Jane last saw her mother here in America, but they had recently seen each other that spring in Hong Kong when Jane visited on her own to talk to Cecelia about the move and to pay her respects to Lilian and Frank over his mother’s death. “Why are you here? Completely unannounced, by the way. Let me guess. You flew First Class?”

Willow ignored that insolence. “We need to discuss what’s been going on with Cecelia. It sounds dire, and I’m surprised thatyouof all people let it get this bad.”

Jane waved away the waiter’s requests for her drink order. “I’m sorry, but what? Cece’s doing great. Good grades, her teachers are happy, she’s making friends…”

“Academically she may be sound, but it’s her personal life I think you know what I’m talking about.”

“Whatabout it? She hasn’t been in trouble at all.”

Willow leveled her apocalyptic gaze on her daughter. “Who is ‘Perry Merryweather?’”

Ah, shit. That’s what this was about? Willow flew all the way out here overPerry?A boy Jane had barely heard about since that dance?Something about taking home somewhere. Football, school spirit, some shit.

Jane went ahead three steps in this conversation. “Someone with a very un-Chinese name, Ma.”

“Oh, good. I don’t have to spell it out for you.”