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“Nope, that just does not sound right.”
“Okay, anyway, before that happen, I was very sad. I felt like you, like my life not going anywhere. I had nobody to talk to, nobody to cook for.”
Aimes tries hard to imagine Vera as a lonely individual with no one to cook for, and the image is so heartbreaking she immediately pushes it out of her mind. How can that be possible? Vera is so outgoing, larger than life, how could she possibly have ever been isolated? Maybe she’s just saying this to make Aimes feel better.
“But I don’t tell anyone how sad I am. I pretend like everything is okay. I go for morning walk, I see same people, and I say hi to them. I never once ask, ‘Hello, would you like to come to my place for tea because I am very lonely?’ No. I just wave and smile like everything is fine. I send message to my son, do I tell him ‘I am so lonely I cry sometimes, for no reason, just in the middle of day, suddenly a tear come out’? No, I don’t do that. Instead, I text him and tell him to drink more water or exercise more to keep virile.”
Aimes can’t help but smile at the thought of Vera’s poor son getting a text from her with the word “virile” in it. She reaches out and grasps Vera’s hand. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
“Is okay. It make me strong. Give me different understanding of life. I feel like I can understand you better because I go through it myself. So when you ask me, do I hate you? No, Aimes. I see you. I understand what you go through. We are exactly the same. Except my breasts are bigger than yours.”
“What?” Aimes blinks, then bursts into laughter. “Vera!” How does she do that? How does she make Aimes cackle at a time like this?
“Don’t worry, is because I breastfeed, so they get bigger. If you breastfeed, yours will get bigger too.”
“Oh my god.” Aimes wipes her eyes and smiles at Vera.
“You’ll be okay, Aimes. So, maybe you struggle in college, so what? Doesn’t mean you are bad person. My niece Sana, she drop out of CalArts, but does that mean she is not good artist? She is earning well over six figures a year doing art now, you know,” she says with obvious pride.
“That’s amazing.” Aimes kind of hates Sana a little now. Who makes six figures doing art these days? And, if Aimes were to be perfectly honest, she also hates that Sana has an aunt like Vera. If Aimes had an aunt like Vera, life would probably be very different. She wouldn’t be such a mess, for one. But it feels less bad being a mess, having told someone about it and not been judged for it. She takes in a shaky breath. “Thanks for listening.”
“Of course. I’m very good at listening. Okay, so you don’t kill Xander? Just making sure before I cross you off the list.”
And somehow, Vera has whipped out a notebook and a pen and is watching Aimes expectantly.
“There’s an actual list?”
Vera looks affronted. “Yes, of course. I take my job as private investigator seriously.”
“Okay. Well, no, I didn’t kill Xander. I might as well have, turning him away like that, but I didn’t physically kill him, no.”
“Okay, that’s one suspect down.” Vera crosses Aimes’s name off with a flourish. “And now I think we should go to bed, get some beauty sleep, yes? You can sleep in Tilly’s old bedroom.”
For the next few minutes, Vera shuffles back and forth, handing a new toothbrush and extra blankets to Aimes. Aimes takes each item obediently. She’s too exhausted to say or do anything else. Then, next thing she knows, she is being tucked into Tilly’s old bed as though she were a kid again, and it isn’t the worst thingin the world. Vera puts a blanket over Aimes and gives her a quick pat on the shoulder before padding softly to the door.
“Don’t think too much, just go to sleep,” Vera says, turning out the lights.
And for the first time in as long as Aimes can remember, her mind does not spend the next few hours ruminating on every little thing she’s done wrong. Instead, she turns over, closes her eyes, and drifts off into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Eighteen
VERA
Vera thinks it might be wise to let Aimes sleep past four thirty the following morning. Not wanting to leave Aimes alone in the house after last night’s events, Vera skips her early morning walk. She’s about to start cooking when someone knocks at the shop’s door. It’s Winifred, carrying a box of pastries.
“Aiya,” she says in Mandarin as soon as Vera unlocks the door. “What happened to your shop front?”
“Don’t make such a fuss, it’s nothing.” Vera’s voice falters as she glances up at the door. In the daylight, the vandalism looks less scary, but the mess is far worse than she’d originally thought.
“Nothing?” Winifred cries. “This is obviously not nothing. What if they came back and burned down your shop? My shop is attached to yours; I don’t want to be collateral damage in whatever shady thing you’ve got going on.”
“There is nothing shady going on. What Chinese pastries did you bring today?”
Winifred gives her a look before opening the box. “This isKorean sausage roll, Korean mochi bread, and my new invention, Korean-French cheese and kimchi croissant.”
Vera shakes her head. “What tea should I pair it with?”
“How about”—Winifred smiles slyly—“boba?”