Page 15 of Caution to the Wind

Henning’s mouth thinned. He knew Cleo was it for me.

I wasn’t sure if something was deficient in my personality or something was wrong with my heart, but I couldn’t seem to connect with people easily. It was all or nothing in games of the heart, and the only people I’d ever trusted with mine outside of my family were Cleo, Kate, and Henning.

“Here,” he muttered, patting his jean pocket until he found one of the felt-tipped pens he always kept on his person. “I’ll start you off.”

He bent over my arm, flaxen hair a wavy curtain on either side of his craggy face. His brow was furrowed with concentration as he started to pen a design onto the pristine cast.

“What are you drawing?” I asked after a minute.

The soft sound of the pen scratching over the rough plaster was strangely soothing. I didn’t care what Henning drew; he’d always been a good artist, so good that Cleo and I used to beg him to sketch for us so we could colour them in instead of using generic colouring books.

“Koi fish.”

My numb heart prickled painfully, coming alive after a long frost.

“Why?” I whispered.

“You tell me,” he countered without taking his attention from the drawing.

“In my culture, the koi fish is a sign of strength,” I said softly. “It swims against the currents and when it reaches the end of the long, hard journey upstream, it becomes a dragon.”

A very small smile hid in the hard edges of Henning’s face. It didn’t curve his lips or brighten his eyes, but it was there, a coded message written just for me.

“You want to be a dragon one day,” he reminded me of our conversation from the carnival, a conversation that felt years ago instead of hours.

“So why didn’t you draw a dragon?”

He looked up then, capping the pen with his thumb as he studied the finished design, then looked up at me with eyes that seemed to know all the secrets of the world.

“Everyone has to start somewhere. But today you proved that you are already an exceptional kid, Rocky.” His words were rough, unpolished gems that meant everything to me. “You might just be the bravest girl I’ve ever known.”

I swallowed thickly, trying not to dissolve in a whirlpool of tears that waited just at the back of my eyes. Two black outlined koi fish swam in the centre of my cast, head to tail so they formed a kind of yin and yang. They were so beautiful and their meaning so profound, my nose itched with the need to cry.

“Kate told me to take care of you and Cleo.” I wasn’t sure why I shared that with him. I’d meant to keep it a sacred secret, but he looked so lonely and broken sitting there hunched over that I couldn’t resist the urge to comfort him.

He made a noise in the back of his throat. “No, Rocky, kids don’t worry about stuff like that. You leave that to me.”

I was shaking my head before he was done. “I don’t care what you say.” I spoke in Cantonese and then roughly translated for him even though I knew he could probably understand. “During difficult times, it’s your family that supports you.”

I was so caught up in the wide, almost startled look on Henning’s face that I didn’t hear the door creak open or notice the people who entered until one of them spoke.

“The Axelsens are not your family,” Florent Marchand scolded from the doorway, his arm around his wife, Daiyu.

I stared at my parents and felt conflict tug at my heart like a rope in a children’s camp competition. It was so good to see them, but it was also good to see them because they were away all the time. Dad was the CEO of one of the top oil and gas companies in Canada, and Ma was one of the top heart surgeons in the country. They were the ultimate power couple, and even at twelve, I admired them so much that I almost feared them and the long shadow they cast over me. They looked beautifully put together even after a four-hour flight, even with faces creased with strain and worry.

On the other hand, resentment festered in me, lit to high flame by the trauma of the carnival and losing Kate. Of course, they wouldn’t understand that Kate was almost as much my mum as Daiyu was. That she was the person who picked me up from school and listened to the daily drama of a preteen girl. That she was the one who hugged me after a bad day and teased me lovingly for my idiosyncrasies. Losing her hurt so badly, I couldn’t even begin to explain it to them, and it infuriated me that their lack of intrinsic understanding deepened the void that already existed between us.

Of course, I couldn’t articulate all that at twelve, but years later, it was all obvious to me.

I just wished it had been obvious tothem.

“Florent, Daiyu…” Henning rose to his feet to address them. “I’m so goddamn sorry Mei was hurt under my care.”

“You should be,” Dad lashed out with all the powerful fury of a man used to being revered.

Ma ignored the men and darted around Henning to get to me. The soft scent of her jasmine perfume wafted over me, and inexplicably, I wanted to cry.

“My baby,” she cooed in Cantonese, touching my face with those surgically careful fingers. “My sweet pearl. Oh, baby, I’m so sorry.”