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Nine days later, Anyu was discharged from the hospital.

Her amah came to fetch her—Master Bellefeuille was busy with a new line of jewelry that was set to roll out, she murmured.

Anyu put on a long-sleeve black dress, a silk scarf, and a black coat and limped out of the hospital’s hallway.

Outside, the sky was a pallid face spotted with clouds shaped like colossal tears; the wind plunged down her throat, nearly choking her.

She covered her mouth with her gloved hand and went down the stairs to the street, where a taxi waited.

In the car, Anyu had many questions for the amah but decided to ask nothing.

She could tell that her servant knew about the herbal tea, but she wouldn’t hold her to account.

The old woman only did what she had been told.

But Bellefeuille! He had drugged her and caused her to miscarry; he had deceived and lied to her all these months, and he had not had the nerve to face her.

When she saw him at home, she would confront him, and she would not forgive him.

She looked out the window. For the thousandth time, she thought of the life she had conceived. Was it a boy or a girl? She would never know.

The taxi stopped; she held on to the door and stepped slowly out to ease the pain shooting from her abdomen.

Then she blinked. In front of her was not Bellefeuille’s grand mansion but a three-story apartment building with peeling plaster and rusted windows.

And she was standing on a narrow pothole-filled street, not the tree-lined avenue.

In her preoccupation, she had not even noticed the direction during the drive here.

She turned to the amah.

The woman stared at her black lace apron. This was a temporary residence Master Bellefeuille had found for her, she said.

It was then Anyu noticed the black suitcase her servant was carrying.

She wouldn’t need to confront him, after all, she realized. Bellefeuille, who had talked her into marrying him, seduced her with his sugary words and silky dresses, kept her in his palatial home, forced her to miscarry, realized she was no longer of use to him and kicked her out.

The amah led her to a stone staircase. Anyu tottered past a gaggle of women washing laundry in a basin and climbed up, each step sending a shot of agony to her stomach.

On the second floor, she entered a one-bedroom apartment with simple furniture.

The amah set down the suitcase near her feet, murmured that the rent had been prepaid for six months, slipped a few coins into her hands, and left.

Anyu sat on the edge of the bed. Slowly, her eyes adjusted to the dimness of the room—cracked wood floor, soot-covered walls, and a cord dangling from a lightbulb, touching her shoulder, like a noose.

She stared at it, trembling. Mother! Oh, Mother!

When she was a child, she had thought her mother was gullible, stupid, to become a plaything for a man.

She had never thought she would follow her path.

But here she was, alone, used, scarred, miserable, in a dingy apartment, just like her mother, and she was worse; she had no fortune to keep a child, nor a home for herself.

What would her mother have said if she were here?

She was twenty-one years old, but a fool.

For six months and thirteen days, she had lived with a man she believed loved her.

She had had some reservations about him the moment they met, yet she still drifted toward him and fell for him.

How could she fail to see his mind, slippery and cold, a treacherous icy land?

Anyu awoke with a start. Bewildered, she sat up.

Her face was wet, her hair soaked with tears.

Somehow, she had fallen asleep. Her head ached, and she felt more miserable than she had earlier.

The room was dim without light; there was the sound of water running downstairs and someone was having a fit of coughing.

She had never felt this cold. She rubbed her arms and opened the suitcase the amah had left.

Inside, packed evening gowns, shoes, hats, some jewelry, including Belperron’s butterfly brooch.

No blankets. She wrapped five dresses around her, still shivering.

There was a knock on her door. Bellefeuille? If it was him, she would slam the door in his face and tell him to get lost. There was nothing she could say to that man except hate, hate, hate. In a swoop that sent a crippling pain through her body, she ripped open the door.

In the hallway, an old man holding an erhu , a two-stringed instrument, stood in front of her neighbor’s door; he turned to her.

She breathed hard, unsure of what to do.

Then she took a deep breath and stepped toward the landing.

At the top of the staircase, she stared down.

The muscles of her abdomen screamed and her legs trembled.

She forced herself to take another step, and then another, until she reached the cracked ground littered with trash.

On the street, she had to pause to catch her breath.

It was cold, the wintery air pale like brine.

Slowly, without a thought of where to go, she shuffled down the street, past barbers with shears in hand, earwax extractors holding thin metal scoops, marriage brokers brandishing zodiac signs, and fortune tellers clacking bamboo slats.

She heard carriage drivers shouting at her, was shoved aside by businessmen wearing eyeglasses, spat on by phlegmy old men with poor vision, and stopped by smiling youths spinning knives in their hands.

She didn’t see them; she kept shuffling.

How was it possible to feel so lonely when surrounded by people?

She must have walked for hours when she realized she was again in front of her apartment. Her head touched the bed and she was out.

For the next few days, she rose when the streets grew noisy, ate a few biscuits found in the suitcase, and walked and walked until it turned dark. This was what she would do, she realized: she’d walk until every tear of her misery left her, until her soul found peace.

The pain lodged in her abdomen, she plodded past the shops teeming with customers, the smoky bars, the Art Deco skyscrapers near the bund.

She saw fashionable young women in fur hats and cloches, young girls wearing dresses with a slit near their thighs, prostitutes smoking cigarettes by the high walls of the fortresses around the Old City.

She saw fur shops, clothing boutiques, automobile shops, hardware stores, soap shops, emporiums, temples, herb stores, brothels, opium dens, and jewelry shops.

Once, she stood before a shop owned by Bellefeuille and stared inside.

All the jewelry, all the beautiful golden brooches for sale, all the gold flowers that he had crafted.

She couldn’t bring herself to look at them.

How many days she walked in the city she couldn’t remember, but soon, her stomach was no longer painful.

She grew healthier, her legs strong with muscles, and she could walk from dawn to evening without feeling fatigued.

She also lost some of her beauty in the sun, with dark speckles like sesames scattered across her cheekbones, her skin roughened like a peanut shell.

Her gaze found many people—the mothers holding children’s hands, the young couples sharing a bowl at square tables, the actors with painted faces singing Beijing opera to a small crowd in the square.

She envied them, their companionship, their self-indulgence, and their dedication.

She wished she were not alone. Then it struck her that she had been loved, too—there was Mother, who had died looking for food for her, and Confucius and Isaac, who had cared for her, too.

Yet what had she done for them? She had thrown tempers and given her mother the cold shoulder, and she had pushed Confucius and Isaac away when she couldn’t get what she wanted.

She was not a good person, she realized; she had been willful, selfish, and ungrateful.

And Pierre Bellefeuille? Maybe he was her punishment.

One day, she came to an area with fallen walls and crumbled houses. Bricks, rafters, and furniture were piled on the streets; people were cooking rice in a corner where the roofs had caved in.

Anyu did not know what had happened to the area. A flood? A fire? But there they were, these people, after the destruction, after the loss of their homes, rebuilding their lives.

That evening, when she returned to her apartment, she took the few coins the amah had given her and bought a bowl of wonton soup on the street.

Sitting on a bench, she savored every drop of the soup rich with minced meat and fragrant with scallions.

It was her favorite food, and she had forgotten how delicious it was.

In her apartment, she opened her suitcase: the small purse she had purchased in a department store, the pillbox hats, the Chanel dresses, the fluffy pink gown that Bellefeuille had handpicked for her, and Belperron’s butterfly brooch.

She fingered the soft silk, thinking of those days of extravagance, those evenings of champagne, wearing the dresses that were not hers, picturing the wedding that was not meant to be, and she knew, for as long as she was alive, she’d mourn the child that could have been hers.

It was time to forget them all, the scars, the fantasies, and the scattered past.

She took the dresses and hats and the Belperron butterfly brooch to a shop and pawned them all.