probably dead already, at the scene of the accident. It had been snapped moments after a car driven by an elderly man plowed up onto a sidewalk in San Francisco and killed Matt and two others. There he was. People around him, bending over him. A woman kneeling.
She couldn’t bear to look at it. She just had to make sure that she still had it. She did, so she zipped it away and turned to the day, just beginning. The morning outside was gray-shrouded. The buildings were spires of lead.
She took a taxi to the New World Building, where she rode to the seventeenth floor.
Then she pushed open the door to Calder Hayes and felt herself stepping back into America. Magazines on the reception room table — it looked like an office at home. It had been the same way when she’d come here before with Matt.
“May I help you?” said the receptionist, young, Chinese, smart-looking.
“I’m Maggie McElroy,” she said, and when this drew a blank, she added, “Mrs. Mason.”
“Oh! Hello. Welcome you.”
“Thank you. Is Carey here?”
“Mr. James is in Bangkok today. Please wait a minute.” She pressed a number code into her handset and spoke in a brief, rapid flow of Chinese. She looked up to see Maggie still in front of her and smiled brightly, pointing to the chairs. “Please.”
Maggie sat, pacing her breathing, gathering calm. Soon a small, sturdy woman came pumping out, pushing black glasses up her nose. “Pleased to meet you,” she said. “I am Miss Chu.” Her accent was clipped, precise, faintly British.
“Maggie McElroy. The same. Your English is perfect.”
“So-so,” the woman qualified. “I’m very sorry about your husband.” With a frank, sympathetic squeeze she took Maggie’s arm to walk her back down the hall.
In the conference room, Miss Chu handed her a file folder that opened to reveal the claim. Maggie scanned the lines of English and Chinese, which repeated the information Carey had given her. “I think,” Maggie said, “that first we should go see the mother. Immediately. I need her permission to take a sample from the child.”
“You see, though,” said Miss Chu, “right now we do not know where the mother is.”
Maggie felt her eyebrows squeeze together. “Isn’t her address in here?” She pointed to the file.
“That is the grandparents. They are the ones who filed the claim. The child lives with them.”
“Not the mother?”
“No.”
Maggie sat back. “And the mother . . .”
“It is just that right now we do not know where she is,” said Miss Chu.
“Okay.” Back up, Maggie thought. “The main thing is the child, the permission, the sample.” Though I want to see this woman. I need to see this woman. “So if the grandparents are the guardians, let’s go to them.”
“But this address is not in Beijing. It is in a town called Shaoxing. It’s in the south.”
Maggie closed her eyes. “Then let’s go there.”
“It’s far.”
“How far?”
“Near Shanghai. The problem is tickets,” said Miss Chu. Her British accent was softened by Mandarin consonants. “One of our biggest holidays is coming, National Day. Everyone will be off work. Everything was sold out long ago.”
“Like Christmas?” said Maggie.
“Yes,” Miss Chu said. “Like that.”
“What about a train?”
“Same problem.”
“Can we drive?”
“Possible. We can hire a car. But it will take too many days.”
“So what do you suggest?”
“I think it is faster to wait. Let me try to get the tickets.” Miss Chu saw that the American had large, thickly lashed eyes and would have been pretty if not for the freckles spattered across her nose and cheekbones, and the excessive, almost masculine point of her chin. She did have unusual hair, though, even for a laowai, a dark mass of coiling curls that bounced around her face and softened her angles. Hair and eyes like these were assets, but this foreigner seemed not to care. She wore plain clothes, no jewelry, little makeup. Her hands were knotty. She looked anxious, too. She had reason, thought Miss Chu. “Try to wait a bit,” she said. “I have a lunch later today that might help.”
Lunch? Maggie thought. “All right. I’ll wait.” She didn’t want to wait, she wanted to move. Her Table assignment had already bombed. She couldn’t let the DNA test go down the drain too.
“Let us talk after the lunch. Oh — call me Zinnia. That’s my English name.”
“Zinnia,” Maggie repeated. “And your real name is?”
“Chu Zuomin.”
“That’s nice,” said Maggie, “but I’d mangle it. Okay. Zinnia.” She rose. “Here.” She passed across her business card with her cell number