o’clock, and she thought about rolling over and going back to sleep, except that her mind was already churning and she knew she wouldn’t be able to drift off again.
She had turned off her cellphone the night before when she went to dinner with Uncle, and now she turned it on. Her brother had called twice; so had her father and her mother as well. She could only imagine the kind of conversations between Michael and her father that would have brought her mother into the picture.
It was early evening in Toronto, too early for dinner, so Ava called the house. “Ava, I’m so glad you called,” Jennie Lee said.
“What’s going on?”
“I should be asking that question.”
“Why?”
“Daddy has been talking to Michael, and he’s so worried that he wants to cut short his stay here and fly back to Hong Kong.”
“What is Michael telling him?”
“Nothing, that’s the problem. He just keeps saying not to worry, that things are getting worked out, except when Daddy asks what’s getting worked out, Michael doesn’t give him a straight answer.”
“Mummy, tell Daddy there is no reason for him to come to Hong Kong. There’s a business dispute and that’s all. I’m working on it with Michael and I think we’ll have it resolved in a day or two. Now listen to me. I don’t want to discuss this with Daddy myself. Michael and I are working as a team, and I don’t want him to think that I went behind his back to Daddy, and I’m sure that’s why he hasn’t gone to Daddy himself. So just tell Daddy that the two kids are on the same page and that he has to step back and let us work out this problem on our own.”
“Is that true?”
“Mummy, stop it.”
“Okay, I’ll talk to Daddy.”
“Love you.”
“Love you too.”
Ava made herself an instant coffee and then went to get the newspapers that were at the door. Her mother would handle Marcus, and Michael could wait.
She scanned the Tribune and the Morning Post, had another coffee, and then headed for the bathroom. I’m stalling, she thought. I’m not ready to start thinking about Simon To again.
Showered and dressed in a black Giordano T-shirt and Adidas track pants, she sat at the computer and logged into her email. She had cheery messages from Mimi and Maria, and she wondered how it could be so easy for them to be happy. She felt a touch of jealousy, and then guilt for feeling that way. It wasn’t their fault they were happy.
As she worked at the computer, she kept glancing at the gate specifications next to her on the table. She was about to reach for them when her cellphone rang and Uncle’s name appeared on the screen.
“I hope I did not wake you,” he said.
“No, I’ve been up for a while, and in fact I’ve been waiting for a chance to call you.”
“Me too, I have been waiting,” he said. “Do you want to meet me for congee?”
“Sure.”
“There is a place next to the McDonald’s near Ocean Terminal, the one just off the Tsim Sha Tsui Star Ferry terminal. How soon can you be there?”
“Half an hour.”
She took the specifications with her, intending to look at them on the ferry, but it was such a beautiful morning she spent the ten-minute trip looking at the sun rising over Kowloon on one side and illuminating the Hong Kong skyline on the other.
As usual, Uncle was already sipping tea when she walked into the restaurant. She kissed him on the forehead and then sat down across from him. “Let us order. I am very hungry this morning,” he said.
Ava’s mother made congee — rice porridge — nearly every morning. There were many ways to eat it — with salted duck eggs, bamboo shoots, pickled tofu — but Ava’s mother liked to add just white pepper and a touch of soy sauce, and they always had a plate of you tiao — fried bread sticks — for dipping. And that is what Ava ordered, along with a coffee, which she knew would be instant. Uncle added an order of salted duck eggs.
“I spoke to the Wongs in Wuhan last night,” he said when the waitress left.
“Why?”
“I could not sleep.”
“So you called Wuhan? I didn’t realize you had become such friends.”
He looked across the table at her. “I could not sleep because I kept thinking about your problem in Macau, and about how I could help. There was a time, when I was chairman,