Short update, but I'll make it up to you later! :) Again, thank you for all the reviews-they mean everything to me.
Friendly reminder that escapewithstories is a goddess.
April 3, 1964
With a gasp, Jean sat up straight in her bus seat, her forehead cool from its former resting place against the window. Remnants of her dream of Adelaide, of churches and beaches and languid kisses, lingered as the chill on her skin faded. A hand grasped hers, and for a moment, she thought that when she looked over, she would see Lucien gazing down at her as he had the day he chased after her.
"Jean?"
While Mei Lin's voice had been so comforting over the last twelve hours, now it doused the last hints of felicity from her dream.
Jean smiled sheepishly. "I'm fine. Just disoriented. I didn't mean to fall asleep."
"You needed it," Mei Lin said, letting go of Jean's hand.
Patting down her curls and smoothing out the wrinkles in her blouse, Jean admitted that Mei Lin had a point. With six more hours on the bus and another eleven hours in the air, their journey would have been draining even if Jean had slept the night before. "How long was I asleep?"
Mei Lin rolled her neck from side to side, stretching tense muscles. "About five hours."
"Do you want to sit here for the rest of the drive?" Jean asked, already reaching below her seat for her purse. "It would be easier for you to sleep if you—"
"No, thank you," Mei Lin said. "I'm too anxious to sleep while traveling."
Ashamed for leaving Mei Lin to suffer her anxiety alone, Jean broached a topic that she hoped would please them both. "What can you tell me about your granddaughter? Li was so kind to send me a photograph at Christmas. She's a beautiful child."
At the mention of a child so dear to her, Mei Lin beamed. "Ying Yue is so like Li." Despite her smile, her voice carried a melancholy borne from years of missed opportunities. "She is only five, but she has such fire, such curiosity about the world. And she is so loving. I had forgotten—" Her voice broke, and as she took a few breaths to maintain her composure, Jean's hand found its way to Mei Lin's shoulder. "I had forgotten what a gift innocent, unconditional love is. She knows nothing about the past, and when she looks at me, she sees only someone who loves her."
For a woman who spent nearly two decades living a nightmare, such simplicity and affection must have been more precious than anything. "There's nothing else she should see, Mei Lin." When Mei Lin only smiled sadly, Jean recognized this as a sore subject and tried again to lighten the mood. "Has she—I don't suppose she's met Lucien?" Only after the words left her mouth did she realize her question could have the opposite effect of what she intended.
Thankfully, the light returned to Mei Lin's face. "The day before I left, Li came to visit him for the first time. Since Gen is…not at home, she brought Ying Yue with her." She drew an unsteady breath. "Lucien had been in the hospital for a week, but that was the first time he smiled."
The next breath she took filled her lungs to bursting. Seeing his daughter after six years and meeting his granddaughter would have lit up Lucien's whole world. Whatever confusion Li felt about her relationship with her father, she apparently inherited his capacity for compassion.
"I never thought that…" Mei Lin worried at her bottom lip. "After all this time, our family, fractured as it may be, is together. I never thought I would see that."
Placing a hand on Mei Lin's forearm, Jean remembered Lucien's tearful declaration following the closing of a particularly disheartening case. Children just want to be with their parents. "I'm so happy for you, Mei Lin."
Underneath her ensuing smile lingered a confusion Jean associated with Mei Lin's last visit to Ballarat, when the world wanted them to be enemies. The web in which Derek Alderton ensnared Mei Lin had been designed for division, but no matter how she suffered during those dreadful weeks, Jean never hated Mei Lin. While the correspondence they began when Lucien disappeared had never been intimate, the friendly tone of their exchanged allowed Jean to hope that they had moved past what happened, as best they could. But no matter what they felt now, Jean had never answered Mei Lin's question that day in the sunroom. Do you hate me?
"I was not sure you would be so pleased." Despite the shame expressed in her tone, she did not shy away from Jean's gaze. "You have every right to resent me."
Mei Lin had spent seventeen years in volatility, without knowing the fate of any members of her family. For seventeen years, she was made to live in terror, rebuke, and violence, and when she finally grasped at freedom with calloused hands, it came at a price, the payment of which she had not yet forgiven herself for. After all of this, she still thought she deserved animosity.
"Mei Lin, even before you brought Lucien back to me, I never resented you. You endured more than anyone should have been able to survive, and when you clawed your way out, you did what you thought you had to do to save your family." When Mei Lin averted her gaze, Jean clasped Mei Lin's free hand in both of hers. "Others' abuses of you are not your sins, Mei Lin. You have nothing to be ashamed of or sorry for."
Mei Lin shook her head, incredulous. "Don't I?"
Ensuring she caught her friend's eye, Jean shook her head. "Not one thing." She paused, encouraged when Mei Lin squeezed her hand. "Sometimes the hardest part of moving on is forgiving yourself." The gravest sins of her life—giving in to temptation with Christopher, accusing him of avoiding the military to stay on the homestead, ignoring the needs of one son in favor of the other's—sprung to mind, and she shoved them into the dark corner of her heart where they usually lay dormant. "I'm still trying. Some days, I can be kind to myself, but others…"
With eyes that had long tired of shedding tears, Mei Lin studied Jean. "You wish it had been you instead."
"So badly," Jean whispered. "But we're still here. And after all this time, all the longing, your family is here."
With an incredulous smile, Mei Lin sighed. "Aren't we the lucky ones?" Sniffling, she opened her purse, intent on finding a handkerchief. "At this rate, we will be quite a sight by the time we arrive in Shanghai."
With a watery laugh, Jean swiped at her cheeks.
"Oh," Mei Lin said, producing a photo instead of a handkerchief. "Here, a more recent photo of Ying Yue."
The black and white photo depicted a dimpled, lively child with her tiny arms wrapped around the neck of a beloved doll, and after Jean cooed over Ying Yue's beauty, she was struck by how much of Lucien she saw in his granddaughter's smile. Shortly after their marriage, Lucien and Jean passed a morning in their bedroom, thumbing through old photographs. Since Lucien teased Jean about her baby pictures, she insisted he retrieve one of his own. Lucien had smiled sadly as he handed Jean the photo of a carefree four-year-old boy that Jean hardly recognized. Apparently, his mother had said something to make him laugh, though he couldn't remember what.
"What can you tell me about her father?" Jean asked, returning the photo.
Gen Jiang was a mystery to Jean. Lucien had only met him once, and she had been pleasantly surprised to hear that Gen gave Lucien more of a chance than Li could at the time. Based on Lucien's account of Gen's experience in the fall of Singapore, he likely saw in Lucien what he himself longed for, a father who would do anything to reconcile with his child. After Lucien's visit, Gen reached out to him a couple of times, which must have been why Lucien recognized the handwriting. Without much time to consider Gen's part in her suffering, Jean had not formed an opinion of him. She didn't want to hate him. He was just a son looking for his father, and after all his searching he had only found a monster. But his deception had ransacked her life, and if she didn't learn more about him soon, the damning information she had would solidify her opinion of him.
Mei Lin pursed her lips, leaving Jean in no doubt of her opinion. "Despite the damage he's caused, he is a good man. He is a professor in Shanghai, and he gives Li more freedom than many women in China dream of." Slipping the photo back into her wallet, she hesitated. "He's a good father. If only he hadn't been so naïve."
"It won't cost them their marriage, I hope?"
"No, but it will take time for Li to forgive him, and thankfully, he's willing to give her that. He is staying with his mother and her husband, thought I doubt his step-father will condone that for long."
While the thought of turning away one of her boys was inconceivable to Jean, she held her tongue. "Does Ying Yue have any idea what's going on?"
Jostled by the bus's tread over a bumpy stretch of road, Mei Lin gripped the armrest. "She thinks her papa is staying with his mother so that when Lucien is released, he can stay with them until he's well again."
Jean winced. "I hope that things will be resolved before she realizes anything is amiss." Though with her strange, broken grandfather living in their house, Ying Yue could hardly be ignorant of change. While he loved Amelia fiercely, Lucien had longed to meet his daughter's baby girl. In all this tragedy, surely he would find solace in seeing Ying Yue's smile in person. Again, the uncertainty of the state she would find Lucien in twisted like a knife to her gut. She didn't want to know what Gen's father had done to Lucien; she only wanted to mend the wounds. But to do that, she had to know it all.
"Do you know—did the doctors say…if there are other, more invisible injuries?"
The pain in Mei Lin's eyes told Jean more than she wanted to know. "When I last saw him, it was a good day. The certainty of your arrival is doing wonders for him."
Jean hadn't realized that she feared Lucien's reaction to seeing her until hearing Mei Lin's assurance of his eagerness. "But he wasn't coping well, was he?"
"Jean—"
"I have to know before I see him. I'm not—strong like you are. I can't just walk in without knowing who I'll find." The words tumbled out of her mouth like a secret long buried, and she hid her watery eyes by reaching under her seat to retrieve her purse, where she dug for a handkerchief.
To her credit, Mei Lin waited until Jean had regained her tenuous hold on control before continuing. "He begged me not to tell you."
For all their relationship's speed bumps and sharp curves, Lucien had spent their marriage working harder at not keeping secrets from her. Before their marriage, he wouldn't have dreamed of admitting that something felt off about his decision to go to Sydney. But he respected her as a partner and valued her input. The fact that he wanted to hide his pain from her, even temporarily, left her wondering what other habits may return.
"I think he is being stupid." Mei Lin fixed her friend with a knowing look that drew a smile out of Jean.
"Yes, he does that." Despite her disappointment and anxiety, she couldn't help but relish in the opportunity to talk about Lucien this way, like he hadn't left, like everything was as it should be.
Eventually, she hoped, it will be.