In the Shade of the Blossom Tree

by Joanna Rees

  ‘We don’t,’ Lois said, putting her hand on the menu to flatten it. But her mother continued glaring at Cara.

  Lois winced. She knew that look only too well.

  ‘You should control your daughter, Lois,’ her mother said in Cantonese. Then in English, ‘I wouldn’t stand for such rudeness.’

  So now Lois was the one being told off? She swallowed hard, counselling herself to keep calm.

  ‘Yes, well, Mom,’ Lois began, carefully placing her napkin on her knees. She tried to find the right tone, her eyes pleading with Cara to play ball. ‘Cara is her own person and entitled to her own views. I don’t want her to feel that anyone is controlling her. She’s responsible enough to know how her actions affect others.’

  There, Lois thought. Surely that should empower Cara, whilst proving to her mother she was in control of the situation.

  But she knew it had backfired almost as soon as she said it.

  ‘Bullshit,’ her mother said in Cantonese.

  Lois reddened. She saw a smirk on Cara’s face. It was a fact of life: you didn’t need to speak a language to understand when it was being used to curse. Cara’s eyes blazed with triumph. She was clearly thriving on the tension, enjoying the sense of Lois losing her cool in front of her mother.

  ‘Three generations of women. Look at you all together,’ Ed said, bearing down on them, his arms outstretched.

  Lois saw Cara recoil from the smell coming from his armpits. The apron around his waist was grubby and Lois realized that Ed was doing the cooking as well as the front of house these days. He pinched Cara affectionately under the chin.

  ‘No smile, little one?’ he asked. ‘I haven’t seen you since you were a baby, but we still have a photo of you up in the kitchen.’

  Cara turned the corners of her mouth up in a sneer.

  ‘That’s better,’ Ed said, before turning to Lois’s mother.

  ‘Ah, Mrs Chan, you must be pleased to have your daughter home? It’s what every mother wants, yes?’ he asked in Cantonese.

  ‘What every woman wants is a son. And for their daughters to look after them,’ Lois’s mother said, deliberately in English.

  Lois felt her words like a slap. No matter how well she did in life, she couldn’t make up for the fact that her mother had lost her husband and Miki. Precious Miki. The son her mother had prayed for. The son who’d broken the chain of female babies, for her grandmother and mother. The son whose gender shouldn’t have mattered in the post-China, campaign-fighting, feminist world of her mother, except that it did. A lot.

  And despite everything, Lois felt the weight of all the generations of her family pulling her back down. Pulling her into line, as a woman. It made her want to scream.

  What a stupid, idealistic fool she’d been. She’d deliberately instigated this get-together, hoping that it would make all of them bond. But she could see now that both her mother and her daughter were bubbling with resentment towards her. They hadn’t come for a reunion, they’d come for a fight.

  Despite Cara’s obvious hostility, however, Lois still wished she could bundle her up and get her out of here. She couldn’t bear the thought of her getting caught up in a painful confrontation. She wanted Cara to be exposed to warmth and kindness and calm. And she could see now that she’d brought her to exactly the wrong place to get it.

  But it was too late to leave. As Ed started bringing out plates of food, Lois couldn’t help being an observer – watching her mother eating without joy and with wariness and suspicion in her eyes. Cara picked at some snow peas, doing exactly the same – the two of them staring across the table at each other, a generation gap that seemed impossibly wide. She saw a look of revulsion cross Cara’s face as Lois’s mother sucked up rice noodles from her bowl into her mouth with her chopsticks.

  Please not today, Lois thought. Please let me get through this without any arguments.

  She staved off any harsh words by babbling a constant stream of cheerful small talk about the food, the weather and the neighbourhood. But there was so much she couldn’t mention: her injury, her career, her future. And with no input from either her mother or Cara, inevitably a brooding silence finally descended on the table.

  She could see how riled her mother was by Cara, who’d eaten next to nothing. And when Ed brought out his famous purple rice pudding, giving Cara his usual spiel about how the combination of red bean curd and sticky purple rice was a food so rare that only the ancient emperors could eat it and Cara pushed the plate away as soon as his back was turned, Lois’s mother snapped.

  ‘You’ve been nothing but a little brat since you got here,’ she said.

  ‘Mom! You can’t—’ Lois gasped. ‘Please don’t. Please—’

  ‘Shut up,’ her mother said. She spread her hands out on the table and challenged Cara. ‘Since Lois here thinks you’re a grown-up, then we’ll treat you like one. You can start by explaining yourself. Come on, spit it out.’

  Cara’s face crumpled. She burst into tears and ran into the restroom.

  ‘Mom!’ Lois stood. ‘How could you?’

  Her mother waved a hand at her dismissively. ‘Pah,’ she said. ‘Histrionics. You know what your problem is, Lois? You’ve got no backbone. No backbone with your daughter. Your own flesh and blood is a spoilt princess. When you see some of the kids her age I see, who’ve had nothing . . . nothing . . . and she behaves like that? Let me tell you, your grandmother would be turning in her grave if she could see this.’

  Her mother had made no bones about the fact she considered Lois’s loss of custody of Cara to be entirely her own fault. Lois made ready to defend herself yet again on this point, if necessary. Especially if Cara was still within earshot. She glanced anxiously towards the restroom door.

  ‘But I guess that’s to be expected now that you’ve sold out on all of your principles,’ she continued.

  The speed with which her mother was getting it all off her chest implied she’d thought out just the right way of sticking the knife in. It didn’t surprise her that she continued without letting Lois justify herself.

  ‘When Miki was killed, when those people your father owed money to came, you said you’d find out who was in charge. You’d bring them to justice—’

  ‘I know but—’

  ‘That’s why I was so proud of you when you got into that police academy. I thought you would always remember your family. I thought you’d make it right to the top. And make a difference. You said that’s where you were going. What you wanted to do with your life. And I believed you.’

  Lois felt all her anger deflating in the face of her mother’s heartbreak.

  ‘It’s not that simple, Mom.’ Lois forced herself to remember that her mother was a one-woman fighter against whole ideologies. Her belief that Lois could somehow change the world – could find some sort of justice for Miki – was completely delusional.

  ‘And now what are you doing?’ her mother continued. ‘You shame your family by working in the same industry that killed your father and brother.’

  ‘It’s not like that. It’s not,’ Lois appealed to her, but she knew she sounded like a petulant teenager. ‘Don’t you see, I’m trying to make the casinos fair and safe? So that people like Dad don’t get hurt.’

  ‘You can justify it to yourself, Lois, but you’ll never justify it to me.’

  Lois stared at her, then at Ed, whose face was aghast.

  Then, growling, she hurried to find Cara. There was no point in arguing any more, or trying to explain the situation to Ed. Her mother shouted something after her, but Lois was no longer listening.

  She pushed through the door into the restroom.

  Too quiet.

  She sensed it straight away. She’d been in this situation a dozen times as a beat cop. Pursuing a perp into a supposed dead end, only to find the bird had already flown.

  Lois pushed open the stall door. It wasn’t locked. The ghost of a Nike footprint still showed on the toilet seat. The window above it was wide ope
n. Cara had gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Panic lanced Lois as she ran out of the restaurant’s front door and on to the street. Please don’t let her have run far, she thought. How long had she been gone? One minute? Two? Cara might think she was a grown-up and sophisticated, but this was a big city. She’d get eaten alive.

  Lois sprinted to the junction at the end of the street. She searched left, then right. Nothing.

  But then she saw the bus stop and the stick-thin figure slouched against it. Lois felt relief blossom inside her so violently, it made her knees weak.

  She ran to Cara and grabbed her. She was so small she felt like a rag doll in her hands.

  ‘Oh God. Oh Cara,’ Lois cried, pulling her towards her, folding her into a tight hug, pressing her precious head against her chest. ‘I thought . . . I thought . . . please don’t do that again. You scared me.’

  Cara stayed limp in her arms. She didn’t hug Lois back.

  Had she really wanted to run away? Where to? But it was pointless asking her what her plan had been. She’d acted on impulse. Just to get away.

  From Lois.

  It was time to start building bridges. Fast.

  Lois crouched down and looked into her face, holding her shoulders. ‘I’m so sorry, darling. I’m sorry that Grandma told you off.’

  Cara said nothing. Her eyes were bloodshot, but she wasn’t crying.

  ‘Please,’ Lois said. ‘I’m on your side. I’m your mom.’

  ‘But I’ve already got a real mom,’ Cara shot back.

  A real mom. Lois felt as if Cara had punched her. The words hurt so much more than anything her own mother had said in the restaurant. She knew Cara was angry, but she was shocked that she could say something that hurtful.

  Lois closed her eyes for a second and took a breath.

  ‘OK,’ she said slowly. ‘Then, perhaps we could be friends?’

  ‘Friends?’ Cara replied, but Lois sensed contrition in her tone. Perhaps she was shocked too by how low she’d just struck. ‘I don’t even know you.’

  ‘Then let’s get to know each other. Please, Cara. That’s all I want.’

  Cara said nothing. She scuffed her toe on the sidewalk.

  ‘I know we have issues to resolve, but ask me anything,’ Lois persisted. ‘Anything at all. Let’s be open. Honest. I want you to feel you can say anything to me.’

  Lois opened her arms. After Cara’s last bullet, she was ready for anything.

  There was a pause, then Cara spoke. ‘Everyone at school says . . .’

  She paused. She stared down at her toe, scuffing it again.

  ‘What? Tell me?’

  ‘They call you a cop-killer.’

  Cop-killer.

  They’d really said that. Kids? To her daughter?

  A spurt of fury shot through her. Chris should have protected Cara from this. But at the same time Lois knew that there was no way he could have. What she’d done . . . her past . . . thanks to Michael Hudson, it had been made public. And distorted.

  She should have guessed Cara would have been exposed to some of his lies. She should have anticipated this moment and come prepared.

  Lois felt sick. She’d always known she’d have to tell Cara about what had happened one day. She couldn’t keep it a secret for ever. But Cara was still a child. And what had happened was complicated. So complicated.

  But Lois had asked for this herself. If this was what was on Cara’s mind, then Lois had to help her understand. It was time to tell the truth and set the record straight once and for all. And despite all the emotion she felt, she would keep the retelling as factual as she could.

  She took Cara’s hand and, pulling her, made her sit next to her on a bench. There was a moment when they sat side by side, looking at the view down the hill.

  And then Lois began.

  Ever since her brother Miki had been killed when they were teenagers, Lois had set her mind on being a cop. A good cop. The kind who would clean up the streets and stop kids like Miki getting killed in the future.

  She was driven by a passion, studying so hard she could have aced her exams twice over. When she hit the precinct, she worked twice as hard as all the men. Double the hours and studying on top. She got right in their faces until they couldn’t ignore her or refuse her promotion to detective.

  Chris was a cop too. A forensics liaison officer. At first, they were a golden couple. They worked and played hard and it seemed like the future was rosy. But as soon as Cara came along, Chris stopped treating Lois as an equal. As far as he was concerned, she was a mom now. She should stay at home.

  But Lois had insisted on going straight back to work, determined that she could juggle it all. The arguments got worse and worse, but Lois refused to back down. She had a point to prove to Chris and all the men on her team. She could be a great mom and a cop. Especially when the break she needed to establish herself came with the Lawnton case. She gave it everything she had.

  Robert Lawnton was a predatory paedophile who had recently been released from a maximum security penitentiary, following a court appeal that had successfully challenged his arrest on technical grounds.

  He’d reoffended – assault – within twenty-four hours of hitting the streets. Then had gone on the run.

  Lois and her partner Billy-Ray were assigned the task of tracking him down. And busting him. This time by the book. To ensure that he never got out again.

  But then a little girl went missing. Jenna De Souza. Hispanic. Nine years old. Not so different from Cara now. Exactly Lawnton’s type.

  Only this was where Lois got lucky – if you could ever call dealing with any of these people that. One of her informants harboured a grudge against Lawnton and gave his location away.

  Blakeney, Lois’s captain, a glory-hunting alcoholic with his lazy eye on a switch to a political career, passed word they were to move in quick and bag Lawnton before the FBI took over and snatched the inevitable slew of headlines such a high-profile grab would bring.

  Chris and Lois had a fight an hour before her team assembled to back up the SWAT team on the early morning raid. He told her she was in no fit state to go. She had been up three nights in a row with the baby, he argued. She was running on empty and should hold back.

  She told him to back off. She was fine, she insisted. But when he carried on arguing, she snapped. He’d always put his career before hers, and it was clear to her now that the only reason he wanted her to back off was so that he could mobilize the FBI and take charge of the bust himself . . . before her. Well, she was a damn sight better cop than him and now she’d prove it.

  The last thing she told him, as she headed off for the raid, was to go to hell.

  In the back of the van, Blakeney joined Lois, Billy-Ray and the SWAT team. He looked tired and haggard and despite his drinking coffee and sucking mints, Lois smelt the whisky on his breath.

  The SWAT team went in alone to the tip-off address. Lois waited outside with Blakeney and Billy-Ray.

  That was when Billy-Ray spotted it: the sudden twitch of a curtain in the building next door. A glimpse of a profile and Lois knew it was Lawnton. Without a doubt. There was no time to call back the SWAT team.

  When they broke down the door of the next-door house, it stank of cigarettes and stale beer. The cot in the corner was empty, the mattress stained, a packet of Twinkies spilt on the floor.

  Lois motioned to Billy-Ray to go through to the kitchen. He eased open the door with his toe, sweeping the room with his pistol.

  Nothing.

  Lois was behind, covering his back, Blakeney right beside her.

  Then she saw Lawnton through the open kitchen window. He was in the yard, little Jenna with him. Backing into the shadows. Lois took aim.

  ‘I’ve got a clear shot,’ she hissed.

  Blakeney gripped her wrist. He took her gun.

  He hadn’t seen Billy-Ray slip out through the back door into the yard.

  A flurry of movement.

  Jen
na screamed. She was free. Lawnton had decided to run. Billy-Ray stood up straight. Aimed. Shouted to Lawnton to stop.

  Blakeney fired.

  Billy-Ray fell face down. He had a gaping wound in the back of his head.

  Lawnton got himself ensnared in the razor wire on the back fence. The SWAT team poured through and took him down. Blakeney ran to join them. But Lois was frozen.

  All eyes fell on Billy-Ray, dead on the ground. Then at Blakeney crouched next to him. He was pointing his finger at Lois.

  Then she saw it. The gun. Her gun. The one Blakeney had accidentally shot Billy-Ray with.

  It was lying by her feet.

  Blakeney’s eyes were as cold as a shark’s. She watched as he swiped his sweating forehead with a red-and-white handkerchief. One she suddenly knew with absolute certainty he’d used to wipe her gun free of his prints.

  As Lois recounted those dark days to Cara, she didn’t know what was more painful – keeping it in, or letting it out. She’d assumed that finally telling Cara the truth would make her feel better. But now, as she stared at Cara’s shocked face, it made her feel worse.

  How could she expect her daughter to make sense of it when she could hardly make sense of it herself? Unburdening herself to a child made her feel more guilty, not less. Cara was too young to hear about paedophiles and liars like Blakeney. She didn’t need to know how painful the world was. What was the point of protesting her innocence, when in doing so she destroyed her daughter’s?

  ‘You let all those people believe you did something wrong, when it was that guy Blakeney?’ Cara said incredulously.

  ‘It was my word against his,’ Lois explained, her voice much more emotional than she’d intended. ‘No one believed me.’

  ‘Why didn’t you make everyone believe you?’

  ‘The forensic evidence showed it was my gun with my prints on it that had killed Billy-Ray. And nobody had seen Blakeney take my gun or fire the shot.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘Blakeney stuck with his lie. Billy-Ray was given a hero’s funeral. They told me I was lucky I’d not been charged with manslaughter. Your father helped there. I do acknowledge that. I was dishonourably discharged.’