Free The Moonlight Palace by Liz Rosenberg

Brown. My fists were clenched, and I think I would have actually struck Brown had he come a step closer. “How could you allow this to happen?”
    Geoffrey Brown put up both hands. “No, no,” he said. “I’m only here to help. It’s important that you believe me.”
    “Grandfather, we can’t let anything else happen to Wei. They want to kill him.”
    British Grandfather flinched at my words. I went on doggedly. “He was just acting as a friend to Omar. Wei had no intention of blowing up anything. I know he is completely innocent.”
    “You know this?” Grandfather said.
    I said, “Wei is just an ordinary student. He loves bridges. He is always drawing pictures of bridges. We have to save him. Please.” And there I was again, tugging on his arm and crying like a child. Geoffrey Brown offered me his handkerchief, a crisp linen one, embroidered with his initials in cursive on one corner, GB .
    Grandfather’s eyes locked with mine. “No matter the cost?” he asked.
    “How can you mention cost at a time like this? Omar says they want to put Wei to death. Just because he is Chinese!” I wailed the final word, Chi-neeeeese . People in the room were now making an effort not to pay any attention to me. Only Grandfather stayed calm and focused.
    Grandfather leaned forward and kissed my cheek. He brushed the hair out of my eyes. While he was so close to my ear, he spoke very softly into it. “You can rely on me,” he said.
    I expected Grandfather to stand up and walk away with Brown. I had forgotten that he was confined to that chair. So many facts of our life slipped from my mind that night—our extreme helplessness, our poverty, the impossibility of our whole situation.
    “All right, Agnes,” he said, putting his hand under my chin, and tilting my face to get a better look at me. “It is your future. We have always agreed upon that. Charles will not blame me.”
    “What do you mean?” I said. “Don’t do anything on my account. Do it because it is what’s right and true.”
    “What’s right and true,” he repeated. His mouth twisted a bit. “Of course, it is always for that,” he said.
    British Grandfather was gone a long time, or so it seemed to me. The others made a point of not crossing my corner of the room, and the Internal Affairs man disappeared from view. One of the women offered me a cup of tea, and when I shook my head, she, too, retreated. I turned the pages of magazines listlessly, unable to absorb a word. There were advertisements for Allen automobiles and for the new low-heeled ladies’ shoes. I began reading an article about the American stock market—and when I got to the end, I realized not a single word had sunk in, so I started over again, but did no better the second time around. Geoffrey Brown himself had wheeled Grandfather out of the room, and when he wheeled Grandfather back in, it seemed to me that the two men had come to some sort of agreement. Grandfather caught my eye and nodded. His hands were shaking on the wooden sides of the wheelchair.
    “There is nothing,” he said, “that one man will not do to another.”

EI G HT
    The Glory of Geoffrey Brown
    B ritish Grandfather barely spoke on the ride home in Geoffrey Brown’s long, sleek automobile. It was the nicest car I had ever seen, a Pierce-Arrow with a bud vase in the side of the door, and a real, live red rose blooming inside the vase. The seats were deep and cushy—more comfortable by far than any of our own furniture at home. But I felt myself at the edge of tears every instant. Grandfather kept patting me on the arm as we drove through the streets of Singapore. They looked unfamiliar at that strange, bleak hour of the night, with dawn still an hour away. It had rained while we were at the Protectorate, so the streets seemed blurry, and when we drove alongside Little India, everything was dark there as well, as if Deepavali had never happened.
    Nei-Nei must have sat by the palace door all night. She scurried