Free The Moonlight Palace by Liz Rosenberg Page A

out to the Pierce-Arrow and insisted on wheeling Grandfather inside herself, muttering all the while under her breath in Peranakan Chinese. Poor Geoffrey Brown looked completely flummoxed. He kept apologizing and trying to take the wheelchair inside, and she would try to wrestle it back—though she did need his help getting the chair up the thirteen marble steps.
    “I’ll be in touch,” Brown said to British Grandfather. “I apologize for all of this. The trouble has been—unconscionable.”
    “Thank you,” said Grandfather simply.
    Nei-Nei Down peered with her sharp little brown eyes first at Brown, then at her husband. She wheeled Grandfather inside without another word, closing the door on Brown—and on me, as it happened, since I’d lagged a few steps behind. I could not remember a time when I had felt so tired. Images passed through my mind, one after another, as in a picture gallery. But I could not piece them together. There was not a single coherent thought left inside my head.
    As I turned to go inside, Brown said, “A moment,” and ran lightly down the stairs to the long black car. He came back holding the red rose from the bud vase. I accepted it numbly.
    “I hope not to remain a stranger,” he said. “I am not a villain. I hope you will believe that.”
    Before I could answer, British Grandfather called my name—“Aggie!”—his voice uncharacteristically sharp. He opened the door, wheeled himself through it, and raised one hand in farewell to Brown—not waving the hand, not moving it, just holding it up, palm out. I stepped inside the palace.
    “What about Wei?” I asked as the door shut behind us.
    “Wei will be spared,” Grandfather said. He smiled at me, but it was not his usual beaming smile. He, too, had seen horrors that night. “You’ve a good heart, Agnes.”
    “Thank you, Grandfather,” I said. “I inherited it from the best.”
    Nei-Nei Down snorted. But she tapped Grandfather on his shoulder with her little claw of a hand.
    After I had washed up, I tiptoed out to the hall outside Grandfather and Nei-Nei’s room. I heard the low rumble of Grandfather’s voice and caught only a stray phrase here and there. “Inevitable,” he said. “Sooner rather than later . . . If not for Brown . . . It could have been far worse . . . We must be grateful.”
    I was foolishly glad that someone as handsome and charming as Geoffrey Brown had turned out to be our savior. My heart warmed toward him. How glad I was that I had accepted his rose! But then, I also heard a sound I had heard before only a few times in my life—the racking, harsh sound of Nei-Nei Down sobbing as if her heart would break.

    In the days that followed, life began to change with shocking rapidity. It was as if we had been stuck in a photograph that suddenly became a moving picture. Omar Wahlid was deported almost at once to Malaya. We did not see our young boarder again—instead, two policemen came to our house with a border patrol officer to oversee the move. His possessions were thoroughly examined and packed into boxes, occupying only a small corner of the front hall, and then they, too, were on their way. Singapore wasn’t far from Malaya. Many Malayans commuted back and forth by bus, working in Singapore by day and returning to Jahore at night. But culturally and politically, the distance was immense. Omar was never to cross those borders again. He vanished from our lives as effectively as if he had never existed.

    Wei was escorted back to our palace after a few days, considerably improved from the night I’d seen him in the Protectorate, but still much the worse for wear. Geoffrey Brown drove him to the Kampong Glam in his own car. Instead of regaining his strength as we expected, the young Chinese student continued to deteriorate from day to day. His round, smiling face became thin and expressionless. For one thing, Wei’s injuries simply would not heal. It turned out that Wei had a disease that kept