Neither of them spoke for some moments. She broke the silence. “I must get up at three-thirty. Thanks for being there.”

“Thanks for listening.” Softly, he added, “Good night.”

Nola hugged a pillow to her chest. She remained in that position until the maid came in to turn down the bed.

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 14

At pre-dawn, Wade caressed Nola's exposed arm, waking her for hair and makeup. “We’ll leave for location at five.” His skin glistened from his shower. She burrowed under the covers again. She couldn’t face another day. Or him.

“Hon, I have breakfast ready,” he said. “You hardly ate last night.”

The pleading in his tone was so uncharacteristic that she peeked out from under the covers. Fatigue was etched in the lines by his mouth. His professional and personal lives had long ago melded into one, and she had shaken his central core. She felt a bubble of satisfaction. Let him suffer the consequences of his own doing.

He wheeled over the cart. She forced some cereal with fruit down her throat. A moment later, she jumped to her feet, rushed to the bathroom, shut the door and vomited into the toilet.

At five, before leaving, she stood by the crib, imprinting in her memory the delicate lines of Lulu's mouth, chin, eyebrows. They were the most beautiful she had ever seen; she could stare at this face for hours and never have enough. She breathed in baby scent. Rescue us.

With a convoy of vans and trucks behind them, Nola and Wade rode in the limousine on the thirty-minute drive to the section of the Great Wall closest to Beijing. Nola wished Leslie didn’t have to ride in her trailer. Wade's efforts to draw her back into the circle of their interests was too taxing on her brain. A line of demarcation etched by Lulu’s appearance and disappearance blazed through their life. The before and the after. This was the after. Forever. If only they weren’t doomed to be stuck together for another week.

As if nothing had happened, Wade continued his chitchat. He hoped the day’s weather would be as good as was predicted, but this was typhoon season, and they had been lucky the Forbidden City concert hadn’t been rained out.

Wade's talk—about reading scripts for movies in which she could star—stopped short in her head at the door of the Silk Market orphanage. Would Lulu be sent to such an institution? Nola looked out the window as though the rice fields that stretched to the horizon held an answer to her plight. She thought of the determination with which Lulu had tried to sit up. At what point would this optimism stop? Without parental love, Jenna had given up long before starting school.