A terrible wheezing sound fills the room, like that of a dying animal caught in a snare, and it takes me a moment to realize it’s coming from me. I’m curled up on the bed in a fetal position, panic threatening to crush my very bones.

I don’t know how much time I spend like this, trying and failing to remember how to breathe and hating myself, hating everything—

Then Mama’s voice cuts through the closed bedroom door:

“Sun Yan. Come eat.”

My heart stutters a beat. I cling onto the tone of her voice, try to dissect her every word. Mama only ever calls me by my full Chinese name when she’s angry, but at least she’s still willing to feed me. To speak to me.

Maybe I haven’t been disowned just yet.

I rub the sleep from my eyes, take a deep breath, and tiptoe out into the tiny living room, feeling like a criminal in my own house. I half expect to find a lawyer or the police or maybe one of Peter’s parents’ assistants sitting on our worn sofa, ready to take me away at a moment’s notice, but the room is empty except for me and Mama.

Mama doesn’t look up from her seat at the dining table when I move to join her. Just pushes my breakfast closer toward me.

It’s the sort of food she used to make me when I was in primary school: a bowl of steaming soybean milk—not that silky, supersweet stuff you can buy in cartons at the supermarket, but the homemade kind you need to filter through a sieve—an already peeled hard-boiled egg, two platters of Laoganma chili sauce and pickled vegetables, and half a chunk of white mantou.

Though I don’t have much of an appetite, hunger pinches my stomach. I realize I haven’t eaten anything in the past twenty-four hours.

I rip off a small piece of the mantou and chew. It’s still warm, the bread soft and faintly sweet. If only I wasn’t having difficulty swallowing.

“Is Baba joining us for breakfast?” I ask quietly, cautiously, wincing as the words scrape their way up my throat.

Mama doesn’t reply for a long time, the room deadly silent save for the soft crunch of peeled eggshells and the clink of her spoon against her bowl. Then at last she says, still not looking my way, “He already go to work.”

My heart sinks to my feet.

“I’m really sorry, Mama,” I whisper, staring down at a stain on the table. “I just—I wish—” My throat closes up, and I go quiet, fighting back the sudden press of tears. Deep down, I know there’s nothing I can say to change the situation; even if I’m sick with regret, even if I apologize a thousand times, in a thousand different ways, it’s too late. The past is permanent.

“We’re out of duck eggs.”

I jerk my head up, certain I’ve misheard. It’s not as if I expected Mama to respond to my apology, but... “What?”