Eight years ago, when all her girl children were long gone and had children of their own, Emily became quite ill. Tak-Wing took care of her for as long as he could and as well as he could considering his own deficiencies, but it was clear she was suffering from dementia, brought on early by all she had suffered in her younger years. When he couldn’t take care of her anymore, he consulted us, and we all agreed she’d be better off in a home. A year after that, he, too, became ill and had to join her. By then, thanks to Macy, the family was doing quite well, and we found a comfortable place with private rooms and twenty-four-hour care out in Aberdeen.

Well, in the end, he went first. He died of a fentanyl overdose. We found him in his room, Emily stooping over the body, and not a nurse in sight. I’m not saying she killed him. Don’t ever suggest that to anyone, especially not your Auntie Macy! But I’m not saying she didn’t either. Her illness altered her sense of time. She thought she was living in the 1940s, and tried to escape the home on several occasions. She said Tak-Wing was beating her, though each time the doctors checked, her body was unharmed. We found her standing over him as he lay on the floor, having rolled out of bed in his dying moments. We didn’t know what to do. We took her back to her room. We put Tak-Wing’s body back in the bed. It wasn’t right, what we did, but we were in a panic. The night nurse found him several hours later and the coroner ruled the death an accidental overdose. The night nurse was fired, and the home offered us compensation. We took it, to protect Emily. But we didn’t hang on to it because it seemed disrespectful to the night nurse who had lost her job in spite of having done nothing wrong. I donated it to the Po Leung Kuk home for wayward women and girls. Don’t tell Macy this story. She doesn’t know. She’d be devastated. Anyway, I’m an old lady now, maybe my memory is flawed. Maybe we never found Emily stooping over the body at all. Maybe Tak-Wing’s death really was an accident. What good would it do anyone if the truth came out? No good. No good at all. I shouldn’t have told you. You’d have been better off not knowing.