It wasn’t our fault Raymond left. If it was anyone’s fault, it was Emily’s. Emily’s fault and Tak-Wing’s fault. Tak-Wing was an asshole and Emily was a romantic fool. Why does everyone ask about them, and not Tak-Wing’s younger brother Tak-Tam, who was good and kind, and who died so young? Why does no one ask about his father, Old Mah, who poisoned his own people with opium packaged as a cure for opium addiction? Why does no one ask about Old Cheung, who tried so hard to do what was right for his family and almost destroyed it by trying so hard? Why does no one ask about Old Lee, one of the early South China communists? Or his wife, Siu-Wai, and her friend Yim-Fong, who gave their lives to the movement only to be purged before the new country was ten years old? Why does no one ask about Morgan Horace, the Jamaican revolutionary and rum importer, whose beautiful visions were dashed to the dirt? Or Isadore Davis Wong, who facilitated the passage of so many refugees to Free China and the rescue of so many Allied soldiers as a member of the British Army Aid Group, and who was left stranded in Hong Kong with a large family and no home for his pains? Why does no one ask about the Irish professor of Chinese history, Kathy Duffy, who helped so many young Chinese women find their way in the modern world? Why does no one ask about Tanaka Shigeru, the civilian translator torn apart by what the Japanese Imperial Army did to his classmates and friends? Why does no one ask about William Courchene, the Métis soldier from Saint-Boniface who brought Raymond into this world? Why does no one want to know about Lee Ting-Yan, whom the handsome prince didn’t want to marry? Why does no one ask about me?

What has Macy been saying to you? Macy is a good person, but she doesn’t know diddly-squat. She doesn’t have a clue. She is good with money, but stupid about human beings. Lots of Hong Kong people are like that. They find the past unbearable, so they drive as hard as they can into the future without understanding how their ignorance of yesterday creates a miserable tomorrow. Macy can be like that. I can’t believe that she thinks Emily was a murderer.

Emily was not a murderer. You don’t understand the whole story. I’ll tell you what she did, but you can’t tell a soul.