I was so shocked when he made the offer again, when the reality of one option or the other seemed sooner and more likely. I loved my father, but in those days, relationships between fathers and daughters were more distant than they are now. When I was little, he lived with us at the Stable, the first house he bought with his casino money. But when Dream Horse began to do well, he bought a house for himself just around the corner, the Kimblewick. So he wouldn’t be distracted, he said, by the sounds of things that were women’s business. I saw him perhaps once a week for Sunday dinner, during which he would dispense wisdom to all members of the family.

“A woman should put others first, herself last,” he’d say. “When she does something good, she shouldn’t cluck about it. When she does something bad, she shouldn’t deny it.”

But other times, he was more progressive. “Women should have the right to education. And when China comes into her own, women should have the right to vote.”

Whether the wisdom was conservative or progressive, it was always stated firmly and with authority. We never knew how to respond, so we just ate quietly.

Sometimes he’d give us his opinions on the politics of the day. He admired Sun Yat-Sen, but worried that Chiang Kai-Shek was a despot. He thought the Communists had some good ideas, but mistrusted their zeal. When we were young, we thought China was very far away and only half listened to his ideas about it.

My mother was the one who translated his offer into details that made sense. She invited me to drink tea and eat melon seeds in her room, at the little rosewood table she had for entertaining exactly such conversations as these. “If you want to marry, your father and I will arrange for you to marry his business partner Yeo’s oldest son in Singapore. By all reports, he’s a very nice young man.”

“But is he good looking?” I asked. I split a melon seed with my giant front teeth.

“No.” She didn’t say any more than that, but I had already been to literature class. I could read subtext. How could someone as ugly as you possibly expect to marry handsome?

“Didn’t think so,” I said. “Maybe Emily will marry him.”

“I’ve suggested it to her. Yeo has two sons. You could both marry into the family, if you wanted. When it’s time, the four of you could inherit Dream Horse and carry it forward into this bright new century.” She poured a little cup of tea for each of us.

“If I were to marry, I’d want to marry for love.” I tried to sip, but the tea was much too hot and burned my tongue.