A Lover's Wish (13 page)

“Do you speak Cantonese?” the older woman questioned in the language.

Kianna glanced at Dao before speaking. “A-a little,” she got out in Cantonese.

Mrs. Zhi walked around Kianna, from time to time poking the younger woman against the arm,

the back, the butt. Finally, she stood before Kianna with a smile on her face.

“Welcome to our home,” she spoke in perfect English.

Kianna was surprised. With a sigh of relief, she bowed her head again before speaking, “
Doh Je
.”

I

t was as though the world had stood still. Once his mother had explained to him what was happening with his father, Dao rushed over to his father’s bed and fell to his knees beside it. “
Fuh chan,
” he whispered taking his father’s hand. It was so stupefying that this old, frail man at death’s door on the bed was his father. Lee Zhi had been such a strong person. The man could gain respect even from the toughest of gangsters in his time. He could lift things that men his size shouldn’t have been able to lift. This man was the centre of his universe when he was a boy, his hero. Lee still was Dao’s hero, just a weaker version. But even then, Lee could do no wrong in Dao’s eyes.

The man turned his head and recognition lit up the older man’s eyes.

He smiled at Dao and that did his heart well. “
Fuh Chan
,” Dao called again.

“Dao…” Lee got out and tried to sit up. “Don’t…save your strength.”

“There is something I have to talk to you about.” Lee grabbed Dao’s hand and squeezed. “I know that I do not have much time. And I would have liked to have given your bride my blessings…”

“
Fuh Chan
.”

Lee smiled. “I am not blaming you. I know that you wanted to make your life comfortable before bringing a wife into your world. That is respectable, but I’d like to give you my blessings now. And you will have to pass them onto the bride you chose for me.”

“I found her,
fuh chan
.” Dao smiled lovingly into his father’s face. “I’ve found her and she is here with me.”

His father’s face lit up.

Dao’s heart danced proudly at the smile he was able to bring his father. Standing, Dao took Kianna’s hand and walked her back to the bed, “This is her…” The older man asked Dao to help him up and with Dao’s help, Lee sat up with pillows propping him up. Dao watched as Lee took Kianna’s hand and pressed a kiss against her wrists. He looked up into her eyes, whispered something before smiling. He lay back against the pillows.

Dao exchanged a look with Kianna then knelt back down beside his father’s bed. Late into the night, while Kianna slept against the ground with

her head in his lap, Dao’s eyes snapped open. Something was different. Something that he desperately needed wasn’t there anymore. “Kiki,” he shook her gently. “Kiki, wake up.”

She moaned, “Dao? What’s wrong?”

Once she was sitting up, Dao pushed up to look at his father’s face.

“My son’s home,” Lee whispered. “My son’s…” Those were his last words before his hand that was holding Dao’s went slack. Dao knew that his beloved father, the man he’d honoured above all others, was gone. He had so much money, so much power in the business world and he had no control over the death of his father. Dao’s world shattered as he knelt there, Kianna’s arms around

him.

When he finally snapped out of his daze, he released his father’s hands and began rummaging through the drawers inside the small room. Finding some red paper, he began covering every statue of Chinese deities with the red paper. It would have seemed his mother had been prepared for the death of her husband. With all the statues covered, Dao turned to Kianna and swallowed nervously. “Please, Kianna, wake my mother,” he whispered. After she left the room, Dao went back to kneeling beside his father’s bed.

*

It was the most horrible thing she had ever had to do. Bringing a woman back to doom, the loss of the man she had loved with all her heart. It was not a pretty thing and even as she did it, she wondered why Dao had let her. But it hit her that it wasn’t about her, it was about the man she was falling for being in pain. It was about the loss of someone who was a large part of a family. With that thought, she sucked it up and allowed her feet to carry her to where Mrs. Zhi slept. The old woman was tossing and turning against her pillow and Kianna didn’t feel so guilty in waking her up.

Kianna brought Mrs. Zhi back and felt out of place as both son and mother went back to the father’s body. She decided to make herself useful by doing what she had studied about Chinese customs so long ago. Walking over to the far wall, she removed a hanging mirror that was there and brought it from the bedroom. In the next room, she placed it up-sided down in a far corner out of the way. In Mrs. Zhi’s bedroom, Kianna pulled a white sheet from the bed and hung it over the bedroom door of the room where the dead man lay. She couldn’t find a gong, but she knew it was supposed to be placed inside the door on the left hand side.

With all that finished, Kianna stood outside in the darkness of the midnight air and inhaled. It was important to give mother and son time to get used to the idea that the man they loved so dearly was no longer there with them. Kianna knew how that felt, all too well and having strangers in her face was the last thing she wanted. She’d wanted them all to go fly a kite and leave her alone. She wrapped her arms around herself as she stared down at the river.

The moon sparkled off the water like a blessing. She welcomed it all, all that this strange, exotic land had to offer her. But in the house behind her, death had reached in and snatched a father, a husband and a friend. That was a feeling she never wanted to have, ever again. Dao’s eyes had died when his father did, Kianna was no fool. She saw the light in those beautiful brown eyes go out. When she began removing the mirror, she saw him looking at her, but she did not stop.

Loneliness like no other would flow through Dao’s mother. It was a feeling that Kianna knew all too well. She was going to wake up in the middle of the night, roll over to bury herself within her husband’s heat, only he wouldn’t be there and her heart would break. She knew all this because even though she had only been with Dao, she knew how she felt all those years when Jace would tell her about sex and love. Then Kianna

would crawl into bed, have a rather raunchy dream and wake up reaching for her dream lover. She knew it all too well.

For a brief moment, she wished there was something she could do for Mrs. Zhi. But then she realized, she wouldn’t know the first thing to do in order to make the hurt go away short of taking the pain onto herself. The truth was, if Kianna could have pulled Mrs. Zhi’s and Dao’s pain onto herself, she would—if only to see Dao smile at her like he did during their lovemaking.

She smelled him before he wrapped his arms around her. She turned into Dao’s arms and cradled his face before he bowed and let his face fall against her neck. She felt his body shake gently and his tears flowed against the flesh of her neck. Tenderly, she caressed his neck and hair as he cried for his father. Kianna felt proud that this man, this sexy man, wasn’t afraid to show his true feelings. He was hurt and he sought her arms for comfort. She felt honoured.

He held her tightly, his face pressed to her neck, then her cheeks. He lifted his face to brush his tear-covered lips to her nose and forehead, before cradling her face and taking her lips. Kianna moaned in desire and utter pain as he drank from her. She felt the ever pulsating pain he felt as his heart broke. Everything he went through she would be right there. Her heart meshed with his,

going through the sensations, the terrible sensations of his absolute fear and dread.

There were no words for what they were feeling. There was nothing else to do but hold him as the moon began saying its goodbye. She allowed him to lead her around the house to a large rock that overlooked the Li River. Then he pulled her into his arms, pressed her head against his chest and there the sunlight found them. Kianna wrapped in Dao’s arms protectively, breathing softly in her sleep.

Time flew by Dao without him even noticing it. He had spent half the morning trying to convince his mother that she should go back to Canada with him and another half trying to convince Kianna to talk his mother into moving to Canada with them. When that hadn’t work, Dao had gotten frustrated enough to cry.

He watched his mother as she bathed his father and prepared him for the coffin. He had left her with Kianna and went into Guilin to get the coffin. There were no preparations made for his father’s death since it had been so sudden.

As the boat moved through the water of the Li River, Dao ached for it to go faster. The further he got from Xingping, the less he felt his father’s

spirit and that gnawed at him. He felt guilty that he wasn’t leaving for things to bury his beloved father in. It felt as though he was running away. He inhaled, but could smell nothing but death on the air. It was putrid, rancid, foul. He hated the smell of the air and for a moment there, he wished he didn’t have to breathe, but he had to.

He spent the day making deals, trying to get someone to go with him back to Xingping and bring his father, mother and Kianna back to Guilin so that they could bury his father beside his grandparents. With those deals finished, he ducked down to the plot and arranged for a hole to be dug. After all those errands were finished, he bought some new clothes, white to be exact—for both himself and Kianna, then returned home.

When he returned home, his mother still had not spoken to anyone, not even Dao. Once in a while she would mutter something, but it wasn’t audible and Dao feared for her. He would have taken Kianna back to Guilin with him, but he knew that his mother trusted Kianna and if Kianna was there, he knew that his lover would at least make sure that his mother ate something.

He spent the rest of the day watching over his father’s body. Finally he unfolded himself and went to find Kianna. He found her, dressed in a blue outfit with a hood over her hair, telling his mother a story as she lay, wide eyed on the bed,

listening. Kianna’s Cantonese was shaky, but she was getting her point through. He was surprised that she knew so much about his culture, but didn’t mention it.

“Hi, Ma,” he whispered before dropping a kiss on Kianna’s head.

“Shh,” his mother hushed. “She is telling me a story.”

Dao smiled sadly and left the room. The childlike sound of his mother’s voice broke his heart. He knew that he had not just lost his father, he lost his mother, too. She would never be the same. He couldn’t imagine what it felt like to have someone by your side for more than thirty years, then all of a sudden he’s not there anymore. Or to have someone kiss your cheeks whenever he came home from work, then suddenly one day, that person isn’t there anymore and the kisses are gone. He had seen her eyes light up when he spoke after entering the room, then they had died. It was as though she expected her husband and when she saw her son, she died a little more inside. For a moment there, he felt like a killer.

In the room where his father lay, he placed his father into the coffin and whispered a soft prayer. Lighting incense and candles, he sat on the floor and thought back to his childhood.

K

ianna got up from where she had been seated telling Mrs. Zhi an impromptu story about a girl who honoured her family wonderfully. The older woman had been intrigued greatly by such story and though it brought a smile to her lips briefly, Mrs. Zhi could not stay awake to hear the end. Picking up the donation box that she had made out of cardboard for the funeral, Kianna searched and found Dao sitting silently on the ground. She moved in and sat down beside him, then pressed a kiss to his shoulder. He turned to look at her, then and she smiled at him. “How are you doing?” she

questioned softly.

“A little better.” His eyes danced at her in the dim candlelight. “You know, the first time I lit a candle around you should have been the night I am making love to you in our own bed. I didn’t want it to be a funeral candle.”

Kianna smiled at him, then glanced over to the altar where candles and incense burnt. “It’s okay,”

she whispered. “This isn’t your fault. And besides, I am thankful that you chose me to stand by your side in this.”

He wrapped an arm around her, then and hauled her into his side. Kianna moaned at his heat, “I smell funky,” she spoke softly, resting her head against him. “Is there anywhere I can take a shower?”

Dao laughed softly and kissed her head. “I would hold you in my arms even if you smelt like a cesspool.”

“Ugh.” Kianna socked him playfully against the thigh.

He simply laughed softly. “Yeah there’s a hot springs just behind the house.”

Kianna never understood why people whispered in the presence of the dead. They couldn’t hear it. Human’s knack for respecting the dead astounded her. She rubbed her hands up his back and stood. “I’ll go wash up. You can stay here…”

“No, I should come with you.” Dao stood. “Was Ma sleeping?”

Kianna nodded.

“Okay, I’ll go in and look in on her, then we can go wash up.”

Before Kianna could respond, Dao slipped from the room. She went to where their bags still sat by the door and rummaged through hers to find

some things she might need. She only took out an organic body wash because she didn’t want to do any damage to the lovely country. Shaking her head, she stood and inhaled deeply. There was a difference to the air now. A slight cooling as the moon rose higher. She glanced out the window and was amazed at the loveliness of the moon. It looked bigger, fuller and more breathtaking than she could remember. Had she not looked before?

“Baby, you ready?”

“Mhmm,” she answered and turned to face Dao. She wanted to kiss him so badly, but she couldn’t due to respecting the home of her hosts. Blinking back her yearning, she took his outstretched hand and allowed him to lead her from the small home, past the stone where she had slept in his arms the morning before and up through some trees until they came to a lovely hole in the ground.