Chapter One
The Loneliest Room in the House
Mei Lin could tell you the exact evening she understood she was lonely, because it was the evening she stopped saying things twice.
For eleven years she had been a repeater. She would tell her husband about her day, and he would nod without looking up, and a few minutes later she would tell him again, a little brighter, the way you jiggle a key in a stubborn lock. Sometimes the lock opened. Mostly it did not. That Tuesday, standing in their kitchen in Ipoh with the fish still warm in the pan, she heard herself begin the second telling and simply stopped, mid-sentence. He did not notice the sentence was unfinished. That was the part she could never explain to anyone afterward: he did not notice. She ate her dinner, washed the dishes, and felt something in her chest close very quietly, like a shop at the end of a long day.
Nothing was wrong, by the usual measures. Boon Seng did not drink, did not gamble, did not raise his voice. He worked hard, transferred money home to his mother, drove their daughter to tuition every Saturday. When Mei Lin tried, once, to tell her sister that she was unhappy, her sister laughed and said, “You know how many women would trade places with you?” So Mei Lin folded the unhappiness up small, the way she folded the good tablecloth, and put it away.
