Chapter One
A Veil for the Wrong Person
Her former husband was wearing her mother's wedding veil.
It had caught on his ear. He was trying to free it with one hand while keeping the other beneath a small cascade of artificial flowers. When the bell above the door rang, he looked up, and for one generous second Cenyi thought he might not recognise her.
Then he said, "Your mother said it would come down in one piece."
"She also said she was having a quiet retirement."
"We may have been told different things about the word quiet."
Cenyi put the folded curtain she had brought on the counter. Four years had given her several reasonable ways of greeting He Renshuo. They had exchanged polite words at Yating's birthday dinner, at a lunch when Lifen had been visiting, once beneath the awning of a food shop when neither could pretend to be going somewhere else. She could ask after his work. She could say that he looked well.
Instead she reached up and released the veil from his ear.
His hair was shorter. There was silver beside his temple. She had seen it at the birthday dinner and then spent an unreasonable portion of the journey home wondering when it had first appeared. Now it was close enough to touch, and she moved her hand away before her fingers could misunderstand their assignment.
"Thank you," he said.
"You were pulling the wrong end."
