Rachel hung up on her mother just as her friend had scraped a nice bit of chocolate-and-coconut frosting off with her finger and comfortably returned to her usual seated position.
“Way to go. Using me as an excuse to get off the phone with your mom.” Sylvia cackled as she licked her finger clean.
Rachel smiled. “Sometimes I forget you can speak Mandarin.”
“A lot better than you, banana girl! Sounds like she was in turbo nagging mode.”
“Yeah, she was fixating on something and wouldn’t let it go.”
“If she’s anything like my mom, she’s going to call you back tonight and try the guilt angle.”
“You’re probably right. Which is why I need to see what Nick is up to for lunch.”
—
A few hours later, Rachel and Nick were seated at their favorite window table at Tea & Sympathy. Nicky Perry, the owner, had been by to share a funny video of Cuthbert, her bulldog, and their lunches had just been placed on the table. It was a snowy January afternoon and the windows had fogged up inside the cozy restaurant, creating an even more inviting atmosphere for Rachel to enjoy the chicken-and-leek pie in front of her.
“This was the perfect idea. How did you know I was craving T&S for lunch?” Nick asked as he tucked into his usual English bacon, avocado, and tomato sandwich.
Taking advantage of his good mood, Rachel got right to the point. “So I spoke to my mom a little earlier. Apparently, our mothers have been talking—”
“Oh God, not the grandchildren talk again!”
“No, this time it was all about you.”
“Let me guess…my mother has enlisted her help to convince me to return to Singapore.”
“You’re psychic.”
Nick rolled his eyes. “My mother is so predictable. You know, I don’t think she really cares about my grandmother dying—she’s just fixated on me getting Tyersall Park. It’s her entire raison d’être.”
Rachel broke the thick golden pastry crust of her chicken pie with a fork and let some of the steam escape. She took her first tentative bite of the piping-hot creamy sauce before speaking again. “What I’ve never really understood is why everyone thinks the house is supposed to go to you. What about your father, or your aunts? Don’t they have more right to the house?”
Nick sighed. “Ah Ma, as you know, is an old-fashioned Chinese woman. She has always favored her son over her daughters—they were all just supposed to marry and be taken care of by their husband’s families, while my father got Tyersall Park. It’s this warped mash-up of archaic Chinese customs and the British rules of primogeniture.”
“But that’s so unfair,” Rachel muttered.
“I know, but that’s the way things are and my aunts grew up always knowing they would get the short end of the stick. Mind you, each of them is still going to inherit from Ah Ma’s financial holdings—so no one’s going to be hurting for cash here.”
“So then how is it that you suddenly got to be first in line to inherit Tyersall Park?”
Nick leaned back in his chair. “Do you remember when Jacqueline Ling came to New York a couple of years ago and summoned me to lunch aboard her yacht?”
“Oh yeah, she had two Swedish blondes kidnap you in the middle of a lecture!” Rachel laughed.
“Yes. Jacqueline is Ah Ma’s goddaughter, and they’ve always been extremely close. Jacqueline revealed to me that back in the early nineties, when my father decided to move to Australia pretty much full-time, it so angered my grandmother that she decided to change her will and disinherit him from Tyersall Park. She skipped a generation and made me the heir to the property. But then after I married you, she supposedly changed her will again.”
“Who do you think is currently in her favor to get Tyersall Park?”
“I honestly have no idea. Maybe Eddie, maybe one of my cousins in Thailand, maybe she’s going to leave it all to her beloved guava trees. The point is, Ah Ma uses her fortune to control the family. She’s always changing her will according to her latest whim. No one really knows what she’s going to do, and at this point, I’ve stopped caring.”
Rachel looked Nick straight in the face. “Here’s the thing. I know that you don’t care what happens to your grandmother’s fortune, but you can’t pretend that you don’t still care for her. And that’s the only reason why I think you should go back now.”
Nick stared out of the fogged-up window for a moment, avoiding her eyes. “I dunno…I think part of me is still so angry at her for how she treated you.”
“Nick, please don’t hold on to this because of me. I forgave your grandmother lo
ng ago.”