The Son In-law They Mocked Found The Lost Vault

CHAPTER 10: THE BOOKBINDER'S SHOP

For a moment, Adrian could not breathe.

The canal kept moving softly beside them. A dog barked somewhere far away. The moon sat on the water like a white coin. Everything in the world was calm and normal, and inside Adrian's chest, something was falling and falling and would not stop.

"Who?" he said. His voice came out like a broken thing. "Who was it?"

Old Lu did not answer. He looked back at the iron gate they had just come through. From deep inside the tunnel came that heavy sound again. Boom. Then a crack, like wood splitting.

"Not here," Old Lu said. "They are almost through. If they find us sitting by the water like ducks, nobody will hear the rest of this story. Not you. Not me. Not her."

"I am not moving one step until you tell me."

"Adrian." Helen stood up and touched his arm. Her face was still wet from crying, but her voice was steady now. "He is right. Please. My father did not send us away so we could die by a canal."

Adrian looked at her. Then at the old man. Then at the gate.

Twelve years he had waited for an answer. He could wait one more hour. It would be the longest hour of his life, but he could do it.

"Fine," he said. "Walk."

They walked.

Old Lu led them away from the canal and into the sleeping streets of the old city. He did not walk like an old man. He walked like someone who knew every stone, every shadow, every corner where a person could disappear. He turned left where Adrian would have turned right. He went through a laundry yard full of white sheets hanging in the dark, and the sheets moved around them like quiet ghosts. Once, a car drove slowly down the main road with its lights off. All three of them pressed their backs against a wall and waited until the sound of the engine was gone.

Helen walked barefoot the whole way, her shoes still in her hand. She did not complain once. Adrian watched her feet on the cold, wet stones and felt something tight in his throat.

Two years he had lived next to this woman. He had seen her in silk dresses at parties. He had seen her give orders in the shop with a voice like ice. He had never once seen her walk barefoot through dirty streets in the middle of the night. And he had never once imagined she would do it for him.

"Here," Old Lu said at last.

It was a small shop at the end of a quiet lane, squeezed between a noodle stall and a shoe repair place. The wooden sign above the door was so old that most of the paint had peeled away. Adrian could only read two words. Fine Binding.

Old Lu unlocked the door. A little bell rang above it. Inside, the shop was dark and smelled strongly of glue, leather and old paper. Adrian saw shapes in the shadows. Tall shelves. A heavy wooden press. Piles of books waiting to be repaired, their covers torn, their pages loose.

"You fix books," Helen said.

"Books are like people," Old Lu said. "When they get old, their backs break. Someone has to put them back together." He pointed to a narrow staircase in the corner. "Up."

The room upstairs was small, with one window covered by a thick blanket. Old Lu lit an oil lamp on the table, and a soft yellow light filled the room.

Adrian stopped in the doorway.

The whole wall in front of him was covered with photographs.

Dozens of them. Maybe a hundred. Some were old and faded, some were new. Some were pinned up straight, some crooked, as if they had been added in a hurry over many years.

And every single photo was of him.

There was Adrian at sixteen, standing outside the police station on the morning after his grandfather died, holding a small bag. There was Adrian at seventeen, sitting alone on the steps of a cheap school, eating a piece of bread. Adrian at nineteen, carrying boxes at the fish market for a few coins. Adrian at twenty two, asleep on a bench in the old library with a book open on his chest. Adrian at twenty six, in his old suit, standing outside the Feng house on his wedding day, looking up at the big gate like a boy looking at a mountain.

Adrian walked slowly to the wall. He could not feel his feet.

"You followed him," Helen said behind him. Her voice was cold. "For twelve years, you followed him like a shadow."

"Yes."

"And you never helped him? Look at him in these pictures. Look how thin he is. Look at his clothes." She pointed at the photo of the boy eating bread on the school steps. "He was a child. He had nobody. And you just stood there with a camera?"

Old Lu did not answer. He only looked at the floor.

But Adrian was looking at another photo now. It was a picture of a small room with a broken window. His room. The first room he rented, after he left the orphan shelter at seventeen. In the photo, it was winter, and there was snow on the windowsill.

And outside his door, there was a brown paper bag.

Adrian remembered that bag. He would remember it for the rest of his life.

That winter was the worst of his life. He had no money. He had no coat. Some nights it was so cold that he could not feel his fingers, and he sat on his thin bed reading his grandfather's notebook by candlelight just so he would not cry. And then one morning, he opened his door, and there was a brown paper bag. Inside was a thick wool coat, a bag of rice, and a jar of hot soup, still warm. No name. No note.

It happened again every winter after that. Every single winter. A bag at his door. Sometimes a coat. Sometimes money for rent folded inside a book. Sometimes medicine when he was sick. He never knew who it was. Some nights he used to lie awake and imagine that it was his grandfather, looking after him from heaven. It was a foolish thought. But it was the only warm thought he had.

"It was you," he whispered. He turned around. "The bags. The coat. The soup. Every winter. It was you."

Old Lu's chin began to shake.

"Henry made me promise," he said. "If anything happened to him, I must never come close to you. Never let them see us together. He said, 'The Hans will watch the boy. If they see you with him, they will know you were with me, and they will take you both.' So I stayed far away. I sent what I could. It was never enough." He wiped his eyes with the back of his stained hand. "Every winter I stood across the street and watched you open that door. And every winter, I wanted to knock. I am sorry, boy. I am so sorry."

Helen's face changed. The anger went out of it slowly, like air out of a ball. She looked at the old man, and then at Adrian, and she did not say anything else.

Adrian wanted to say many things. Thank you. Why. You should have come. I was so lonely. But all of it got stuck in his throat at once, and in the end, he only nodded, because if he spoke he knew he would cry, and he was not ready to cry in front of anyone yet.

Old Lu pulled out two chairs. "Sit. Both of you. I will make tea."

"I do not want tea," Adrian said. "I want the name."

The old man stopped. He put the teapot down very slowly. Then he sat on the edge of the bed, put his hands on his knees, and looked at the oil lamp for a long time, as if he could see that night inside the flame.

"It was raining," he said. "I remember that the most. Heavy rain, the kind that sounds like stones on the roof. Your grandfather got a phone call at eleven that night. I was in the kitchen. I heard him say, 'Now? At this hour?' Then he put on his coat and told me to go home. He said he had to meet someone at the old Museum Hall. Alone."

"The Museum Hall," Adrian said. "That is where they found him. At the bottom of the stairs."

"Yes." Old Lu nodded. "I did not go home. I knew something was wrong. For weeks, men had been following him in the street. So I followed him to the Hall. The front door was open. All the lights were off, except one on the top floor. I went in quietly and started up the big stone staircase."

His voice dropped.

"I was halfway up when I heard voices. Henry's voice, and another man's. They were arguing. Henry said, 'I will never give it to you. Never. You can tell your master that.' Then there was a sound, a shout, and I saw him. Your grandfather. He came falling backward out of the dark at the top of the stairs."

Helen's hand flew to her mouth.

"Lightning flashed through the big window," Old Lu said. "Just for one second. Everything was white. And in that one second, I saw a man standing on the stairs above Henry. His arm was stretched out. His hand was right on your grandfather's chest."

Adrian's hands closed into fists on his knees. He could hear his own heartbeat in his ears.

"I saw his face," Old Lu whispered. "Only for a second. But I have seen it every night for twelve years when I close my eyes."

"Was it Mr. Han?" Adrian said. "The old man with the cane?"

"No." Old Lu shook his head slowly. "It was not Mr. Han. The Hans are too clever to get blood on their own hands. They paid someone."

"Then who?" Adrian stood up. The chair fell over behind him. "Who? Tell me his name!"

Old Lu lifted his eyes. And he did not look at Adrian.

He looked at Helen.

"Miss Feng," he said quietly. "I am sorry that you must hear this tonight, after everything else."

Helen's face went very still. "Hear what?"

"The man who pushed Henry West down those stairs," Old Lu said, "has worked inside the Feng house for thirty years."

The room went silent.

Adrian saw the color drain out of Helen's face. He saw her lips move, but no sound came out. He saw her hand reach for the edge of the table, as if the floor had tilted under her.

Because there was only one man who had worked in the Feng house for thirty years.

The man who never smiled, not even at weddings. The man who stood on the pier tonight with a gun in his hand.

The man who had saved Adrian's life.

"No," Helen whispered. "No. Not Chen."

And downstairs, in the dark shop, the little bell above the door began to ring.