The Silent Bride by Leslie Glass Read Free Book Online Page A

kneeling. He said it was a very attractive ear, pretty as a sea-shell.
At ten to nine she pulled up in front of her personal albatross, the Woo family house in Astoria, Queens. Two stories high and red brick, it was a cookie-cutter copy of the five best, but all distinctly modest, houses on the block. Her rooms were on the second floor. The living room faced a small backyard where the tiny French poodle called Dim Sum ran around and did her business. April's small bedroom, large enough for a chair, a bureau, and a single bed, faced the street. Separating the two rooms was a tiny kitchen where she never cooked. Her full bathroom was well stocked with flowery bath-and-body products.
From the outside the only notable feature of the house was a bit of decoration over the windows that had been installed by the previous owners. Shaped like the NBC logo, the "awnings" were useless. They provided no shade against the southern exposure of the morning sun and caught rain with all the noise of a tin roof in the tropics. The fans were purely for show, as was April's signature on the mortgage, since she had debt but no title to the property.
Every time she looked at it, she was reminded that at the time of purchase she had not been included in the selection or the location of the house. She hadn't even known the transaction was in the works until she was pressured into the double bondage of using her savings for the down payment and assuming the mortgage so that her parents would be secure in their old age. At just twenty-one and new in the cops, she'd assumed a thirty-year debt. Nearly ten years later, she'd learned a lot. She'd discovered that many grown children could say no to their parents in bigger ways than choosing a career they didn't like. But somehow she wasn't turning out to be one of them. She'd fallen in love with Mike, but was afraid to tell him about the debt hanging over her head. Even worse, she was afraid of her mother's curse should she marry him. Her fears and her family loyalty made her ten thousand times a jerk, for no one was happy with her lack of decisive action. Her least of all
    With these thoughts in her head again, she slowed the car. The pathway of small red-for-luck azalea bushes that her father had planted on each side of the walk two years ago hadn't bloomed the year of their planting. Four days ago when April had last seen them, they'd still been covered with buds. Now they were finally, spectacularly in flower and every bit as delightful as he had predicted. Sighing, she parked in her usual space in front of the house and killed the engine.
    Skinny Dragon Mother, who must have been waiting for her by the window, came running out before she'd opened the car door.
    "Ayeeai, ayeeai! You so late," she screamed. "Nothing for dinner." Skinny was wearing one of her mismatched outfits. Plaid pants, flowered shirt, knitted vest, all of different colors, as if she'd picked them up willy-nilly from a Goodwill pile at a disaster site.
    Chinese people could be very noisy, or very quiet. Either way could be trouble. Tonight was noisy. "Where you been?" the dragon screamed.
    "Hi, Ma," April said, trying to think of a story that would not spook her.
    "You said five o'clock. Now nine o'clock." Sai Yuan Woo ran toward the car, sniffing at her daughter as if she were a dog that had gotten into the garbage.
    "I'm really sorry, Ma. Something came up."
    "Today day off," Skinny grumbled.
    "I know." April opened the back doors and started gathering the plastic bags of staples she'd been careful to purchase before her meeting with Gao, just in case she didn't feel like it later. Lucky it hadn't been too hot a day and she hadn't bought a squirming fish that her mother would definitely reject now. Everything else looked okay.
    "Bu hao. Murder every day." Skinny correctly intuited murder even though April had not touched the corpse.
    "I know, Ma." How many times could she say she was sorry? One time for every leaf in all the trees