Read Online Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok - Free Book Online

stories they have about animal ambulances, I know her better than anyone. “But she and Jim can’t have any pets because Jim’s allergic to everything.”
    At this, Lukas’s face closes up. “That is a pity. It looks a bit lighter outside. I will take your suitcases.”
    As I step out I wrap my jacket more closely around me. The storm has turned day into evening. It is freezing for May. The wind feels different here, more penetrating, piercing the thin cocoon of warmth I’d found in the car. We race into the main house. Helena has turned on only a few lights, and it somehow manages to feel even chillier than the bleak weather outside. I stare at the darkened stairwell, which has steep, tiny steps that look like they would only fit half a normal foot. The living room is depressing and tasteless, as if someone flipped through a pile of decorating magazines from different decades and copied the pages at random. The walls are modern in dark gray, clashing with the orange-and-gold marble floor. A brown leather couch dominates the room, forbidding and stern, bracketed by two puritanical armchairs that face off against a traditional Chinese wooden opium table. None of the stiff furniture seems to go together, despite the apparent expense of each individual piece. Willem flips on more of the lights and I catch sight of my reflection against the main window, pale and wrung out, like an old dishcloth.
    There are framed photos of Lukas everywhere—very handsome, now that I can see his face without the overgrown stubble. Impish, long-lashed dark eyes, his father’s fine features. Gangly adolescent. Estelle and Lukas, laughing together into the camera, like two teenage models posing for a perfume ad. Lukas, small and skinny, missing a few teeth, wearing swimming trunks and holding up a piece of paper that reads A . A family photo of Helena, Willem, and Lukas in front of the Eiffel Tower. They all squint into the sunlight as if they’ve been blinded. A studio shot of Helena and Willem’s wedding: A young Helena sitting in a cake of a dress and Willem awkwardly poised with his arm around her. A small basket filled with what looks like identical triangular bits of folded paper sits beside a half-assembled paper sculpture of a creature—a coiled cobra, perhaps.
    I search for a picture of Sylvie and can’t find anything: only there, a small stubby finger on Lukas’s shoulder; in the background, strands of black hair over a purple jacket; part of a knee, resting next to Lukas’s leg. Sylvie has been deliberately excised, made into nothing more than a fall of hair, a disembodied hand. With painful pity, I think, Sylvie, was this the home you longed for?
    At the far end of the living room, a long hard dining set looks like it’s been bolted to the floor. Helena is bustling around in the open kitchen, where I also find an altar for Grandma. I clasp my hands together and bow low. The incense holder overflows with ash. Finally, something I recognize here.
    As I straighten, Helena watches me approvingly. “Let me show you to your room.”
    Even with my small feet, I am careful climbing the shallow stairs. My bags have disappeared, which means someone has probably already brought them upstairs, thank goodness. Helena and Willem’s bedroom is on the second floor as well, along with the main bathroom and a little room filled with cabinets and boxes. There’s another room that smells faintly of medicine, an old person’s room. I know instinctively that this must have been Grandma’s. An empty key chain and a few pieces of china are all that remain—a Kuan Yin, serene on her lotus blossom, sits on a small raised altar in the corner. A bracelet of polished wooden temple beads, like the ones Ma wears, lies abandoned next to the bed. Helena pauses by the doorway and I see grief shadow her face. She wraps one arm around herself as if she is cold.
    Impulsively, I touch her shoulder. “I’m so sorry you lost Grandma. You must have loved