CHAPTER 1
"Dad, I'm home." No answer.
Leili Teng sighed. She told herself that after a week away, he'd come rushing to the door to welcome her. But she knew the minute she stepped into the unlit front hall that he would be sitting in his study, bent over his computer, lost in some other world.
She dreaded walking into her father's office. For the past few months, he'd covered his papers and turned off his computer screen, shielding his jumbled numbers from her eyes. She trudged down the hall to the study door that was shut tight against her. Last fall, it always stood open, beckoning her to come in. Today, he had taped a note above the door knob.
UOY EVOLI. RETAL WON TON.
Uoy evoli. Dad had written her that little message, their private code, for as long as she could remember. I love you. Some mornings, she'd find a note on her bedside table when she woke up, his letters neatly printed in a thin line: Uoy evoli.
Retal won ton. Not now later. A flash of anger tore through her.
The card may have taken longer to write than a welcome home hug.
In spite of the message, she knocked on the door and put her hand on the door knob. She needed to speak to him. And after all the secrecy of the past few months, Leili thought maybe he needed to speak to her as well. She let a shimmer of hope slip down her arm to her fingers and turned the handle.
She found him hunched in front of his computer, head in his hands. Numbers, letters and symbols blinked across the white glare of the screen, the only light in his icy room. He had a pad of paper on his right covered with minuscule scribbles and blue file cards stacked in precise piles on his left.
He turned to look at her and then quickly turned the pad, cardboard side up, on top of the mound of notes. "I didn't hear you come in," he said. The room darkened as the screen went blank. Leili had planned to tell him about her week-long trip. But her words vanished. Her father continued to face the blank computer as if it held him in a trance he could not break.
Could she explain to him how it felt to be with the Bennetts, part of a real family? Caitlin Bennett had invited Leili to spend spring break with Caitlin's parents and her brothers in a small rented cabin in West Virginia. The constant chaos startled Leili. Caitlin's younger brothers, eight year old twins, Max and T.J., couldn't sit still for any length of time, nor could their chocolate Labrador puppies, Chip and Fudge. On the second evening, a tangle of boys and pups upset the chess board, ending the game for the night. The Bennett clan also held silly contests over who could sing louder, run faster, or eat more pancakes with hugs all round for the winners and the losers. On the other hand, the whole family stopped often on the long hikes up mountain trails to admire a wild flower or the view. Once when a doe with two spotted fawns crossed the trail, they all stood silent in open mouthed admiration. Best of all, they treated Leili as one of them, teasing her with their easy-going comments and sharing their love of games, the outdoors and each other.
Leili wanted to confront her father with the thoughts running through her head. His increasing silence scared her. She wavered between concern for him and fears for herself. Caitlin's father is a United States senator. He had plenty of work over the week. He sat with his laptop in a corner for hours each day. But he never gave Caitlin an empty stare when she interrupted him.
Leili sighed. What's wrong? she wondered. Why this change? Here in our house now, it's secrecy, silence and solitude.
She tried to control her voice and said, "Sorry to disturb you. Senator Bennett asked me to remind you that his hearings begin Tuesday, the day after tomorrow. He hopes you'll call him in the morning."
He swiped his hand across his forehead. "Didn't you read my note? I'm right in the middle of ..." He shook himself and turned toward her, softening the harshness of his words with a sad smile. "It's good to have you home. I missed you."
Leili felt a flicker of his old warmth. She wanted to reach out to him, wanted them to be a team once again, the way they had been when they first moved to Washington ten months ago.
She watched the feeling pass from his face. Without responding to the message from the Senator, he turned back to his computer. She'd been dismissed. Leili quietly pulled the door shut behind her and leaned heavily against the wall.
Leili muttered to herself as she marched toward the stairs. "Dad, what's happened? It wasn't like this when we came here. You treat me like a spy." The word slipped out with a hiss.
She tromped up the bare wooden steps, loving the heavy echo that sounded in the narrow hall. Maybe he'll notice that, she thought. She banged her feet with satisfaction on the stair treads.
CHAPTER 2
Leili dumped her backpack on her bed and looked around. Her room soothed her. The clean white walls and the order of her things—every object in its place. The bookshelf beside the bed full of folk tales and other old favorites plus a few tantalizing new novels as yet unread. She and her dad had found the long table under the window in a junk shop. They had sanded the top until it was smooth and rubbed in three coats of tung oil with their bare hands like ancient Chinese woodworkers. Now the hard surface shone in the sunlight.
The table held her journal, a ceramic pot filled with pens and a treasured photo of her mom. The expanse of bare wood invited her to sit down to write another of her fantasies about cranes flying to people's rescue and gentle dragons hiding in piney forests. Outside her window, leaves small as mouse ears unfurled on the gnarled apple tree. She tried to clear her mind and fall into her fantasy world, but the real facts of what was happening with her father held her back.
Leili studied the photo of her mom holding a rattle in front of a laughing baby for maybe the ten thousandth time. It had been taken only a few months before she died. "Believe it or not," her dad told her when he gave her the framed photo, "that tiny baby is you. You gave your mom a lot of joy. See how she looks at you."
Leili stared at the photo, comparing her years in California with the months since then in Washington. After her mom's death, she and her dad moved into a small apartment in her grandmother Teng's traditional Chinese house on a lonely hilltop high above San Francisco. Grandmother Teng watched Leili carefully to see that Leili followed her strict rules: take your shoes off before you enter the house, eat everything on your plate. Don't run in the halls.
By day, Leili went to her grandmother's real estate office until her father picked her up after work. At age three, her grandmother hired Tutor Chen, a white bearded teacher, to begin morning lessons. By age ten, the lessons lasted most of the day.
Her dad, a computer analyst, received an offer to become Under Secretary of Technology for the Department of Commerce in Washington, D.C. In early June, only ten months ago, they packed up the car with their books and belongings and drove across the country, moving into a small rented bungalow on Upton Street on Leili's thirteenth birthday. For Leili, it meant freedom. No more home schooling with Tutor Chen. No more living by Grandmother's rulebook.
Furnishing the house. Cleaning. It had been an adventure. A shared adventure. They ran twice a week or set out for long bike rides in Rock Creek Park and on...
