Page 2 of The Manor of Dreams

Madeline remembered precisely the day and the moment when her mother came home early from work. Ma had entered the living room with a vacant look in her eyes and dropped her bag to the ground, andthat was when Madeline found out her grandmother was dead. They’d sat on the couch together in silence for what could have been minutes or the better part of that day. Ma then called Aunt Rennie; it went to voicemail twice before she’d picked up. When her aunt finally answered the phone, Ma disentangled herself to go upstairs and shut herself in her room.

And then, that next day, her mother abruptly kicked into action. She drafted the obituary and planned the funeral, which had originally consisted of her and Madeline and Aunt Rennie. Madeline’s dad eventually came up for the day, a gesture of kindness that softened her mother, if only momentarily. She pestered theLA Timesto include the obituary, calling the Entertainment desk over and over.

And then, finally, Ma told Madeline about Wài Pó’s house. “We’ll just stay there for a short time,” she’d said. “You and me and your yí ma. Two weeks at most to get everything in order. And then we sell it.”

“But that’s your childhood home,” Madeline had said. “Don’t you want to keep it?”

“No. We don’t.”

They’d driven up two hours from their home in Newport Beach with their bags that Sunday morning. They were all supposed to meet at the house an hour before the reading of the will; Aunt Rennie didn’t come until fifteen minutes before, citing car issues and having needed to hail a rideshare. Ma was slightly irked. But now they were all here. Madeline arched her head up, staring at the way the reddish ceiling beams curved toward each other with intricate wood carved corners, observing this house as she would an artifact in a museum. Whatever had been painted up there was long faded, cracks splitting through the paint.

She felt detached from this place. Her mother was the one who grew up in this house, with Aunt Rennie, with Madeline’s grandmother—her wài pó—who once was an actress in Hollywood.??had been married to another actor, too, named Richard Lowell; Aunt Rennie’s father and Ma’s stepfather. He’d died when Ma was seventeen and Aunt Rennie was fourteen. And then Ma left for college and never really lived here again.

Suddenly Madeline’s passing curiosity twinged into a sharp longing to have lived here; to have known her grandmother beyond her fleeting childhood memories. When she was little, Wài Pó would come to their house in Newport Beach. She would make dumplings for lunch. Then??would take her to the nearby park, her hand clutching Madeline’s.

But then she started fading from their lives. Ma wanted Wài Pó to sell her house and move in with them; Wài Pó refused. She turned down holidays. Ma tried calling her, but she would rarely answer. When Madeline was eleven, she watched a pixelated, pirated version of the movie that won her grandmother her Oscar,Fortune’s Eye, where Wài Pó played a Chinese American woman looking for her brother in the gold rush. The camera work was jarring, the music brassy and melodramatic, but still her grandmother was captivating in every scene. It felt strange, unauthorized almost, to witness the younger, animated version of the person who now shut them out. Madeline never mentioned it to anyone; no one ever brought that movie up.

“The first matters are of her finances,” the lawyer said, bringing Madeline back to the present. Her mother leaned forward. “To her daughters: Yin Chen, Lucille Wang, and Yin Zi-Meng, Renata Yin-Lowell—she intends to distribute a sum of forty thousand dollars to be divided as the two beneficiaries see fit.”

Madeline watched Ma’s glance dart down the table at Aunt Rennie. “That’s—” She swallowed her words. “Forty thousand?” she said, in hoarse Mandarin. Aunt Rennie was frozen. And then, almost immediately, Ma’s shock folded shut. “There must be a mistake,” she said in English.

The girl across from Madeline just watched, her expression flickering with scorn. Madeline felt jarred by Ma’s outburst. It still was a substantial figure. Madeline wanted to melt into the floor. How much money had they been expecting, exactly?

But then again, if her grandmother lived inthisplace, shouldn’t she have had more?

Ma was still bewildered. “This is the entirety of her inheritance? What about her accounts? Her investments?”

“This was all decided on,” the lawyer said. “The monetary inheritance. And for the next—”

“We’re not done here. Where’s the rest?”

“Let him finish, will you?” Elaine Deng finally spoke up.

Ma’s glance cut over to the woman across the table. “I’m sorting outmyfamily matters.”

Elaine said nothing more but smiled, spitefully polite. Aunt Rennie reached out a hand. “It’s okay,” she said softly, sounding unsure herself. “There’s the house.”

“Which leads us to the next clause,” the lawyer said. “The estate.” He shifted in his chair and looked, not at Ma, not at Madeline’s side of the table, but to the two people seated across from them. “Vivian Yin has decided that upon her death, the ownership of this estate and all its matters will hereby be transferred to Elaine Deng.”

two

AUGUST 2024

DAY 1 IN THE HOUSE

RENATAYin-Lowell flinched as Lucille stood abruptly, her chair skidding backward. Rennie watched in slow motion as it tipped over. The back of the chair slammed into the ground and everyone jumped. “This house belongs to us.”

Elaine retorted, “That’s not what the will says.”

“It’s ours,” Lucille insisted. She righted her chair. “Our dad’s family lived here for generations. Our mother lived here for the past fifty years. You’re not taking it away from us.”

“Like you wouldn’t immediately put it on the market to make up for that pathetic inheritance your mother gave you?” Elaine’s voice was caustic. Next to her, the girl stared at Rennie with the same contemptuous look.

While Rennie racked her mind for anything to say to back Lucille up, she registered something in the corner. A figure materialized. But it was quite hazy when she tried to look at it straight on.

She clutched the edge of her seat and blinked, hard. Nothing. It was nothing! Just dust in the sun.

“It belongs to us!” Lucille’s raised voice hauled Rennie’s attention back to the table. “None of this should have been allowed to happen.”

---