Page 1 of The Good, the Bad, and the Aunties

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The wind is a constant song in my ears, the air so cold and refreshing it sparkles against my cheeks as I whoosh down the ski slope. I can’t believe this is the first time I’ve tried skiing. Growing up, Ma and the aunts had forbidden me from doing any “dangerous sports,” which included anything more physically strenuous than chess or piano. When I was five, I suggested that I wanted to try out for the girls’ soccer team. In response, Ma smacked her palms to her cheeks and wailed, “Aiya, the ball will hit you in the head and you will get brain hemo-hedge!”

“What’s a brain hemo-hedge?” Images of a hedge growing out of my head swirled through my mind.

Ma waved her hands around her head, opening and closing her hands. “Is when all the blood come out of your head.All the blood.”

My mind replaced the hedge bursting out of my head withbuckets of blood exploding from it in a red geyser. I swallowed, feeling ill. “Wait, so this is a thing that happens when people play soccer?”

Ma nodded sagely.

My mouth dropped open in horror. “Jenny plays soccer!” I couldn’t believe that Mrs. Andrews would let Jenny play such a dangerous sport.

Ma nodded again, this time somberly. “Ah yes. This because Jenny is middle child. You should be grateful you are only child.”

After that day, I hugged Jenny tight whenever I could, because the poor thing had no idea she was (1) this close to having her head explode like a watermelon on the beach, and (2) unloved due to her fraught position in the family as a middle child.

Soccer was the first sport to be deemed too deadly by Ma, but over the next few months, she and the aunties added to the growing list.

Softball: The ball will smash right through your chest and come out the other side!

Basketball: The ball will decopitot you! (Decopitot: verb. To have something hit you in the head so forcefully that your head is replaced by that thing. Highly probable when playing high-velocity, high-strength sports like basketball in first grade.)

Swimming: There will be a shark in the water, and it will eat you! “But we would swim in the pool, not the s—”

“Are you talking back to your elders??!”

I joined the chess club. I was the worst member in the club because I wasn’t actually into chess, but there wasn’t a possibility of an errant projectile hitting me and making my head spontaneously combust, so there was that. It wasn’t untilcollege that I met Selena, who dragged me to the school gym and introduced me to the wonders of exercise. I found that I liked the rush of endorphins, and later, when I went into wedding photography, it became necessary to start lifting weights so I could carry around my heavy camera equipment without injuring myself. Of course, Ma and the aunts still nagged at me, telling me I was going to give myself a hernia or pop a blood vessel by doing weight training. If they knew that part of my honeymoon with Nathan was a ski trip to Val Thorens, the highest ski resort in France’s Trois Vallées, they would freak out like never before. Probably even more than when I accidentally killed Ah Guan, or when we thought that my wedding vendors were mafia.

I’d been resistant toward the idea of skiing before, due to the aforementioned upbringing of doom and disaster when it came to sports, but Nathan had convinced me and enrolled us in a two-day beginners class with a kindly instructor. That was five days ago, and I graduated from bunny slopes to green, and later, to blue slopes. Today is the last day of our trip, and I’m making the best of the remaining time I have here by skiing down my favorite blue slope, Gentiane. It’s a wide slope that’s so gentle I’m surprised it’s a blue and not a green, and because most people prefer the more exciting reds and blacks, Nathan and I are the only two people on the slope for ages.

I glance at him now, skiing next to me. My husband. The term still sends a delightful little shiver down my back. Reflexively, the corners of my mouth quirk up into a smile. I’m sure that down the road, the words “my husband” will lose their sheen and I’ll be able to say them without experiencing that little glow of joy, but for now, I still savor the words. It still takes me a moment to let them sink in. I’m married. To theOne That Got Away. The man I’ve ached for since college. My one true love, who’s covered up literal murder for my sake and done so much more to ensure the safety of me and my family. I’m so glad we capped off our tromp across Europe with this ski trip. It’s been the most amazing month spent venturing into museums and actual castles complete with battlements and crenellations and old armor, not to mention eating our way through Europe. Thanks to all the incredibly rich cheese and silky chocolate we’ve been having, the waistband of my jeans feels a tad snugger than I’m used to.

A shrill, familiar jangle tears through the peaceful, snowy calm, shattering my focus. I startle, my right foot slips an inch to my right, and that’s all it takes to overturn my balance. My skis swerve precariously, and the world tips sideways as I try—and fail—to stop myself from falling over. Luckily, the snow is as soft as a pile of feathers, and I barely feel it when I land very ungracefully on my side. Dimly, I can hear Nathan calling out my name. Moments later, he skids expertly to a stop and crouches down next to me.

“Are you okay?” His gloved hands cup my face, brushing away snow and gazing with open concern down at me.

I blink and try to catch my breath. “Yeah, nothing’s broken, aside from my dignity.”

Nathan’s shoulders sag with relief, and he pulls me up into a hug. “What happened?”

As though in answer, the ringing starts up again. I grapple for my phone, tucked somewhere into one of the many pockets in my bulky ski jacket. My fingers are half-numb from the cold and clumsy due to my padded gloves, and it takes an eternity to locate the phone and pull it out. When I finally see the screen, my heart sinks. “It’s Ma.”

Nathan frowns, a crease folding between his eyebrows. “That can’t be good.”

I nod. Ma and the aunties have made a big show of not calling me on my honeymoon because, as Ma had said, “Don’t spend time talking to me on your honeymoon, you must spend all your time and energy to make me grandbabies, okay!” I’d almost pointed out that we would hardly be spending all of our waking moments making babies, but then my sense of self-preservation had kicked in and I realized that this worked in my favor, since I didn’t exactly want my mother calling me at all hours of the day while I was on my honeymoon. Still, throughout our trip, Nathan and I have been dutifully checking in on the family WhatsApp group every morning. He had been invited to join the family chat group the very next day after our wedding, and to my slight annoyance, he fit right in, even diving into the inane emoji game with gusto. He had already checked in with them this morning to assure them that we’re okay and haven’t been kidnapped by the same people who took Liam Neeson’s daughter inTaken, so the fact that Ma is calling right now must mean there’s legit bad news.

Ever since the unfortunate incident involving Ah Guan, followed by the appearance of his (understandably) vengeful family, every time Ma or the aunties call instead of using WhatsApp, I get this jolt of electric fear running through my entire body, jump-starting my heart rate into a gallop and making me break out into a sweat. God, I hope nothing’s happened to them.

I struggle to pull my gloves off and hit Accept. “Ma, is everything okay?”

Ma’s face fills my phone screen. As usual, she’s holding the phone right up against her face, so all I can see is one eye and a nostril. “Aduh, Meddy, disaster!”

My stomach plummets. There it is. I just knew that Staphanie and her family wouldn’t be able to let go of the fact that we’d killed their beloved Ah Guan. They only pretended to accept it so they could regroup and come back to get us with a better, deadlier plan. I can practically feel the blood draining from my head, making me dizzy. Next to me, the crease between Nathan’s eyebrows is so deep it looks like a crevasse, but he grabs my free hand and gives it a reassuring squeeze. “It’ll be okay,” he mouths, though clearly, neither of us believes it. There are too many skeletons in our closet for anything to be okay. It’s always been a matter of time before my past caught up with us. I’m only sorry that I dragged Nathan into all this mess. My sweet, loving, unfortunate husband.

Somehow, I manage to find my voice. “What is it, Ma? Wait, tell me in Indonesian,” I add as an extra precaution, though Nathan and I are still alone on the piste.

Ma’s face scrunches up into a picture of sheer anguish. “Mama ngga keburu beli Porto’s cheese rolls.”

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