Page 21 of Vera Wong's Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man)

Vera falls silent. She clears her throat. “Ah. Has there been a falling out?”

“No, you don’t understand. I—” Qiang Wen struggles with what to tell her. “I don’t know who Xander’s parents are.”

“But he’s your grandson?”

Qiang Wen winces. “Not by blood.”

“Oh.” Vera leans back. “I see. An adopted grandson.”

Qiang Wen doesn’t answer. The less Vera knows, the better. Once more, his focus goes toward the heavy black lump sitting in his belly. Xander is dead. And Qiang Wen knows, no matter what anyone tells him, it is all his fault.

“You better come with me,” Vera says after a while.

“Huh?”

“I came here to invite you to dinner, remember? The food will get cold. Come, grab your jacket. And if you don’t mind, I’ll just pack up those leftover dumplings and add them to the menu I’ve prepared for tonight.”

Qiang Wen gapes wordlessly as Vera bustles to the kitchen, already whipping out a container and a pair of chopsticks seemingly out of thin air. She opens the massive steamer without asking for permission and begins collecting the dumplings in her container. “These look great, Qiang Wen! Still the same juicy dumplings after all these years.” When the container is full, she closes it with a quick snap and comes back out. “Got your jacket? Ah, here it is.” She grabs it from the hook and drapes it over his shoulders. “Let’s go, mustn’t keep the others waiting.”

“The others?” Qiang Wen must be in a dream. Or a trance. Or some kind of fugue state. And he’s somewhat grateful for Vera’s unquestionable confidence; now that she has dropped a bomb in his life by telling him about Xander’s death, she isn’t merely leaving him to spiral in his thoughts like he surely would. She’s leading him, as though he were a helpless child, to what sounds like a big dinner, and maybe that’s just what he needs right now? He has no idea, but here he is, locking up his shop and hurrying after Vera.

“Oh yes, the others. They are quite a funny group of people. I think you will like them.” She glances at him sideways. “Or maybe not. I don’t know, but you will like the food, anyway.” With that, she brisk-walks down the block with so much enthusiasm that Qiang Wen has to jog to keep up with her.

•••

As Vera predicted, Qiang Wen does like the food. He likes it a lot. When Yi Mei was alive, their meals used to be more like this—varied, with at least five or six dishes to accompany the white rice they ate daily. After she died, Qiang Wen stuck only to leftover dumplings. To be clear, his dumplings are nothing to be scoffed at. They are juicy and flavorful and made from scratch every morning, and he makes six different fillings, so there’s some variety, at least. But all he’s had for the last twelve years are dumplings. Dumplings for breakfast, dumplings for lunch, and dumplings for dinner. His daughter asked him once if he wasn’t tired of dumplings, and he’d wanted to tell her that he saw food only as sustenance, that he ate without really tasting, so what did it matter if he was eating the same thing every day?

But now he finds himself sitting at a table surrounded by strangers. “A funny group of people,” Vera had said, and they truly are, just not in the ha-ha sort of way, but more in the why-is-everybody-here sort of way. He’s still in a daze, and it’s a struggle to remember who everyone is. The Latino man sitting on his left is named TJ, and next to TJ is his teenage daughter, Robin. On Qiang Wen’s right is Vera, and on Vera’s other side is a young Caucasian woman named Amy or something like that, and then on Amy’s other side is a young Asian woman named Millie, who looks like she might jump out of her seat and run away at any moment. Though, Qiang Wen supposes, the same could be said for any of them, really. None of them look like they’re delighted about being here.

And yet, for some strange reason, here they all are, and none of them is making a move to leave. It’s got to be some sort of spell.Maybe Vera is some sort of deity, or maybe some cunning fox spirit in the guise of an older woman. Her food is certainly bewitching. The past few years, food has turned to ash as soon as it enters Qiang Wen’s mouth. He’s been chewing for years without tasting. But now, as he sits there wordlessly, Vera heaps different steaming dishes onto his plate—spicy Mouthwatering Chicken, cold peanut noodles, braised beef shank, tea-flavored eggs—and for the first time in years, Qiang Wen is eating first with his eyes. He stares at each dish with newfound wonderment. They’re all familiar, all of them things that Yi Mei had made before, and yet they’re also different. Gingerly, he takes a small bite of the chicken, and true to its name, his mouth waters, his taste buds bursting to life. He chokes back a sudden urge to start sobbing and quickly takes a sip of tea.

“Now, Aimes,” Vera is saying to the blond girl. “You stay away from the chicken, is too spicy for white people.”

“That’s—you can’t say that,” Robin says. “That’s playing on stereotypes.”

“What is that? Stereo what?”

“Stereotype. Like, making an assumption based on someone’s race.”

Vera looks confused. “So, what I should be making assumption based on? Age?”

“That would be ageist,” TJ says helpfully.

“Okay,” Vera says. “So, base on sex?”

Everyone except for Qiang Wen (who is in all honesty rather lost at this point) groans. “No, that would be sexist,” Aimes says. “Anyway, it’s fine, we can move on from this. I can take spice.”

“So, sexist is not same as sexy?” Vera muses as she places somechicken on Aimes’s plate. “I always thought that when people tell me I am sexist, they mean I am very sexy.”

Qiang Wen wonders about the etiquette of leaping up and running away. Around him, faces are still, like everyone is wondering the same thing.

“Yeah,” Robin says finally. “That’s not what they meant when they said that.”

“Aiya. And here I have been thinking: Oh, good job, Vera, over sixty years old and people still finding you sexy, like Michelle Yeoh.”

TJ looks horrified at the combination of the words “Vera” and “sexy.” Qiang Wen can hardly blame him; Qiang Wen’s own cheeks are burning with embarrassment. But then he takes a bite of the tea-steeped eggs, and he wants to weep because he feels like a little boy again, running indoors after an afternoon spent climbing trees and biting into a tea egg. He can almost feel the comforting pat of his mother’s hand on his head as he chews. He’s forgotten what food made with love tastes like.

“Everyone have some dumplings,” Vera says, plopping the dumplings on their plates. “Qiang Wen made them especially for tonight.”

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