Chapter 2

"Blake, why didn't you bring your girlfriend home for All Souls' Day this year? It would've been the perfect chance for us to meet her."

Unease crawled through me, and my mind had already started running toward ugly possibilities.

"Ah, I did mean to bring her back to meet all of you, but we broke up half a month ago. Her family didn't approve, and we lived in different cities, so we ended it."

Blake said it with a helpless tone, his smile a little awkward. Clearly he didn't want to talk about it any further.

But the more I thought about it, the more panic set in, and a few more questions later my mother cut me off.

"What is wrong with you? Why are you so tactless? Your cousin doesn't want to talk about it, and you just keep pushing."

Blake gave another awkward laugh and suggested we go honor the graves and burn the offerings, then head off to eat.

He said he'd booked a whole table at the country lodge in the village and wanted us all to come.

I nodded and walked over to tend the graves. Burned the paper, bowed, offered incense, circled the family plot twice.

I paced off the grave's footprint with my feet, and sure enough it was bigger than before.

The number of steps was more than a little off from what I remembered walking around it as a child.

And at the spot behind the grave, the stench of decay was especially thick.

The back of the grave had been sealed with concrete. The concrete hadn't fully set yet, and one poke of a bamboo stick broke through it.

So I kept working the stick down deeper, wanting to see what was at the very bottom.

Just as I got the stick all the way in and was about to pull it back out, Blake came over without a word, his eyes fixed on me like burning torches, his voice several degrees colder.

"What are you doing, cousin?"

He looked angry, his stare locked on the bamboo stick in my hand.

Then he snatched it away.

"Ah—"

I let out a small cry. The stick had cut my hand.

"It's nothing. I just saw there was a hole here and figured I'd check how deep it went, whether it needed filling in."

Blake was tense, and unhappy too. He snapped the stick in half, turned, and threw it into the fire pot where the paper money was burning.

"I understand. I'll get someone to patch it up in a bit. Cousin, please stop touching things."

He ignored my injured hand and instead grew even more anxious, checking around the whole grave, then called then and there to order more than a dozen bags of concrete to seal on another layer.

"Cousin, I speak bluntly, so don't take it to heart, but don't disturb a single grain of sand on this grave again. I had a professional master lay out the feng shui for it, and it cost a lot of money."

"The master said the women of the family aren't to go touching the grave. Otherwise it ruins the fortune and the feng shui, and it'll hurt my luck with money and career."

"Cousin, don't act up like you did when we were kids. If I lose my temper here, it won't be good for either of our families."

The moment my mother heard I'd caused trouble, she didn't dare say much, quickly dragging me over to apologize to Blake.

The longer I looked, the more it turned my stomach, and I was even more certain now that Blake had a body hidden in the family grave.

To avoid tipping him off, I could only apologize for now, planning to sneak back that night to take a look.

Later we went to the country lodge to eat. Blake never showed up, but he'd covered the food and the drinks.

One table ran to several thousand, everything gourmet game and country delicacies, the liquor top-shelf, and he'd even left several cartons of good cigarettes on the table to honor the elders.

The elders couldn't help praising him. Blake had really made something of himself this time.

Uncle Gerald, though, gave a cold snort. He kept eating what Blake had paid for, cursing him all the while.

"Him, make a fortune? Not a chance in hell. He stuttered when he was a kid, and now two years out in the world and he strikes it rich?"

"You don't know, but I do. He's just got a decent face, latched onto some rich girlfriend out there, and bled her dry a long time ago."