Wildest Dreams (Thunder Point #9)(15)

They took her identity. She became Lin Su Simmons.

Then one day she was with her new mother in a store and two old Vietnamese women were whispering about her with her white parents, called her a derogatory name indicating she was an orphan no one would take and her parents had adopted her for status, not for her worth. She thought she was about seven at the time. And without thinking or planning, Lin Su had shot back at them in Vietnamese, My mother is a queen and my father is American, you ugly hag!

The women ducked and ran. Marilyn Simmons was mortified and one of her older sisters, a blonde and biological Simmons daughter, laughed hysterically at their mother’s outrage.

Her birth mother had told her, My father is American and your father is American and these men have failed us. Her heritage was lost, but for the scrap of embroidered cloth and two faux-gold coins given to Nhuong by her father.

Lin Su had two sisters—Leigh was ten years older and Karyn was fourteen years older. Since Lin Su was three when she joined that family in their rich Boston home, that made her sisters thirteen and seventeen. They attended boarding school and from the time Lin Su arrived until she departed at the age of eighteen her sisters were merely visitors. Later, Lin Su would attend the same boarding school, a prestigious academy located in the Adirondacks. There were family holidays together, Karyn’s wedding after her graduation from Bryn Mawr, some trips they all took together. But there were also holidays that her parents were abroad or in the islands and Lin Su stayed at school, one of very few students abandoned while most others spent Thanksgiving or Christmas with their families.

She never bonded with her sisters, unsurprisingly. She had liked them, however. She looked up to them and envied their blond hair and amazing style. Lin Su had friends at school—she was quite popular and very smart. But her older sisters were chic and had fabulous taste. They were also complete opposites. Karyn married a man from a rich banking family, divorced him when she was thirty and married a richer man from a more elite family. She had two children she mothered in much the same way Marilyn had mothered—with a nanny. Leigh had not yet married by the time Lin Su left the family, but she had graduated college, done a tour with the Peace Corps and traveled quite a bit. Lin Su often wondered if either of them ever came home to Boston and said, “What? What do you mean she’s pregnant and gone?” But then why would they? They had given no indication they loved her.

It was her senior year at the academy that she began dating Jacob Westermann. Jake was a big, sexy athlete and she adored him. She went with some of her girlfriends to his rugby matches at a neighboring boy’s academy; they went to each other’s dances; they made love on the sly in any private place they could find. He had been her first.

And her last.

Her parents were very firm—she was to terminate the pregnancy and go to college as planned. She had already been accepted by Bryn Mawr, her mother’s alma mater, and Harvard. Her parents’ charity had extended itself to its limit. They were not supporting her while she raised a child with no father. To her shock and horror, Mrs. Westermann was of like mind. These two upper-class women who spent so many hours drumming up money for good causes from crack babies to animal rights would not acknowledge Lin Su and Jake’s baby. Jake was little help. God, I’m sorry—I was careful. I’ll get you some money. You can take care of it.

She had no option but to leave. She looked for work anywhere and finally was hired in a dry cleaning/laundry shop. The owner was Chinese and rented her a room in the back of his house—a converted garage. She worked by day and went to cosmetology school by night and then found a Vietnamese nail shop where she was grudgingly accepted, though her language skills were rusty at best. In retrospect she realized she took that route to spite her parents—she went back to her roots and before Charlie was born she had polished her language skills. Her uppity parents had no idea how women like her, immigrants from a war-torn country, struggled to acclimate in this complicated country.

Though she worked very hard she still had to accept the charity of those people who would help her. She relied on social services and free women’s clinics for medical care for herself and her baby, shared what seemed like a million apartments with other nail technicians, hoarded her money like a miser, shared child care and transportation. By the time Charlie was three she had socked away enough savings to get to a place better for all his allergies and asthma—she moved to Eugene. She worked and went to school, studying nursing, and when Charlie was six she had a degree and a decent job in a hospital. Charlie was getting allergy shots, and while they still struggled with viruses because of his weakened immune system, he fared well. When he was in school, he excelled.

And here she was, sitting at his bedside, asking herself if she’d been the cause of this latest asthma attack. She could do a little better than that shitty trailer park. They were both at risk there, though they’d been lucky so far. Charlie was an expert at avoiding trouble and keeping the door locked. But she lived in fear. Some of those hoodlums in their neighborhood could turn that little fifth wheel on its side if they wanted to. It might be safer to live in the car, except they needed a kitchen, a bathroom with shower, a food source.

She would not leave Charlie home alone again. She would bring him to Winnie’s and make sure they were kept apart as long as Charlie had a cough, even if that cough was benign. And she’d get about the business of finding better lodging. At once.