Their mother's cooking of a full meal, it turned out, wouldn't end after that evening. Nearly every night afterwards, their mother continued to cook for them. Every meal was a surprise — it could be congee one night, real, not-frozen dumplings the next. Vicente stopped going to school hungry, and Yao's dark circles faded by the day.

  Even the arguments stopped. Their father changed to be strangely subdued, never shouting at their mother. She never yelled back, either. There was no more of Leon crying himself to sleep or Ling hiding under her desk while clutching her stuffed animals. For a whole three months, things were peaceful.

  But the peace was only the calm before the storm.

  At the end of June, when the siblings received the results of their final exams and their report cards on the last day of school, the time of peace ended. Their mother returned home without the cheerful greeting they'd become used to, instead going straight to the kitchen to start making dinner.

  While trying to sort out the mess of worksheets and notices in his folder, Vicente heard the familiar sound of chopping. He rifled through his papers one last time and got up from the kitchen table, heading for the kitchen counter where their mother was mincing a stalk of ginger. He tapped her on the shoulder. "Mother?"

  She scraped the small pile of pureed ginger off the chopping board and into a dish.

  "Mother?" Vicente repeated. "Can I help you cook?"

  She reached for a sprig of spring onions and began cutting them up. Vicente went back to the kitchen table. Leon, who realised that their mother wasn't paying attention to them, resumed his search for somewhere to hide his report card.

  "Hide it under your pillow," Vicente suggested, watching Leon try to wrap his jacket around his report card.

  "Then I'll see it every night." He pulled his report card out and stared at the window. "Should I just throw it out?"

  "If you throw it out, someone is going to find a crumpled-up report card with Leon Huang wrote all big and clear on the top and bring it back up. Then Mother will see the D you got in math."

  Leon crossed his arms. "At least I passed."

  Those were his thoughts when he saw the C+ he got in French and the B- in English, but Vicente decided not to say it. His little brother went back to brainstorming. "I could wash it down the sink."

  "You'd block the sink, and we'll have to dig little bits of your report card up from the sink-hole-thing." No, it couldn't be called a sink-hole, that was a sort of hole that opened up in the middle of the street to swallow people. "From the drain, I mean."

  "Should I set it on fire?"

  "I don't trust you near fires."

  "You were the one who nearly melted our frying pan!"

  "That was one time," Vicente defended. He made a big show of covering his ears and went back to trying to organise his mess of a folder.

  Yao chose that moment to march into the kitchen, holding his own report card, and found Leon trying to jam his card up his shirt. "I'm gone for fifteen minutes, and I come back to you trying to wear your report card?"

  "There's no report card," Leon fibbed. "I never got a report card."

  Vicente added helpfully, "he got a D in math and doesn't want Mother to know."

  He narrowly dodged the pencil-case Leon threw at him.

  "How about the rest of your subjects?" Yao set his report card down on the kitchen table; he could see the neat row of As all the way down, except for the B+ in French that stuck out from the line of perfection. "I bet you did great in English."

  "I got an A!" Leon said smugly. "And my teacher gave me a prize for having the most stories stuck on the board all year. She only sticks the best stories on the board."

  Yao grabbed Leon's report card, which was sticking out from the top of his shirt. "English, A," he narrated loudly. "Math, D. Social studies, B+. Science, B-. Music — "

  Leon screeched and tackled Yao, wrestling the report out away from him. Yao mock-groaned in pain and sank to the floor, holding an imaginary wound. "You killed me!" He cried. "You killed me like Claudius did to his brother in Hamlet!"

  Vicente had no idea what that Hand-lute or Hamster or whatever was, but he didn't want to be the next one to get his grades announced, so, as usual, he hid his report card at the very back of his folder.

  Ling ran into the kitchen holding her own report card. "I got an A in Art!"

  "That's great." Leon peered at his sister's report card. "And for everything else..." He groaned. "Nothing below a B! How come I'm the only one with grades under C?"

  "Because you don't study enough?"

  "Shut up."

  Then came the sound of the stove switching on, and the sizzling of something being fried. Leon's stomach growled audibly, and the noise earned him a dirty look from Yao. "I can't help it, I'm hungry," he protested.

  He no longer had a reason to be hungry when five minutes later, their mother announced that dinner was ready. Then, since he was feasting on salty brown muui choi with steamed tofu and a too-large chunk of rice, it took Leon another minute to finish chewing (he at least had the good graces not to talk with his mouth full). "This is really good," he said. "Ling, can you pass me some watercress?"

  Ling pulled the pot of watercress soup farther away from Leon. She only succeeded in pulling it a few centimetres away, but Leon still gave her a dirty look. Sandwiched between the two of them, having been trying to get a piece of radish from across the table for ten minutes, Vicente silently wished he'd switched seats with Yao.

  After their father broke up the little scuffle between Leon and Ling, everyone fell into silence again. Vicente began thinking about how he'd spend his first summer in the West. Unlike in Taiwan, his teachers hadn't assigned home over the holiday, which meant more time to relax and have fun. But he still didn't really have any friends, and Arlingdale wasn't familiar enough for him to spend his time outside, and he found himself longing for a stack of work to do. At least that would keep him occupied.

  When the family was living in Taipei, Yao would drag him and Leon out once they'd both finished their holiday homework, yammering on and on about how it was unhealthy to stay at home and read all day (Vicente never mentioned that that was what Yao did most of the year). They'd take the metro and go to the city, spending their pocket money on new books and snacks, then went to parks or handicraft fairs. Lunch would be eaten at a nearby convenience store. Yao and Vicente would get hot fishballs and tofu that burned their mouth one too many times, and Leon, who laughed as they fanned their mouths, would get refrigerated rice balls instead.

  And sometimes, when both their parents weren't around, they'd take Ling (who could barely talk the first few summers they went out) with them for dinner, which was normally spent at a nearby night market. The four of them would buy buns stuffed with minced beef and black pepper one night, sausages another, and their heavenly dinner would be completed by a bowl of herbal jelly or a cup of bubble tea to keep blisters from popping up. By the time September came and school begun, they'd have spent all their pocket money. Vicente always saved up for the next ten month in preparation for their next glorious summer escapade.

  Of course, there wouldn't be that sort of thrill or fun in Arlingdale, or even a twentieth of it. Maybe he'd finally pluck up the courage to get himself a card at the local library and read the summer away. Maybe he'd ask his mother if she'd teach him how to cook, again and again until she gave him an answer that wasn't "we'll see" or "I'll tell you later". Maybe he'd help Yao prepare for high school and ask for advice on starting middle school. None of those things sounded very exciting, but he figured it was better than doing nothing.

  Suddenly their father spoke up, and though he was content contemplating his limited options for summer entertainment, he decided to listen.

  His voice was unusually serious as he asked, "do you all know what 'divorce' means?"

  Leon's grin faded instantly. He stopped jostling with Ling, looked right at their father and nodded. His two older brothers followed suit. Only Ling stared in confusion and shook her head.

  "It means that two people will end their marriage and live separately." That definition was close to what Vicente had thought to tell Leon during September. He swallowed another mouthful of rice as their father continued, "your mother and I have decided to get a divorce."

  His brother had been right. Their parents would part ways, and despite who the siblings would be living with, they might not see the other parent ever again. Yao, who looked unsurprised at the news, asked, "why?"

  "That is none of your concern." Their father said, a tinge of harshness creeping into his tone. Then he sighed. "But you all will continue living here, as usual, and the only difference will be that your mother will no longer be with us."

  It didn't feel like the "only difference". With their mother gone, Vicente was sure that things would go back to the way it'd always been. He and Yao would have to try and cram cooking, studying and resting into a day, for one. Leon would struggle with his work without anyone to answer his questions, too, and Ling would be left alone again. That was surely more than one difference.

  "Oh." Vicente surprised himself by saying, "all right. We understand." He didn't get it at all, really, but it seemed a nuisance to ask, so he immediately busied himself with getting soup instead.

  Next to him, Leon looked like he wanted to ask a million questions, but, like Vicente, he stood up and reached for the pot of soup.

  Later that night, for the first time in three months, their parents argued again. Trying to muffle the shouting from under his pillow, Vicente could only hear a few words of their fight — that everything was "for the best" and "for the children". He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to think of something else.

  Loud coughing came from the other bed in the room, and Vicente poked his head out from under the pillow to see Leon crying harder than ever, shoulders shaking from under the blanket. He jumped out of bed and walked quietly towards his brother, pulling him into his arms and reaching for a piece of tissue.

  He didn't have any reassurance to offer. "We'll be fine" didn't sound like the right thing to say when they could very well not be.

...

A/N: Muui choi is a type of cured vegetable commonly served in Cantonese food, sometimes with tofu (like the one Leon eats in the chapter) or steamed meat. Unlike most cured vegetables, it's not sour but very salty.