Rich People Problems-Kwan 2017 (WWT)

he ever saw that Jack Bing thing coming. Hey, what ever happened to that daughter of
his?”
“Colette? Hell if I know. After she had Rachel poisoned, we made sure to steer clear of
her. I wanted to press charges against her, you know? But Rachel wouldn’t hear of it.”
“Hmm…Rachel sure is a forgiving person.”
“That she is. And that’s why I’m here. I’m under specific orders to come back and make
peace with Ah Ma.”
“And is that what you want to do?”
Nick paused for a moment. “I’m not sure, quite honestly. Part of me feels like all this
happened a lifetime ago. Our daily lives are so removed from everything going on here.
On the one hand, I can’t ever forget the way Rachel was treated and how my grandmother
couldn’t trust me, but on the other hand, her acceptance is kind of irrelevant now.”
“Everything ends up seeming irrelevant in the face of loss,” Colin said as he sped onto
East Coast Parkway. “So am I taking you straight to the house, or do you want to grab a
bite first?”
“You know what, it’s so late, I probably should go straight to the house. I’m sure there
will be food for us there. With everyone in town, I think Ah Ching’s kitchen staff must be
churning out food nonstop.”
“No problem. Tyersall Park, coming right up! I’m just going to visualize a hundred
sticks of satay awaiting me there. You know, not to push you in any way, but I like your
grandmother. She’s always been good to me. Remember how I ran away from home after
my stepmonster threatened to ship me off to boarding school in Tasmania, and your
grandma let us hide out in the tree house at Tyersall Park?”
“Yeah! And every morning, she would make the cook send a big basket full of breakfast
goodies up to the tree,” Nick added.
“That’s what I mean! All my associations with your grandma revolve around food. I’ll
never forget the chee cheong fun and char siew baos delivered on those bamboo trays,
and the freshly baked roti prata! We were feasting like kings up there! When I finally got
sent home, I wanted to find any excuse I could to run away to that little tree house again.
Our cook was nothing compared to yours!”
“Haha! I remember you ran away from home so many times.”
“Yep. My stepmonster made life so miserable. You only ran away once, if I remember
correctly.”
Nick nodded as the memory began to unfurl in his mind, taking him back to when he
was eight years old…
They had been in the middle of dinner, just the three of them. His father, mother, and
him, eating in the breakfast room off the kitchen, as they did when his parents weren’t
entertaining guests in the formal dining room. He could even remember what they ate
that night. Bak ku teh. He had poured too much of the rich, aromatic broth over his rice,
making it too watery for his liking, but his mother had insisted he finish his bowl before
she would let him redo it. She was more irritable than usual—it seemed like both his