The Weight of Red Envelopes
The courtyard house sat like a stubborn old man among giants, its gray tiled roof and red lacquered gate hemmed in on every side by glass towers that caught the last orange light of the dying year. Chen Wei always felt something loosen in his chest when he turned off the wide avenue and onto the narrow lane leading home, as if the city noise fell away and something older, slower, took its place. Red lanterns swung from the eaves, their tassels stirring in the cold wind. Above, wedged between skyscrapers, a strip of dusky sky held the promise of fireworks to come.
"Careful," he said, offering his arm to Su Yan as she stepped over the raised threshold, one hand pressed instinctively to the swell of her belly. She was seven months along now, and the courtyard's uneven stones made him nervous in a way he'd never felt before marriage, before this child that had transformed him, quietly and thoroughly, into a man afraid of every loose brick and patch of ice.
"I'm pregnant, not made of glass," Su Yan said, but she smiled as she said it, and let him steady her anyway.
Inside, the kitchen was already thick with steam and the smell of soy sauce and star anise. Chen Wei's mother, Lin…
