I cry a lot, but I am so productive

Oscar had been accused of plenty of things by 2021.

Driving too aggressively. Driving too cautiously.

Being too quiet. Being arrogant because he was quiet.

Having no personality. Having a very dry personality.

Mark had once accused him of treating pasta like a food group.

Felicity regularly accused him of leaving glasses of water in increasingly inexplicable places around their flat.

Oscar Piastri had never been accused of kidnapping his own daughter, though. That one was new.

And that one, as it turned out, Oscar did not handle it particularly well.

It was a Monday afternoon in London.

He remembered that afterwards because Mondays were usually his easiest day.

No race weekend. No simulator work until the following morning. No travel.

Felicity had gone to lectures for the day, which meant Oscar had Bee.

Not that having Bee was unusual.

They arranged everything around each other. Felicity had her degree. Oscar had Formula 2.

Bee had decided neither of those things were particularly important compared to ensuring she received a banana at precisely the moment she desired a banana.

It worked. Mostly.

That afternoon, Oscar had taken her to the supermarket. They needed milk. Bread. Strawberries. Nappies.

Felicity had texted him halfway there asking for coriander.

Oscar had texted back: Which one is coriander?

Fliss: The green one.

Oscar: They're all green.

Fliss: It says coriander on the packet, Oz.

Helpful.

Bee was thirteen months old and had recently discovered walking, which meant every outing now took approximately four times longer because she objected strongly to being carried when she could instead stagger independently toward every interesting piece of litter in Greater London.

She wore a pair of dungarees that Felicity had bought secondhand because, according to her, buying expensive clothing for a child who grew at the approximate speed of bamboo was economically irresponsible.

Her dark hair had grown long enough for two tiny pigtails. Oscar had done them himself. One was slightly higher than the other.

He'd sent Felicity a photo. She had replied: I'm proud of you. Oscar had considered that a successful morning.

Bee had Felicity's face.

Everyone said it. She had the shape of Felicity's eyes. Felicity's cheeks. Felicity's nose. Felicity's entire face, really, reproduced on a one-year-old who occasionally made expressions so unmistakably Oscar that it startled him.

Oscar loved that. There were moments when Bee looked up at him, and he could see the girl he'd fallen hopelessly in love with staring back through their daughter's face.

There were pieces of Oscar in there too. His mouth, perhaps. Bee’s eyes were lighter than Felicity’s.

He had never once considered that anybody might look at Bee’s face and see evidence that Bee couldn't be his. Apparently, he should have.

He knew exactly where she came from. He'd been there. He remembered every terrifying second of it.

They were in a supermarket near their flat. Bee was sitting in the trolley seat. She also held a banana in both hands. Not eating it. Just possessing it.

Oscar had learned there was an important distinction. "You can't have that yet," he told her.

Bee hugged it closer. "Mine."

"You haven't paid for it."

"Mine."

"Technically Tesco's."

Bee stared at him.

Oscar sighed. "Capitalism is difficult, isn't it?"

"Mine."

"Yeah, Bumblebee, yours." He turned the trolley into the next aisle.

That was when he noticed the woman. Probably late fifties. Maybe early sixties. Standing near the end of the aisle with a basket over one arm. Looking at him. Then at Bee. Then at him again.

Oscar looked away.

He picked up Felicity's preferred tea and dropped it into the trolley. Bee immediately reached for it.

"Mama."

"Yes, Mama's tea."

"Mama."

"Very good."

He handed her the box. Bee examined it seriously.

The woman was still watching.

Oscar felt irritation beginning to prickle. He moved on.

Cereal. Bread. Eggs.

(They didn't have chickens yet. In retrospect, Oscar would someday look back on supermarket eggs with enormous fondness.)

Bee babbled to herself. "Mama. Banana. Car."

"Yep."

"Papa."

Oscar looked at her automatically. "Yeah?"

Bee smiled. Oscar smiled back.

And then a voice behind him said, "Excuse me."

Oscar turned. The woman had followed them. Something about that made his shoulders tighten immediately.

"Yeah?"

She smiled. Except it wasn't really a smile. It was the sort adults used when they had already decided they were reasonable. "Is she yours?"

Oscar stared at her. He looked at Bee. Then back at the woman. "Yes."

The woman hesitated. "Your daughter?"

Oscar's irritation sharpened. "Yes."

Bee, apparently deciding this conversation concerned her, pointed directly at Oscar. "Papa."

Oscar almost laughed. There. Problem solved.

"How old are you?" the woman asked.

Oscar stared at her. "What?"

"You seem very young."

"I'm twenty."

"And you're saying she's your child." Not asking. Saying. Sceptical.

Oscar felt heat climb his neck. "Yes."

Bee reached for him. "Papa."

He automatically put one hand against her stomach. "Yeah, Bumblebee."

The woman's eyes flicked toward Bee's face. Then Oscar's. "You don't look very alike."

And there it was. Oscar felt his jaw tighten. He'd seen this before.

Not this exact situation. He'd seen people ask Felicity where she was really from.

He'd been there when someone at a restaurant had assumed Felicity was part of the staff.

He'd watched airport security pull her aside while Oscar walked through.

He'd heard people ask whether she was "Chinese or Japanese" as though those were the only settings available.

Once, at dinner, a man had asked Oscar if Felicity's parents minded her "dating outside her culture." Oscar had been too shocked to answer properly.

He'd heard jokes. Questions. Comments.

Small things people expected them to laugh away because apparently racism stopped counting if someone smiled while doing it. Oscar hadn't always known what to say when they were younger.

Felicity usually made it easy for everyone. She smiled. Corrected them quietly. Changed the subject. Said it didn't matter.

Oscar had eventually realised that it doesn't matter often meant I do not have the energy to make this matter right now. He had started paying closer attention after that.

Now someone was looking at his daughter with the same suspicion.

And suddenly Oscar had plenty of energy. "She looks like her mum," he said.

The woman's smile tightened. "Oh."

Oscar waited. She still didn't leave.

Then she looked down at Bee. "Sweetheart, do you know this man?"

Something in Oscar went absolutely still. Bee blinked at the woman.

Oscar said, "Don't."

The woman looked at him. "Sorry?"

"Do not talk to her."

His voice wasn't loud. Oscar almost never got loud. It was worse when he didn't.

The woman shifted slightly. "I'm only checking—"

"Checking what?"

There was a pause. "Well, you have to be careful these days."

Oscar stared at her. "Careful about what?"

She didn't answer. He knew why.

Because saying it aloud would make it sound exactly as ugly as it was. White man. Asian baby. Therefore, something was wrong.

Bee sensed the change before she understood it. She reached both arms toward Oscar. "Papa."

Oscar immediately lifted her out of the trolley.

She settled against his chest, banana still clutched in one hand, little face turning into his neck.

His anger got worse. He kissed the side of her head. "It's okay, Bee."

The woman looked vaguely uncomfortable now. "I didn't mean anything by it."

Oscar actually laughed once. There was no humour in it. "You thought I kidnapped my daughter."

"I didn't say that."

"You asked her if she knew me."

"I was concerned."

"Because she looks Asian?"

The woman flushed.

"No, that's not—"

"Not that it’s any of your business, but her mum is Singaporean." Oscar could hear his own heartbeat. "Bee looks like her."

The woman's face changed at the word Singaporean.

Just slightly. Oscar noticed. Of course he did. Because he'd seen that too. The recalculation. The placing. The need to fit Felicity into something understandable.

"Oh," the woman said again. "Well, I couldn't have known."

"No." Oscar shifted Bee higher against him. "You couldn't." That was the point. "You could've just not assumed I'd stolen her."

The woman bristled. "I was trying to protect the child."

"She's protected." Oscar's hand spread instinctively across Bee's back. "By me."

Bee tucked her face under his chin. The anger inside him became something almost frighteningly clean.

He thought of Bee in hospital. Bee impossibly small. Bee connected to machines. Felicity unconscious. Doctors speaking too quickly.

Oscar sitting between two hospital rooms, thinking he might lose his entire family before he'd even had time to have them.

He had spent a year learning every sound Bee made. Every cry. Every expression.

He knew which whimper meant tired and which meant hungry. He could settle her at three in the morning. He knew how she liked her strawberries cut. He knew she hated having socks put on but became furious if they came off.

He knew her. She was his daughter.

"No harm done," the woman said stiffly.

Oscar stared at her. There it was. That phrase.

The kind that always seemed to arrive after somebody hurt Felicity too. No harm done.

As though harm required blood. As though humiliation didn't count. As though being reminded, over and over again, that people thought your family required explanation wasn't its own kind of wound.

"There was," Oscar snapped. "And I suggest you think very carefully before you do this to another family."

The woman blinked.

Oscar didn't elaborate.

He didn't owe her a lecture. He didn't owe her reassurance. He certainly didn't owe her forgiveness.

He pushed the trolley away with one hand, Bee balanced against his chest with the other.

Behind him, the woman said something.

Oscar didn't listen. His hands were shaking. That annoyed him too. Bee noticed. Of course she did.

She pulled back enough to examine his face. "Papa sad?"

Oscar swallowed. "No, baby."

She touched his cheek. "Papa cross."

That nearly got him. "Yeah," he admitted quietly. "Papa's a little cross."

Bee considered this seriously. Then offered him the banana.

Oscar stared at it. "For me?"

Bee nodded. "Nana."

He laughed despite himself. "Thanks."

***

Oscar was still furious twenty minutes later. Bee, meanwhile, had recovered completely.

She sat in her high chair eating strawberries while Oscar paced their kitchen. "Unbelievable."

Bee stuffed half a strawberry into her mouth.

Oscar pointed vaguely toward the universe. "She looked at you."

Bee chewed.

"Looked at me."

Another strawberry.

"And decided you couldn't be mine."

Bee held out a sticky hand. "More."

Oscar gave her another strawberry.

"Yes, obviously."

He resumed pacing.

"Because apparently genetics only work if children come out as fifty percent visibly each parent."

Bee dropped the strawberry. "Oh."

"Exactly."

He bent down, retrieved it before she could. "No floor strawberry."

Bee looked devastated.

Oscar replaced it with a clean one. "You're welcome."

His phone was sitting on the kitchen counter.

He'd thought about calling Felicity immediately. He hadn't.

Not because he wanted to hide it from her, but because he knew exactly what she would do.

Felicity made these things smaller. She'd shrug. Say the woman was ignorant. Say it didn't matter. Say she was used to it.

That phrase. Used to it.

Oscar hated that phrase. Nobody should become used to people treating them badly.

Especially not Felicity. Especially not Bee.

The front door opened. "I'm home."

Bee immediately squealed. "MAMA!"

Oscar heard Felicity laugh from the hallway. "Hello to you too."

She appeared in the kitchen a moment later, coat still on, laptop bag over one shoulder.

Bee held both arms up. Felicity went straight to her. "Hi, darling."

She kissed Bee's forehead. Bee grabbed both sides of her face. "Mama."

"Yes."

"Berry."

"I can see that."

Bee proudly held up the remains of a strawberry. Felicity kissed her again. Then she looked at Oscar.

One glance. That was all it took. "What happened?"

Oscar leaned against the counter. "Nothing."

Felicity stared at him.

Oscar sighed. "Something."

She took off her coat. "What?"

He told her. He got increasingly angry again halfway through.

Felicity listened. She didn't interrupt. That somehow made it worse. "Oh," she finally said.

Oscar hated the oh. "Don't."

Felicity blinked. "Don't what?"

"Do that."

"Do what?"

"Pretend it doesn't bother you."

Her eyes dropped briefly. "Oscar—"

"No."

Bee was humming to herself, completely unaware.

Oscar lowered his voice. "You always do it."

Felicity leaned against the table. "It happens."

"That's not the same as it being okay."

"I know."

"You say things like that every time."

"Because what do you want me to do?" There was no anger in it. That was worse. She looked tired. "What am I supposed to do every time somebody says something stupid? Cry? Have an argument? Go home angry?"

"No."

"Then sometimes you learn to let it go."

Oscar stared at her. "That's shit."

Felicity's mouth twitched despite herself. "Excellent analysis."

"I'm serious."

"I know."

He looked at Bee. She had discovered that she could put strawberry pieces into her water cup.

Oscar watched her tiny fingers. "She shouldn't have to learn that."

Felicity followed his gaze. Something changed in her face. "I know."

Oscar swallowed. "I knew she'd get some of it."

Felicity said nothing.

"But I think I thought..." He struggled for the words. "I don't know. That because she's half me, maybe people would—"

"Be nicer?"

He looked at her. "Maybe."

Felicity gave him a sad little smile. "It doesn't work like that."

"I know."

He did now. Or knew it differently.

Bee looked enough like Felicity that strangers saw Asian first. And apparently that was enough for some of them to invent an entire crime around Oscar going grocery shopping with his own daughter.

He ran his hand through his hair. "I was so angry."

"I can tell."

"I wanted to tell her to fuck off."

Felicity's eyebrows rose. "You didn't?"

"Bee was there."

"Good parenting."

"Thank you. She was looking at Bee like—" His voice caught. He stopped.

Felicity waited. "Like what?"

Oscar swallowed. "Like she wasn't mine."

There. That was the part. That somebody could look at Bee and Oscar together and decide biology itself was suspicious.

Bee had his surname.

She slept on his chest. He had sat beside her incubator. He knew exactly which song calmed her down. He knew she rubbed the edge of her blanket between two fingers when she was tired. He knew every scar on her tiny body.

But to that woman, none of it existed.

All she'd seen was white man. Asian baby. Wrong.

"I know she's mine," Oscar said. His voice had gone rough. "Obviously I know. It's stupid. But I wanted to—" He stopped.

Felicity's voice softened. "What?"

"I don't know."

He did. He wanted to scream at her. He wanted to drag out photographs. Birth certificate. Hospital records. Videos. Anything. Proof. And that made him even angrier.

He shouldn't have to prove his own family.

"I wanted to make her understand," he said finally.

Felicity was quiet. "She probably won't."

Oscar shut his eyes. "I know."

That might have been the hardest part. Some people simply wouldn't.

Then Felicity crossed the space between them. Oscar opened his arms before she even reached him. She tucked herself against him, forehead under his chin.

He wrapped both arms around her. "I hate that you're used to it," he said quietly.

Felicity didn't answer immediately. Eventually she said, "I'm not used to all of it."

Oscar looked down. She was watching Bee. "It's different when it's your child."

He tightened his arms around her.

Bee spotted them embracing. This was clearly unacceptable. "UP!"

Oscar and Felicity both looked at her.

Bee stretched her arms dramatically toward them. "Mama. Papa. Up."

Felicity smiled. "Apparently we're excluding someone."

Oscar walked over and lifted Bee from the high chair. She immediately wedged herself between them, sticky hands and all.

Oscar kissed one cheek. Felicity kissed the other. Bee squealed. Then she grabbed Oscar's nose. "Papa."

"Yeah."

"Mama."

"Yeah."

Bee looked incredibly pleased with herself. Oscar felt something in his chest settle.

This was her normal. Mama. Papa. Her.

Nobody else's confusion changed that. Nobody else's assumptions changed that. Oscar pressed another kiss into her dark hair.

He couldn't stop the world from being stupid. He couldn't guarantee that Bee would never hear the things Felicity had heard.

That realization made him feel slightly sick.

Oscar could endure somebody being an arsehole to him. He could even endure somebody being an arsehole to Felicity, though not happily.

But Bee? Bee was one.

She didn't know anybody might one day ask what she was. She didn't know somebody might decide she was too Asian to belong to her father or too white to belong somewhere else.

She didn't know.

And Oscar wanted, with an almost desperate intensity, to keep her from knowing.

"Can we just..." He hesitated. "Can we make sure she doesn't think there's anything wrong with looking like you? Because there isn’t. And I don’t want her to think that there is."

Felicity inhaled quietly. "Oh, Oscar."

"I know she doesn't now."

"She won't."

"But later."

"We'll make sure."

"We tell her about Singapore."

"Yes."

"The Good Bits."

"Yes."

"Food."

Felicity laughed softly. "Obviously food."

"Everything."

"Everything."

He looked at Bee.

His daughter. Dark eyes. Black hair.

Felicity's face.

A little Australian-Singaporean girl, who was also sort of British, because she was raised there and had only ever known London as her home, who had no idea that a stranger had looked at her that afternoon and decided her family didn't make sense.

Oscar kissed the top of her head.

The stranger had been wrong. There wasn't anything complicated about them at all. Bee was Felicity's. Bee was his.

And anybody who couldn't understand that could fuck right off.

***

It became important to Oscar in a way he couldn’t quite explain without sounding slightly insane.

It wasn’t like he came home from the supermarket incident, opened a spreadsheet, and titled it BEE: CULTURAL IDENTITY PLAN.

It was slower than that.

It was looking at her dark eyes and black hair and thinking about that woman saying, She doesn’t look like you.

And then it was something else. Something worse. The realization that, because Felicity’s family no longer spoke to her, Bee could grow up missing pieces of herself simply because there was nobody left willing to hand them down.

Oscar hated that. Absolutely hated it.

Because Bee wasn’t half of anything.

That was the first thing he decided.

He didn’t want people telling her she was half Australian, half Singaporean, half this, half that, as though she had been assembled out of incomplete pieces.

She was all of it.

Entirely. Completely.

She was Australian. She was Singaporean. She was a Piastri. She was Felicity’s daughter. She was his.

None of those things cancelled the others out.

And if Oscar had anything to do with it, she was going to know that.

The complication was that Oscar knew absolutely fuck-all about mooncakes.

Or about Singapore in general.

Felicity did not talk about growing up in Singapore very often.

At least, she didn't talk about the bad parts. The good memories came occasionally.

Food. Rain hammering against windows during monsoon season. Her grandmother's garden. The smell of pandan.

But there were entire sections of her childhood that seemed locked away somewhere Oscar knew better than to force open.

He knew the facts.

The Leongs had money. That was an absurd understatement.

When Oscar had first met Felicity at school, he'd known she was wealthy in the vague way teenagers recognized wealth. Her clothes were expensive. Her laptop was expensive. She never seemed worried about school fees. She knew how to behave in expensive restaurants without looking at the cutlery first.

Then, over time, he'd understood.

Not wealthy. Wealth. Old wealth. Generational wealth.

The kind that had existed long enough that nobody needed to talk about it.

Felicity had grown up a Leong in Bukit Timah in a house that Oscar initially thought she was exaggerating when she described it.

She wasn't.

There had been staff. Drivers. Housekeepers. Gardeners. Private tutors. Holidays most people would have considered once-in-a-lifetime trips discussed as casually as weekends away.

There were investments and properties and family companies and money that had existed before Felicity was born and, everyone had assumed, would continue existing long after she died.

The Leongs weren't new money. They weren't trying to look rich. They were the sort of rich where nobody in the family could actually identify when the money had even started.

There were old photographs of Felicity's grandmother wearing jewelry that probably belonged in museum displays.

Family weddings looked like diplomatic functions. Homes in more than one country. Memberships to places Oscar suspected would politely ask him to leave if he wandered in wearing a Prema hoodie.

Felicity had once mentioned, with complete seriousness, that her grandfather had considered one of the family properties "rather small."

Oscar had later seen a photograph. It had twelve bedrooms.

He'd stared at her. She'd shrugged. "Perspective is relative."

Felicity had been the only daughter of their eldest son. Three brothers. Then her.

Which, in the Leong family, had meant something.

She had been prized. Displayed. Protected.

Her brothers had expectations too, certainly. Excellent schools. Excellent universities. Excellent careers. The usual architecture of a family that believed achievement was both inheritance and obligation.

But Felicity had been the only daughter.

And therefore, according to the logic of a family Oscar still didn't completely understand, she had needed to be exceptional in a slightly different way.

Beautiful. Thin. Elegant.

Quiet when quietness was useful. Charming when charm was required. Brilliant, but never socially inconvenient about it.

Academically perfect. Musically accomplished.

Graceful. Fluent. Polite.

Well dressed. Well connected. Well behaved.

Everything about Felicity Leong had been cultivated. Nothing had been allowed to simply be.

Oscar had once asked her what she'd been like as a little girl.

Felicity had thought for a long moment. Then said, "Good."

Not funny. Not loud. Not shy. Not adventurous.

Good.

It had unsettled Oscar for days.

He wanted Bee to have Singapore. Desperately.

He wanted her to know where her mother came from. To know that there had been generations before her. He wanted their daughter to understand the foods Felicity loved and the festivals she had grown up with. He wanted her to speak the languages and hear the stories.

He wanted Bee to have all the pieces of her mother's childhood that were beautiful.

But Oscar never wanted Bee to inherit the cage that had come along with them.

That distinction became incredibly important to him.

He wanted her to know the culture. Not the conditions.

The history, but not the expectations.

Three days later, Felicity walked into the kitchen.

Oscar was sitting at the table with his laptop open.

“What are you doing?”

Oscar looked up from his laptop.

Felicity stood in the doorway of their little London kitchen wearing one of his hoodies, hair twisted into a loose knot, expression suspicious.

“Nothing.”

She looked at the screen.

Oscar instinctively tilted it down.

Felicity narrowed her eyes. “That was incredibly convincing, Oz.”

“Thanks.”

“What are you hiding?”

“Nothing.”

“Oscar.”

He sighed. Then opened the laptop again. Felicity came around the table.

On the screen were approximately seventeen tabs.

TRADITIONAL MOONCAKE RECIPE

MID-AUTUMN FESTIVAL DECORATIONS UK

SINGAPORE MID AUTUMN FESTIVAL FOODS

MOONCAKE MOULDS LONDON DELIVERY

LOTUS SEED PASTE HOW TO MAKE

SALTED EGG YOLKS WHERE TO BUY

CHINESE LANTERNS CHILD SAFE

CAN A ONE YEAR OLD EAT MOONCAKE

She stared. Oscar stared back. Neither spoke.

Finally Felicity said, “Why are you researching mooncakes?”

Oscar shrugged. “Mid-Autumn Festival’s next month.”

“I know.” Felicity looked back at the screen. “You don’t celebrate Mid-Autumn.”

“No.”

Her eyes moved to him again.

Oscar rubbed his thumb along the edge of the laptop. “You do.”

Felicity’s face changed. Only a little. But enough. “I used to.”

There it was. Used to.

Oscar hated that too.

Felicity said things like that sometimes. Not often. Usually casually enough that someone else might miss it.

We used to go there.

My grandmother used to make that.

We used to have one of those.

Her childhood existed in the past tense now. Before London. Before Oscar. Before Bee. Before her family stopped speaking to her.

Felicity had made it clear early that she didn’t want to spend her life chasing people who had decided they didn’t want her. He respected that. But respecting it didn’t mean he had to accept that she lost everything attached to them too.

Traditions weren’t theirs to take. Food wasn’t theirs to take. Language wasn’t theirs to take. Felicity’s culture certainly wasn’t theirs to take.

And Bee’s had never belonged to them in the first place.

Oscar looked down at the laptop. “I thought we could do it.”

Felicity was silent. “Do what?”

“Mid-Autumn.”

“Oscar.”

“I know I’ll get things wrong.”

Her lips twitched faintly. “You currently have a tab open asking what lotus paste is.”

“I know what lotus paste is.”

“You clearly didn’t fifteen minutes ago.”

“I was checking.”

“You’re Australian.”

“We have different priorities. We prefer Vegemite.” That got the smallest laugh. Oscar took it as encouragement. “So you can tell me what I’m doing wrong.”

“I haven’t agreed to this.”

“You don’t have to do anything.”

Felicity frowned. “That’s not how festivals work.”

“No, I mean—” He stopped. Started again. “I don’t want you doing all the work.”

Her expression softened slightly.

Oscar pushed the laptop away. “I want Bee to have it.” Felicity looked at him. “All of it. I don’t want her growing up and feeling like she’s not Singaporean enough because she lives here. Or not Australian enough because she looks like you.”

Felicity went very still.

Oscar hated talking like this. He could discuss lap times for hours. Tyre management. Race starts. Anything that had rules.

This didn’t.

This was just him saying things and hoping they came out right.

“She’s going to have people tell her what she is,” he continued. “I know that.”

Felicity sat down slowly opposite him.

“I can’t stop that.”

“No.”

“But I want her to know before they start.”

Her eyes dropped.

Oscar continued carefully. “And I don’t want you losing it either.”

That got her attention. “What?”

“Your stuff.”

“My stuff.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I actually don’t.”

Oscar gestured vaguely toward the mooncake research. “This.”

Felicity stared at him.

“You shouldn’t stop doing things you grew up doing because your family are assholes.”

“Oscar.”

“What?”

"You cannot condense eighteen years of generational dysfunction and complex familial trauma into assholes."

He shrugged. “They are. But they don't own Singapore."

Felicity looked at him.

"And they definitely don't get to make you feel like you have to leave all of it behind because you left them."

Felicity’s mouth twitched. Then disappeared again. “My grandmother used to make mooncakes.”

Oscar waited.

Felicity rarely offered memories like that without being asked. “She hated the commercial ones,” Felicity said. “Said they were too sweet.”

Oscar nodded.

“She made lotus paste herself.”

Oscar slowly turned the laptop around. “I found instructions.”

That did it. Felicity laughed. Not a polite little breath. Actually laughed. Oscar smiled despite himself.

“You’re serious.”

“Yes.”

“You’re going to make mooncakes.”

“We’re going to make mooncakes.”

“I haven’t made them since I was about fourteen.”

“Good. So we’re equally inexperienced.”

Felicity looked back through his tabs. “You found moulds.”

“Mhm.”

“And lanterns.”

“Mhm.”

“Why are there seventy lanterns in your basket?”

Oscar looked mildly defensive. “The reviews said they were small.”

“That does not mean we need seventy.”

“It’s cheaper in bulk.”

“Where are you planning to put them?”

Oscar looked around their London flat. That was admittedly a problem. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Oscar.”

“Bee likes lights.”

“She is one. Bee likes spoons.”

“Exactly. Easy audience.”

Felicity shook her head, but she was smiling now. Then she noticed another tab.

Her expression stilled. SINGAPORE CHILDREN’S BOOKS UK

She clicked it.

Another. MANDARIN BOARD BOOKS TODDLERS

Another. SINGAPOREAN NURSERY RHYMES CHILDREN

She turned to Oscar. “What’s all this?”

Oscar hesitated. “I told you.”

“You told me about Mid-Autumn.”

“It’s not just Mid-Autumn.”

Felicity stared.

Oscar picked at a loose thread on his sleeve. “I thought we should make sure she gets everything.”

There was a dangerous softness to Felicity’s face now.

“She should know where Singapore is.”

“Oz—”

“She should know the food you grew up with.”

“She’s one.”

“Eventually. She can learn both.”

Felicity looked down.

Oscar continued. “And if there are things you don’t remember, we look them up.”

Something about that made her eyes shine. She blinked and it was gone.

Oscar pretended not to notice.

“Okay,” she said.

Oscar stopped. “Okay?”

“We can do Mid-Autumn.”

His face brightened before he could stop it.

Felicity pointed at him. “But.” There it was. “You are not buying seventy lanterns.”

“Forty?”

“Twelve.”

“Twenty.”

“Twelve.”

“Fifteen.”

“Twelve.”

Oscar sighed. “Fine.”

“And Bee is not eating a whole mooncake. She’ll vibrate through a wall.”

“I know.”

“And we are not making ten different kinds.”

“I only planned four.”

Felicity stared at him. “Oscar.”

“Two?”

“One.”

“Two.”

She sighed.

“Fine.”

***

It became a project. Of course it did.

The lanterns arrived first. Fifteen of them.

Felicity discovered the extra three hidden inside a box labelled SIM CABLES. She said nothing. Mostly because it was funny.

Bee adored them.

Oscar came home from training one afternoon to find her sitting beneath a cluster Felicity had hung in the living room, pointing upward.

“Ball.”

“Lantern.”

“Ball.”

“Lantern.”

“Ball.”

Oscar sighed. “Close enough.”

Then came the mooncake moulds. Oscar had bought three.

Felicity held them up. “We agreed on one.”

“They have different patterns.”

“One is enough.”

“This one has flowers.”

“Oscar.”

“This one has fish.”

“Oscar.”

“And this one has—”

“I can see it.”

Bee toddled over. “Fish!”

Oscar pointed at her triumphantly. “See?”

Felicity narrowed her eyes. “Do not use our baby as a swing vote.”

The first batch of mooncakes was catastrophic.

Oscar misread the measurement for the alkaline water. Felicity got distracted because Bee had decided lotus seed paste was finger paint.

The first mooncake stuck in the mould so thoroughly that Oscar eventually had to use a screwdriver.

Felicity stared at him. “That is not traditional.”

“It’s stuck.”

“My grandmother never used a Phillips-head screwdriver.”

“Your grandmother was probably better at this than us.”

“That is undeniably true.”

The second mooncake came out with half a flower.

The third looked vaguely like a diseased hockey puck.

Bee loved all of them. “Cake!”

“Mooncake,” Felicity corrected.

“Cake!”

“Close enough,” Oscar said. “She’s happy.”

“She just licked lotus paste off the table.”

“Exactly.”

The fourth worked.

Oscar turned it over in his hands.

The flower pattern was clear. The edges mostly even.

Felicity looked at it and went quiet.

Oscar noticed. “Is it wrong?”

“No.”

“Too thick?”

“No.”

“Did I—”

“My grandmother’s looked like that.”

Oscar stopped.

Felicity ran her thumb lightly over the moulded pattern. “It had a similar pattern.”

Oscar looked down. He had chosen it because it was pretty. Nothing more.

He suddenly felt as though he had wandered accidentally into somewhere sacred. “We can get another mould.”

“No.” Felicity shook her head. “This one’s good.” She swallowed. “This one’s really good.”

Bee reached up. “Cake.”

Felicity laughed wetly.

“Yes, baby.” She crouched and kissed Bee’s hair. “Mooncake.”

Bee considered this. “Moo cakes!”

Oscar snorted.

Felicity closed her eyes. “Mooncakes.”

“Moo cakes!”

“Excellent,” Oscar said.

“You’re no help.”

“I helped make the moo cakes.”

By the actual Mid-Autumn Festival, their flat looked ridiculous.

Twelve approved lanterns. Three contraband lanterns. A little bowl of mandarins.

Tea Felicity had insisted on choosing herself because apparently Oscar’s first choice was “offensive.”

Mooncakes arranged on a plate.

Bee wore red. She had two tiny clips in her hair.

Oscar took approximately forty photographs.

“Stop.”

“One more.”

“You said that six photos ago.”

Bee toddled around carrying an unlit lantern and shouting, "MOO CAKE!" at regular intervals.

They ate mooncake.

Bee liked pandan best. Oscar liked lotus. Felicity took one bite of hers and stared down at the table for a long time.

Oscar said nothing. Under the table, he put his hand on her knee. Felicity covered it with hers.

It was nothing like Felicity's childhood Mid-Autumn celebrations.

There was no Bukit Timah estate.

No garden large enough to accommodate hundreds of lanterns. No staff. No family silver.

No grandfather presiding over a table. No brothers sneaking food. No grandmother complaining that nobody appreciated her work while secretly loving every second of it.

No old money. No Leong name opening doors. No trust fund waiting somewhere in the background.

Their table was from IKEA. Their mooncakes were lopsided. Oscar had flour on his shirt. Bee had lots paste in her hair.

That was the difference. Felicity’s childhood had been beautiful in photographs.

Perfectly dressed children. Perfect house. Perfect table. Perfect daughter.

This was messy. Cheap. Small. Nothing matched.

And it was perfect.

Eventually Felicity said: “Back in Singapore there were lanterns everywhere. The whole garden was lit. Proper ones. They were beautiful.”

Felicity kept talking.

And Oscar realized that was the other part of it.

He had started all of this because of Bee. Because he wanted her daughter to grow up knowing where she came from.

But sitting there, listening to Felicity tell stories she hadn’t told him before, he understood it was for her too. Not replacing her family.

He couldn’t do that. Wouldn't try. But making room for the parts of her life she still wanted. Letting those memories become something other than things she'd lost.

Bee held out a sticky piece of mooncake toward Oscar. “Papa.”

He leaned forward and took the bite. “Thanks.”

Then she offered one to Felicity. “Mama.”

Felicity ate it directly from her little fingers.

Bee grinned.

Oscar looked at them.

Same eyes. Same hair. Same face in two different stages of life.

And something settled inside him.

People were still going to get things wrong. They were going to ask Bee stupid questions. They were going to make assumptions.

One day somebody would probably tell her she wasn't enough of something.

Oscar couldn't stop that.

But he could make sure she came home to lanterns. He could learn recipes badly. He could buy books he couldn't read yet. He could learn what questions to ask.

He could make sure Singapore was never some abstract place on a map that belonged only to Felicity's past.

He could make sure Bee knew her mother's stories. And maybe, in doing that, remind Felicity that they were still hers too.

Bee shoved another piece of mooncake into his mouth. Oscar nearly choked.

Felicity laughed. “Slowly, Bumblebee.”

Bee clapped. “Papa cake!”

Oscar swallowed. “Papa nearly died.”

“Moo cake!”

“Yes.”

Felicity leaned against his shoulder, still laughing.

Oscar kissed the top of her head.

The lanterns were cheap.

The mooncakes were slightly wonky.

There was lotus paste dried onto the kitchen cabinet that Oscar wouldn't discover for another three days.

It wasn't the celebration Felicity had grown up with.

It wasn't supposed to be. It was theirs.

And next year, Oscar thought, they could make the mooncakes better.

Next year Bee could help more.

The year after that, she might remember it.