Four Chambers: Power of the Matchmaker Read online

  Four Chambers

  By Julie Wright

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  Four Chambers

  Copyright © 2016 by Julie Wright

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any reference to historical events, real people, or real locales are used as fiction in the work. Other names, characters, places and incidents are all a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual events, locales or people, living or dead, is purely coincidental or used in a fictitious manner.

  Interior Design by Jules Hartman

  Cover image Kaspars Grinvalds/Shutterstock

  Cover design by Rachael Anderson

  Published by Heart Stone Press

  St. George, Utah

  Other Books in the

  Power of the Matchmaker Series

  Broken Things to Mend by Karey White

  January 2016

  Not Always Happenstance by Rachael Anderson

  February 2016

  If We Were a Movie by Kelly Oram

  March 2016

  Love is Come by Heather B. Moore

  April 2016

  Four Chambers by Julie Wright

  May 2016

  O'er the River Liffey by Heidi Ashworth

  June 2016

  Chasing Fireflies by Taylor Dean

  July 2016

  Between Heaven and Earth by Michele Paige Holmes

  August 2016

  How I Met Your Brother by Janette Rallison

  September 2016

  To Move the World by Regina Sirois

  October 2016

  King of the Friend Zone by Sheralyn Pratt

  November 2016

  The Reformer by Jaima Fixsen

  December 2016

  Dedication

  To Gary, who toyed with the idea of going to medical school. After all my research to write this book, I feel you’ve taken the better path. I’m glad you’re my baby brother.

  Table of Contents

  Read the matchmaker’s story to find out where it all starts

  The First Chamber

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  The Second Chamber

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  The Third Chamber

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Fourth Chamber

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Read the matchmaker’s story to find out where it all starts . . .

  Mae Li has been in love with Chen Zhu for years, and he with her. But when the matchmaker arrives at the Zhu family home, she recommends another village girl for Chen.

  Heartbroken, Mae Li watches as Chen does his duty by marrying another. Mae flees her village with the clothes on her back and her only possession—a pearl embedded comb, given to her as a goodbye gift from Chen Zhu.

  Upon Mae’s arrival in Shanghai, she quickly learns that she’ll starve within days unless she sells her prized comb or joins a courtesan house. She goes to the Huangpu River and promises the River God that she’ll always be selfless if he will save her from becoming a prostitute . . . Her wish is granted when Ms. Tan, the matchmaker of Shanghai, finds Mae. But Mae must completely change her future and her name if she is to become the next matchmaker.

  The First Chamber

  Love itself is calm. It is the individuals in love who cause the turbulence

  —Chinese proverb

  Chapter One

  “Give me the paint,” I said, hoping Janette heard the threat in my voice. She was coming seriously close to getting demoted from favorite roommate to homeless person.

  “Andra, think about this for a minute.” She danced out of my reach and held the paint can above her head. Pretty much anyone could do that to me. It was the curse of being five foot three. I made a jump for it, my dark ponytail swinging into my vision, causing me to miss my target. “If you spray paint the word tool on his truck, you’ll not only get into legal trouble—arrested and fined for criminal mischief and vandalism and all that—but you’ll also probably lose your scholarship, and likely your future placement at UMASS. Is that what you want?”

  My hands dropped. I glared at her, glared at Greg’s truck, and glared at the spray can Janette held over her head as if she believed I was still planning on coming after her and wrestling the can from her grip.

  But she had me at the threat of losing my educational opportunities.

  “Besides,” Janette said, “You might be the youngest person in the senior class, but you’re still an adult. Adults behave rationally. And you’re going to be a heart surgeon someday. No one wants a heart surgeon who flies off the handle like this. It’s not like you were planning on marrying this guy! So what if Greg was seen nuzzling the neck of some other girl last night?”

  At the words that I’m sure Janette meant to be comforting and sensible, I lunged again for the spray paint. Janette, whose arm had lowered as she tried to talk me off the ledge of my anger, jerked her hand back and nearly fell into the street.

  Everett Covington, Greg’s roommate, coming back from a morning run, arrived in time to catch her from behind. But his eyes locked on me. “Hey, Andrea without an E, what’s going on?”

  I just stared at him while Janette unleashed her frustration.

  “You’ve got to talk sense into her! You’ve got to help me!” Janette wailed.

  Everett’s eyes stayed on mine, his hands still on Janette’s waist. “Help you what?”

  “Andra found out that Greg’s been cheating on her.”

  Her saying it out loud to Everett felt like being stabbed in the chest all over again.

  “And now she wants to spray paint the word tool on the side of his car. You’ve got to save her from herself because that’s vandalism!” She continued all this with the kind of frustration that could only come from having dealt with a crazy person all Saturday night and into the morning. Neither of us slept after the phone call from a mutual friend that announced Greg to be a cheating jack-wagon.

  It wasn’t like I’d gone and purposely rousted my roommate from bed so she could share in my misery, but the sound of my ranting and banging cupboards had probably been hard for her to sleep through. The many threats to go over to Greg’s apartment and strangle him in his sleep must have sounded real enough that Janette stayed awake with me—likely to keep me from making good on those threats. Both of us were under the pressure of exhaustion and too much emotion.

  Everett listened to Janette’s version of events with his face unreadable. He surveyed me from under his dark, damp hair. After a moment
of some internal debate with himself, he finally plucked the can out of Janette’s hand and tossed it to me. “He is a tool. A warning to the next girl is only fair.”

  I spun and started spraying.

  Janette let out a roar of frustration. “Are you both stupid? This is ridiculous! You’ve got to stop! This is like that Carrie Underwood song where she carves her name in her boyfriend’s leather seats. What kind of lunatic does something like graffiti her name into her vandalism so the police have all the evidence they need? Andra! Stop! You know I can’t get into trouble for this kind of stuff. What about your scholarship? What about mine?”

  I did stop then and blinked at her as if waking up from a bad dream. My situation wasn’t anything like hers. If I lost my scholarship, my father would step in, find me a school who would accept me, and take over tuition payments.

  I could never allow that to happen because then he would own my education. He would be able to tell me what to do and who to be. I would have to listen to him, day in and day out, tell me that my goals were too ambitious for a girl, that I wasn’t made of the right kind of stuff. He would try to redirect me to other avenues that he felt more appropriate. I would hate it. It would be awful.

  But it would also be survivable.

  If Janette lost her scholarship, she’d have to quit school altogether, not just quit attending Boston University, because there was no way she could afford the tuition. Her whole life would be ruined. Unlike me, she didn’t have anyone to sell her soul to, no one to pick up her pieces.

  And it would be all my fault.

  “Go home, Janette,” I said.

  “What?” She shook her head, her blonde hair frizzed from the frazzled night. Exhaustion had stolen her ability to reason. “Why?”

  “If you aren’t here, then you aren’t involved. Go home.”

  I followed her gaze to where the red painted letters T O O dripped down the side of Greg’s white truck like blood in a bad horror movie poster.

  “Go home, Janette. I’m not taking you down with me.”

  “Come with me.”

  The tired in her voice made the tired that I’d been hiding under blind anger slam into me with full force. I lowered the paint can.

  Everett, who’d been watching the whole scenario play out, took the can and finished the “L” for me.

  I should’ve stopped him. But I hadn’t even been able to muster enough self-preservation to stop me; I certainly didn’t have the power to stop him. “Why did you do that?” I asked, staring at him like he was a puzzle on a test.

  His T-shirt was stained dark at the armpits from his exercise. He crossed his arms over the Boston University logo and shrugged. “I told him you were different, that you weren’t the kind of girl to be played, just because you were younger. I warned him that if he messed with you, he would deal with my wrath.” He glanced back at the car and lifted his shoulder in a one-armed shrug. “My wrath looks a little pathetic now that I think about it, but . . .”

  “Wrath?” I said. “Do college-aged guys feel wrath against cheating buddies?” I looked at Janette. “Is that even a thing?”

  He shrugged again. “It’s a matter of principle.”

  “A matter of principle leads you to painting someone’s car?” Janette sounded as baffled as I felt. Had I really just done what I did? Had he really contributed to my delinquency? I hadn’t even bought the cheap spray paint that would likely be more water than anything. No. I had to go and buy the good stuff so that it would stand as a testament forever to the relationship that would not last forever.

  “No,” he said. “A matter of principle leads me to keeping my word.”

  We all turned again to face the carnage of the truck. Everett tilted his head to the side as though inspecting abstract art in a museum. “So . . . do you feel better?” he asked me.

  I took several deep breaths. “No,” I finally answered. I threw my arms in the air. “Gah! This was really stupid. Go home, Janette. I don’t want you in trouble.”

  “What about you?” The girl was as loyal as any best friend could ever be. If only boyfriends could be like best friends.

  “I have to clean this mess up before the tool wakes up.”

  Everett shook his head. “You do know this isn’t exactly something that can be cleaned off, right?”

  I shoved at him a little. “Just go get me a bucket of soapy water and a sponge.”

  When he stared at me with his face clouded in doubt, I yelled, “Go. Get. A. Bucket.”

  With a grunt of frustration, he did as told.

  Janette rubbed her hands down her face and pulled her blonde curly hair to the nape of her neck. “Sometimes, Andra, you really give me a headache.”

  With that declaration, she turned and left, probably to sleep for the rest of the day to make up for the night I'd stolen from her.

  I collapsed down on the curb in fatigue. “Sometimes I give me a headache too.”

  Everett showed up moments later, sloshing sudsy water up the sides of his bucket in his obvious attempt at hurrying.

  When I didn’t stand to take the bucket and get to work, Everett plopped down beside me. “So Andrea without an E . . .”

  “So Everest without an S . . .” I returned. The first day I’d met Everett, he’d introduced himself to me by explaining how his name required two t’s. He told me to think of his name as Everest with the S replaced by a T.

  I’d shared the fact that my name started as a misspelling. My name was supposed to be Andrea, but someone at the hospital wrote it wrong on my birth certificate, and my mom was too out of it with postpartum depression to care. By the time she decided she did care, my dad had decided Andra suited me better, and he wouldn’t let her change it. Honestly, he probably just didn’t like the name Andrea and purposely wrote it wrong on the certificate in the first place. He’d likely let the poor nurses take the fall so he didn’t have to deal with my mother’s temper. I didn’t mind. I really liked my name. It was the one place of solidarity between my father and me.

  Everett sighed. “Do you want to attempt to put the bucket and wash rags to use? Or do we want to let our statement stand unhindered?”

  Instead of viewing our handiwork again, I focused what little remained of my drained attention on him. He finger-combed his dark hair back so that it angled across his forehead. Everett finger-combed his hair a lot—a nervous thinking habit I’d become familiar with during the many hours we’d studied together in classes we shared. I didn’t really know much about Everett aside from that habit and the fact that he was really very intelligent and made a great study buddy. The angle of his hair acted as a lopsided frame for eyes that hovered between brown and gold and green. His eye color shifted as I tried to pin down which of the three colors was dominant, but it remained a mirage that could never be caught.

  Everett nudged me toward where Janette had gone. “Go get some sleep. I’ll keep you apprised of the events that follow. I’ll even try to clean it up—though you know that’s pretty much an impossibility, and we’re likely going to have to pay to have his truck professionally painted to fix this. I’ll do whatever you want me to.”

  “I’m sorry I involved you.”

  “I’m not. I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time. To have an accomplice like you just makes it perfect.”

  His eyes remained steady on mine. So steady, that if we made a contest of it, I knew I would be the first to blink. “Even if you have to help pay for repairs?”

  “Totally worth it,” he confirmed.

  I closed my eyes, shutting down the visual connection between us, and leaned against Everett’s shoulder, not even caring that he was a sweaty pig from his morning run. “I should’ve stayed the serious student,” I said. “I have plans and goals. Boyfriends were never part of the plan. I don’t have time for cheating tools.”

  He waited a moment before answering. “You know, the first date you went on with the tool was a party. And we ended up sitting on the stairs of the frat hou
se together—just you and me, remember?”

  I murmured something that I hoped counted as assent. Then I smiled and said, “Your red Solo cup was filled with peanut M&M’s.”

  “And yours was filled with Wheat Thins.”

  I laughed. “That’s what you get when you have two serious students wanting to be doctors at the same party.”

  He laughed too, but then his voice grew serious. “I asked you if you had a boyfriend. Do you remember?”

  I jiggled my head against his shoulder.

  “Do you remember what you answered?”

  I opened my eyes as if I could somehow see the memory in front of me. “I told you I didn’t because I didn’t have time. Pre-med students never have time.”

  “True, you did mention the time thing, but you also said something that seemed kind of profound.”

  A garbage truck swooshed past on the road, blowing a dirty piece of notebook paper at our feet. It was crumpled and weathered from the spring rain shower yesterday, but today’s sun had dried it enough to let it be blown around the street some more. The air around us smelled of recently wet stone—a smell that was familiar and comforting to me. The rainy season always brought that smell from the brownstone buildings in the Back Bay.

  “I’m never profound,” I said.

  He ignored my self-assessment. “You said that your past boyfriends broke up with you because they felt like you weren’t a dedicated enough girlfriend or whatever.”

  I lifted my head from off Everett’s shoulder. “Is that why he cheated? Was I not dedicated enough?”

  “No, Andra. He cheated because he’s a tool.” Everett pointed to the truck as if he needed to prove his point. “And that wasn’t the profound thing you said. Stop interrupting me.”

  I smiled and felt a little spark of gratitude to know I still had a smile in me to give. “Sorry. Please continue telling me I’m profound.”