Counterfeit

Back at her apartment in China, Winnie rejects a call on her burner phone before she remembers it might be someone trying to contact her about her new diamond venture. Winnie reflects that while Ava is being questioned by Detective Georgia Murphy, Ava is using Homeland Security money to do business with the Maks, the plan being to apprehend Boss Mak when he lands in San Francisco for his supposed transplant surgery. Winnie imagines Mandy hugging her father goodbye and looks at Mandy’s social media, where the pictures depict her as a socialite and fashion icon.

The next morning, Winnie watches the news, including a segment on robots in fast food, when the story breaks that Boss Mak was arrested. Ava assured Winnie that Boss Mak would not be sent to prison, but Winnie still feels she betrayed the man who helped change her life. Winnie clicks off the news to look at the website for her new, fictional jewelry company based in New Hampshire.

Ava asks the detective if she’s happy that Boss Mak was apprehended. Ava explains that she waited to turn herself in because of Henri and asks the detective to forgive her for crying. She explains that Henri was miserable at preschool and wept constantly, and they expelled him within three weeks. Maria was gone, and Ava was desperate. Winnie suggested they hire a white shopper, and that, Ava says to the detective, is how they met her. She asks the detective to confirm she monitored their eBay store and tried to authenticate their products. The detective posed as a suburban mom to answer Winnie’s advertisement.

Ava says she doesn’t know where the missing 200 units of their inventory went to; she was at her 15th college reunion the day the bags went missing, as her cell phone data shows. At the reunion, Ava felt that at “the very nadir of [her] life,” she was “forced to confront the most accomplished people on the planet” (240). Carla and Joanne talked her into going.

In the narrative, while Ava feels embarrassed and lies about her life, the topic of Winnie comes up and they rehash the SAT scandal. A successful couple with two children learning Mandarin from their live-in Chinese nanny mention a story they heard about a preschooler at Ming Liang who did nothing but cry and wet himself. Even though they don’t know the child was Henri, Ava feels humiliated.

Instead of going straight home, Ava sits at a bus stop. She reads about the plane crash on her phone and learns that counterfeit airplane parts may have been at fault. Ava fears the Maks might have been involved in that business, too, and resolves to turn herself in. Ava protests that she has no idea how a letter from her turned up in Winnie’s green card file. Winnie must have faked it.

Ava says that when Winnie learned the detective was on to them she escaped to China. Ava describes how she confessed to Oli. She says she wants to atone for her mistakes, go back to school, and start an ethical business in luxe basics. She says she can’t wait to go back to her family and her beautiful life, and she hopes the detective will hold up her end of their deal.

Mandy Mak gives a public statement protesting that her father is innocent and was framed by Fan Wenyi and Ava Wong. Winnie knows Mandy shut down the black factory. People comment online; one says if the international brands “want Western-style IP protections, then they should pay for Western labor!” (252).

Winnie, taking care to remain in disguise, sets up her diamond lab and sales team. She worries a certain man is following her. She and Ava discussed what Ava’s sentence might be. Winnie thinks it was brilliant how Ava left her phone at her friend’s house during the reunion while she drove to their storage unit to get the replica bags.

Ava calls to describe her sentencing hearing; she is required to serve two years of probation and pay $500,000 in restitution. Winnie is awed at the light sentence, thinking, “Ava’s proven to be a straight-A student through and through” (257). Winnie continues setting up her jewelry business and prepares to return to the US. She buys a house in New Hampshire, a Cape Cod-style cottage with a garden and a flagpole by the door. Winnie watches how debates rage in the media over the Boss Mak scandal. Nervous she might get caught, Winnie gets a new haircut, boards a plane, and texts Ava that she’s coming home.

The narrative continues in the present day: The day her probation ends, Ava kisses Henri and boards a plane. She was divorced shortly after her sentencing and now has a new apartment and a job as a receptionist in a dental clinic. After speech therapy, Henri speaks fluently. Maria will watch him while Ava is gone. When Ava pleaded with Maria to come back, swearing she was manipulated by Winnie, Maria laughed and said “that good-immigrant shit may work on white people, but it won’t work on me” (267). Henri says hello to tell Aunt Winnie. He still has the mink charm Winnie gave him.

Ava and Winnie greet with a hug, and Ava admires Winnie’s house, including the American flag by the front door. They speak of Boss Mak’s death two years prior and of Oli’s new fiancée. Winnie gives Ava the blood-red crocodile Birkin, which she says she bought when the government auctioned it off. Winnie shows Ava a lab-grown diamond and describes the shoppers she hired to buy wedding rings from expensive stores.

Ava finally asks how Winnie bought her SAT score, and Winnie reveals she was the proxy who took the tests for the rich children. Ava reflects that Winnie “is the American dream” and “she had the gall to crash their game and win it all” (274). They toast to winning, then get down to business.