She was gone a couple of days after that. The funeral was poorly attended—after everything that had happened, no one in Southern Courtyard wanted anything to do with her. It was raining heavily when Auntie and I got the bus back with her ashes. We took shelter by the post office. The rain didn’t look like it was stopping anytime soon. Auntie burst into tears. Cheng Gong, she said, I’m an orphan now, please be nice to me.

We buried Granny’s ashes on a hill outside the city, all alone, no family around her. We couldn’t send them to her ancestral home because Auntie only knew she’d come from Cao County, but not which village. She hadn’t been back since leaving at seventeen. On the way back, Auntie said, We have an ancestral grave here now, we can finally call this city home.

When a dictator dies, they leave behind a terrifying void. Resistance had become our whole lives, and we didn’t know how to do anything else. Freedom had fallen from the skies, and we could only hold it like some complicated object we had no idea how to handle. For the next week, Auntie and I carefully went on living like usual. She went to work, I bought groceries, and at dinnertime we sat across from each other at the dilapidated table. The overhead light flickered like a twitching eyelid. Auntie overcooked the food, as usual. The greasy plastic tablecloth still stank of Granny’s drool. I could still see her sitting between us, gnawing on a rib. On Sunday, at my suggestion, we bought a water dispenser and the juicer that Auntie had wanted for a long time. That was the sum of it, the new life we’d hoped for.

I didn’t know what I was sticking around for, and decided to tell Auntie a friend had found me a job in Shanghai. When I got home that evening, all the lights were on, and she was sitting in the living room. I headed to my room, but she called my name and told me she had something to say.

“I don’t know why …” She began sobbing. “Ever since your granny died, I haven’t been able to sleep at night. My mind keeps turning. All those things that happened, they’re like a play. Sometimes I’m in the audience, sometimes I’m on stage … Do you know, I have a strange feeling”—she kept her face lowered, shaking her head—“your grandfather is still alive.”

“No one could survive in that condition for forty-two years.” I surprised myself by knowing exactly how many years it had been. We hadn’t spoken about him for a long time. It’s been almost two decades since he was spirited away from his hospital room in the middle of the night.

“What if it’s a miracle? Your granny asked about him in the ICU. She must have sensed something. People know more when they’re about to die.”

“You’re just guessing. You have no proof.”