I press on. “I signed up for one of those adoption DNA matching services and I received this in return.”

Her lips thin. “Is this because your father died?” She lets the paper flutter back onto the counter and shoves by me. At the cutting board, she begins to slice the cucumbers into ragged, uneven bits. “You should get some counseling. You didn’t cry at the funeral. I know you don’t like crying, but it’s good to do sometimes. It gives you a”—Mom fists her hand in front of her chest—“a release. I’ve been thinking of going to therapy myself. We could go together.”

“It’s not because Dad died.” It was that he’d tried to make a new life without me; it was because of the email that I’d received; it was because I’ve never truly felt that I fit in here among everyone with their blond hair and their prominent brows and their high nose bridges, but I didn’t fit with the Asian crowd either. My shoes are either too tight or too loose, but I feel like there are answers somewhere in that small peninsula on the other side of the ocean. “I wonder things,” I finally say.

“What things? Why he abandoned you? There’s nothing to be curious about. You already have a father.” Mom stomps over to the counter and haphazardly throws the cucumbers down onto the bread I laid out earlier. “You don’t need to get in touch with this stranger. Besides, you know what happened to Nicki’s family. That was horrible. She went through so much trauma, and unnecessary trauma at that.”

Nicki was an adoptee from Minneapolis whom I’d met a few times during annual cultural festivals. Through the adoption grapevine that Mom had once been hooked into, Nicki’s unhappy reunion story spread like a spark falling on dry hay. She’d gone to Korea on a trip hosted by her adoption agency and met with her bio father and two older siblings. They were poor, which was why they’d given young Nicki up for adoption. They were still poor when Nicki, now a med student, returned. They’d demanded money from her, stating that it was her filial duty. She’d grown up in a posh home with wealthy doctor parents, wanting for nothing, while her biological family had scraped by. She’d given them money, but the requests were nonstop to the extent that Nicki had to cut off contact. She regretted ever meeting her bio family and never wanted to return.

“He didn’t say he wanted money.” The few responses I’d received from Lee Jonghyung were brief. Come and visit me. I would like to meet you.

“Why else would he contact you?”

Mom doesn’t mean to hurt me, but the offhand way that the sentence is phrased, as if there couldn’t possibly be any reason other than money, leaves a shallow mark across my chest. I pretend that I’m unaffected. “Perhaps he’s curious, too.”

Mom sniffs. “He could be one of those fisher people, trying to take your identity. A lot of people over there do that.”