Her new mother, watching her study and read, said she was too greedy for knowledge. “It is not a good thing. How will you live if you know so much? You will never be happy. You will be a poor worker. You will never be a good wife.” But unlike the baker’s wife, Lin had a hunger that wanted to consume something and what it wanted to consume wasn’t rice in a bowl but learning, knowledge. Perhaps that was better because it kept her from remembering the burning sampans, the fires at nights, the sounds, her old grandmother floating away on the river to the unknown world of night and death, while she herself was pulled and pushed away to life.

“Don’t worry,” she said to Mother, her mistress of the flower shop. “I will stay here and care for you. I will care for you and Pa when you are old.” Lin saw the relief in the woman’s eyes. She had her losses, too, this mother did, too many to talk about. Lin must constantly reassure her.

And so, some days when Lin was called to help translate in the offices, at the desk where the terrible stories were told, this mother didn’t send her out with flowers. She had a secret pride in Lin’s success and so an overly tall boy down the street delivered the flowers instead.

Lin heard the stories: One small old man sat down at the table and opened a large bag and took out the bones of his ancestors, those bones that were left, and said how he couldn’t keep them clean enough. He didn’t notice if anyone in the room was disturbed by the bones. They weren’t. They’d all seen worse. He said, “The Americans dug them up because they knew, we cared for them, and one man peed on them.” He wept. The ancestors had been loved and buried with care. The bones were wiped clean with alcohol. He wanted to take them home. He cried and his hair was almost white. Lin understood him and translated what he said. This was a problem that could be solved. He could take them back, even if the place looked as if it was gone. They could arrange such a journey. Later, a scarred woman, a cut through her face, told about her lost children and she said she last saw them by a banyan tree. Lin said nothing, but she got up and went through files of children searching for their mother because she was certain she recalled a brother and sister saying something like that, and as she did a windstorm came up. They all went to the window and saw it rippling the water outside, some papers blowing across the streets and the people outside walking leaned against it, holding their hats and skirts to their bodies.

“I think I might have a lead,” Lin said, looking at the file. “I will come to your house tomorrow.” She believed this because it was a story told by two people who said they last saw their mother at the village tree just before there was a blast in the air and men came and took their mother away. At the time, they were just children left crying. She remembered this from the file. The tree was probably long since dead, but the children were now young people. She hoped she was right. She had the best of memories. It would be so good, it was so good, the few times she had seen people reunited with one another. She wished for her own father.