I discarded a red middle tile. “And she used it to teach me lessons about critical thinking, planning two steps ahead, stuff like that.”

“Oh?” Mrs. Wang raised an eyebrow.

Maybe I was flying too close to the sun, drawing too many parallels to her. “But mostly she just wanted to spend time with me doing what she loved. We’d play with my older brother and one of his friends,” I added, hoping for a distraction and another mooncake point. (That term still made me smile so much.)

She clicked her fingernails on the table. “Ah, you have an older brother. I’m surprised he didn’t come up sooner.”

He had (I’d mentioned him yesterday). I was sure of it because I’d been waiting for the usual questions to come, but Mr. and Mrs. Wang had been too focused on my parents. Instead of pointing that out (and contradicting Mrs. Wang unnecessarily), I just told them about my fake brother: “His name is Peter and he’s a computer scientist at IBM.” Big enough company that it wouldn’t invite potential truth-revealing conflicts, and a cushy, money-making job to ensure that he wouldn’t become a financial burden and would be able to support my parents as dictated by firstborn-son expectations (which I knew from Jing-Jing’s form was something the Wangs worried about).

Both her parents nodded. Sometimes I wondered—if my words were too perfectly curated, would they seem too good to be true? So far, that hadn’t been a problem on any of my jobs, but what if several instances plus time led one of the parents to figure out the truth down the road? Well, I guess I wouldn’t know if that happened. I had no idea what the clients did after my time with them. (Was there a horrific breakup? Did they continue telling their parents we were together but I was otherwise occupied?) But that wasn’t my prerogative, so much so that it was a company rule. Not your prerogative, Operative.

I dropped a seven bamboo tile.

Mrs. Wang raised her eyebrows. “Either you have a fabulous hand or you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Or I just don’t have any other bamboo tiles and it doesn’t make sense to hold on to it.

Jing-Jing rolled her eyes. “That’s not a Nash equilibrium,” she mumbled.

“What’s that?” her mother said.

“Nothing,” Jing-Jing said even quieter.

“No, go ahead and tell me. I’d love to know what you think I’m missing when I’ve been playing mahjong for twice as long as you’ve been alive.”

A switch flipped in Jing-Jing. “It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been playing when game theory says—”

“That’s enough,” Mr. Wang said, a pained tilt to his lips.

This was way worse than silence.