The others couldn’t tell, but I knew you. I knew when you were upset, you lashed out, then went quiet. Any further speaking might cause the tears to fall, and you would not let that happen, not in front of this many people.

“There are far worse things than leaving a home.” My father’s voice was low.

“Calm down and eat,” my grandmother ordered. She was the only one who could speak like that to my father. We ate the rest of our meal in silence.

At night, you paced our room.

“He was going to hit me,” you said.

“I don’t think he was—”

“He was. I could sense it. He would never hit you, but he would hit me, without a second thought.”

“I’m sorry.” I wasn’t only sorry for the way my father had treated you. I was sorry that my father returned and yours didn’t. That yours had been replaced with Mr. Gao, a man you refused to trust, who never showed you any love, only your mother.

Refugees had poured into Shanghai during the war against the Japanese. Now the opposite happened. People began to leave out of fear of the Communists. The Nationalists lost battle after battle. Not even scrappy Ah-shin could find enough food to buy. There was no more hope of meat. The only vegetables we had were pickled, and every bit of rice was watered down. We once thought we had a good amount of money saved. It seemed we would blow right through it. Our mothers skipped dinner often.

“We spend all this money on the military, and they can’t even win these battles against a bunch of peasants,” my father complained. He read the news even more than my grandmother. Those days, she normally contented herself sitting beside my father and nodding off.

“The Communists have infinite peasants to throw around as they please,” Mr. Gao scoffed.

It was a soggy summer day a year into the civil war, as we ate our dinner of watery gruel, that you told us your boy and his family were fleeing to Hong Kong. His father, alarmed by the Communists’ crossing of the Yellow River into central China, had already arranged their travel. Your boy had offered to bring you, even to marry you if it would help get you out of Shanghai.

“I’m not going to, of course,” you said as you stared my father down, as if winning this argument with him was more important than your life.