We began work on the Phoenix Pencil Company Taiwan branch. I helped Mother decorate the new store while the government bought equipment. The building had been left by the Japanese Mitsubishi company when they departed after the war. We tried to make it as similar to the Shanghai store as possible—the back contained all the equipment, the front a small counter, behind which would be a wall of pencil hearts. There was an extra nook to this place that we did not know what to do with, so Mother arranged a table and bench there and called it a study area.

I poured everything I had into reviving the pencil company. It started slow, but with each passing day, the building looked more and more like our home, and some of my energy returned. I chatted with neighbors, telling them what kind of store would be there soon, handing out sample pencils. I met others like us, straight from Shanghai, many who were familiar with our store. I took down their addresses, promised I would let them know when we opened.

By the time the store opened, we had been in Taiwan for a year. We still had not heard from you. The radio broadcasted news of persecutions and starvation on the mainland. They buried the news of the Communists taking Nanjing without a fight, followed swiftly by Shanghai. The day we opened the store was the first time I really suspected I would never return.

“Let’s get to work,” Mother said, and she hunched over her workstation, looking like she was home.

The reinvigoration lasted only a few weeks, during which we manufactured pencils, and I worked the storefront, trying to channel my father’s way with people and your mother’s easy charm. I had been good at it in Shanghai. In Taiwan my language faltered, everybody with such different dialects and attitudes toward people like us. My father invited his colleagues. They inspected our pencils, chatted with Mother, eyed me. I should have known where all this was headed from the moment my father said they were funding the company.

“When will the Reforging start?” they asked.

A few days later, we were back to Reforging, cutting ourselves open, bleeding out onto a page. In a way it was a return to our previous life and should have been a comfort. But our previous life was all about war and survival, and this time, too, was all war and survival, only without you.