“Maybe you should stay another day,” I said, clearing my throat and turning away. Only the heat from the open oven door was able to match the heat in my face. “My grandparents seem to enjoy having you around.”

“Just your grandparents?” Louise leaned over the counter, stirring her oatmeal. I had never felt so much desire this close to oatmeal before.

I managed to avoid answering by shoving the tray of shaobing into the oven.

“I wish I could,” Louise sighed. “But my parents weren’t happy about me spending this much of my fall break away from them.”

“Ah, of course.” I wished I had never blurted out such a request. Of course she would be in high demand, and of course her parents had priority.

Louise sat at the kitchen table with her cereal as I tried to cut the soy-sauce-braised beef. Grandmother had been braising it for days—probably longer than she intended to—and it would be all the more delicious. Typically, we only ate the beef with rice. On special occasions, though, grandmother would rise early and make shaobing from scratch, flaky flatbread that wraps around the cold beef perfectly. It was not long before grandmother came into the kitchen, as if she could sense there was some bad knifework going on, and shooed me away from the cutting board. She took over. Something about using a knife seems embedded in her muscle memory, and she cut us perfectly thin slices.

By the time grandfather came down, the room smelled like warm bread. He took a few deep breaths, opened the window, and declared it perfect soup weather. He pulled out the leftover soup from the night before and stirred some eggs into it.

The shaobing came out perfectly. All different shapes, yes, thanks to my amateur rolling pin skills, but their coloring was beautifully golden and the smell of the toasted sesame irresistible.

We ate at the table, warm bread, cool salted meat, cutting the shaobing open with a pair of kitchen scissors, washing it down with grandfather’s tomato and egg drop soup.

Louise let out a contented sigh.

“I never want to leave.”

“What plans do you have today?” grandmother asked.

Louise glanced at me, then back to grandmother.

“I was hoping I could spend some time interviewing you,” she began. “About your time in Shanghai during the war. And afterward.”

Grandmother took her time answering. I tensed. She was chewing in a harsh way, perhaps fiddling with her dentures.

“Did you hear Louise’s question?” I asked, hoping she had not, that she would agree without an argument.

Grandmother nodded.

“Why do you wish to know about that time? About Shanghai?” grandmother asked. She always said “Shanghai” a little differently, a remnant of her Shanghainese she could not abandon entirely.

“It’s a fascinating time period,” Louise said, sitting up straighter. “And there aren’t many people around who lived through it that can still remember.”