The letter on top was your mother’s writing. It was marked from an unfamiliar address and name, a disguise on your mother’s part, since maintaining a Nationalist relationship was reason for persecution. She wrote about how well the pencil company was doing, how the gangs were finally leaving Shanghai, how it was safer than it had ever been and you were staying active and healthy, though if we had some rice to spare, that would be lovely. She was including a pencil to prove to her older sister that the quality of the pencils was as high as ever.

I can imagine you glowering behind your mother as she wrote this, watching each motion of her pencil as the characters emerged. We knew other families who had received letters from China with large portions blacked out. Your mother’s had none of this. Her message appeared pristine, in stark contrast to the bleeding characters in the second letter.

The second told us the truth that could not be censored. Mother burned it after I read it so there would be no proof. I can only recount it as I remember it, with this doctor-certified faulty memory of mine. I remember the first lines—Meng burned down the pencil company. This may be our last honest communication with you.

Burned it down! You always had a flair for the dramatic. Your mother was doing much of the same work Mr. Gao had tasked her with during the war, only now for the Communists. The same work we were doing in Taiwan for the Nationalists. That you and I ended up on opposite sides of the war—it did not make sense to me. How could we be on opposite sides of something as significant as war, when we ourselves were not opposing at all?

You were the one who decided to rebel. You made it look like an accident, of course, cutting off their supply of pencil hearts. More could be made in time, but that was my mother’s specific skill and any Reforging would have to wait.

Your mother’s anger was clear even in the Reforged characters. She called it a youthful symbolic rebellion—I believe those were her words—for we could still Reforge pencils that were not our own. It would only hurt us more. The Communists did not yet know you could Reforge other pencils. Your mother was sure they would find out soon enough. She feared they might hear rumors about our Reforging in Taiwan, and how Mother could Reforge any pencil. She ended the note saying to reply under a pseudonym, all their mail was screened, and any connection to the Nationalists could result in public denouncement, ostracization, even a pencil might not be safe, not when they knew what they could contain.