Even then, I delayed. I can partially blame being a new mother. Torou was working late all the time, doing all he could to attain a tenured position, and Edward wasn’t a happy baby. I convinced myself you did not need my help anymore, that it had been months since you sent the pencil, that you would have figured out a way, as you always did. And I had not Reforged in years, had sworn off it, was terrified to do so again. It was not until Edward was a year old that the guilt overcame me, and I Reforged your pencil. The note was short, so simple, it would have been nothing to bleed it back out, probably would not have affected Edward. I can still see the words now.

Mother has died. Will you please come back? I am alone.

Why did you not just write it on a piece of paper? There were no incriminating words that would have been censored. So there had to be somebody after you, somebody who would take advantage of knowing you were alone and without your mother. Your mother would not have been old by then. How had both of our mothers died so young? Our greatest defenders, our greatest teachers, who danced and gambled and then left us to fend for ourselves after their lives burned out too soon.

You did not say what happened to your mother. Was it not safe even for the hearts of our pencils to carry? In a way I did not need to know. Your words—I am alone—were enough to tell me you had reached your lowest point, as I had in California.

I imagined you alone, and it was the same image of Monica sitting before me now, not quite looking at me, not quite accusing, though not absolving either.

And as I told her all of this, she tried to defend me.

“It was unlucky timing,” she said. “You were pregnant when you got the pencil.”

Then I told her my true mistake, the one that still haunts me, the one that makes you a ghost listening in on my conversations even now.

“I never replied.”

At first, I told myself I would eventually. Even after I had stashed the letter away, deep inside the cabinet drawer. I was afraid I would write, and you would be dead, and I would never hear from you again. I was afraid I would write, and you would be alive, and you would ask me to return to Shanghai.