I feared Shanghai by then. I feared the ghost of our home, tensing at the passing footsteps of soldiers, the shadows of neighbors slipping away after spying on us. The memories of family meals and Ah-shin’s cooking and when I teased you in school were gone. It was the late fifties. The American news reported that China had become a country of famine and poverty under Communist rule. I did not want to see what my home had become, to witness what I was lucky enough to escape, what you were unlucky enough to have to live through. Did not want to see how famine changed you, as I wandered through luxurious supermarkets, carefully selecting the freshest bok choy and the choicest cut of beef. Did not want you to see this blessed life I had somehow built on top of all the lives whose words I had betrayed.

Even if we could have made our way there, even if all of the officials in China overlooked my flight to Taiwan, my father the Nationalist, and if I somehow made it back to America afterward, somebody would have accused us of being Communists, enemies of America, enemies of Taiwan. Footsteps around the house, neighbors spying, again, even in America. If it wasn’t famine in China, it was the Red Scare or the Cold War here. Torou would never have been able to keep his job. We could not lose our home, I told myself, not now, not after Edward’s birth, not when he could have a life free from occupation after occupation.

Excuses piled on excuses. Convenient reasons to leave my past behind, to leave you behind.

“I don’t think it was unfair of you,” Monica said. Always so careful with her words.

“And of course, you already know about the pencils I betrayed in California,” I said.

She gave the smallest of nods.

“I wish you hadn’t found out that way,” I said. “But even if I could explain it myself, I don’t think I could do so in a way that would make it forgivable.”

“It was a different time,” she said. “And I should have waited for you to tell me. If and when you wanted to.”

“That’s why I wanted you to Reforge Meng’s pencil. She did not make the same mistakes I did.”

She shook her head.

“I don’t know Meng. And I don’t know exactly what it is you did, what it was like living through those wars. All I can say is what I know of you now, and that for all my life, I have never had a reason to doubt you. I would forgive you for anything.”

I wanted to hold her close, wished she was once again small enough where I could place her on my lap and squeeze. I wanted nothing to touch her belief in me.

“But I could have written back,” I said.