Edward looks like your father. That was my first thought when we met shortly after he moved to Shanghai. He would have been around the same age as your father the last time I saw him, the last time I saw you.

Edward was in an awful state. I won’t go into detail, except that he seemed lost in many ways—far from home with few friends, unsure where home was anymore. I was a last resort. He was so pitiful that even though I thought I had long moved on from you, I decided to help him.

I hated your father—do you know that? The times when he was away during the war were the most stable of my life. As soon as he came back, everything went wrong. Mr. Gao spent more time at the house. A new war began. And of course, he took you away. The circumstances were dire, I know that now. But at the time, I absolutely hated him.

Yet for some reason, I kept his pencil. You left it here, do you remember? You were mad at him and threw it across the room that first night he suggested leaving. I found it months later, under my bed, and recognized it for what it was if only because it was one of the older designs, ones that would have only been made when our mothers were young. I kept it. I thought you might want it back if we ever met again. In a way, I kept it hoping it would allow that to happen.

Instead, Edward showed up, looking so much like your father and reminding me that I still had his pencil. Edward told me he had never met his grandfather, that by the time your family was able to return to Taiwan, he had already passed, that he only knew him from a tombstone on a mountain where he’d burned paper and hadn’t known what to say.

But I still had his pencil. And when Edward came, I Reforged it.

It was the first I had Reforged in decades. I had sworn off it. It was easy to avoid after I burned down the company. Mother was furious with me all the time. She continued to Reforge, but the pencils weren’t ours, and she was sick more often than not. I know that is my fault; her death is on my hands. I was devastated when I learned your mother had died. I looked up to her more than my own mother even. I didn’t hear about it until decades later. There was a small bit of relief, though, too. Your mother still became ill, Reforging our own pencils. It made me think that maybe I was not entirely to blame for my mother’s illness.