But it doesn’t matter what she thinks, does it? She tried to call me, text me, until I told her to please stop, not right now, I need time, I need to take care of grandmother, and she had gone silent.

That night was grandmother’s last in the hospital. Grandfather was already asleep, and I still didn’t want to talk to Louise. I was tired and drained after my call with Prof. Logan, but found I wanted, needed, to talk to someone. Meng’s message made the answer obvious. I called my father.

One of the most surprising things I learned was that he had spoken with Meng. We always knew she was likely in the same city, but it was a large city, and he did not care enough for his family here, so why would he seek out this distant relative? That I could have called him, that he could have simply told me how to reach Meng—compared to the way I went about searching, setting up internet scrapers, driving to meet Louise, retrieving Meng’s pencil from her, learning how to Reforge, having my heart broken—it was almost laughable, the simplicity of the alternative. But maybe that’s just the way of the women in our family, for everything to involve a pencil and a broken heart.

“Monica!” he exclaimed, genuinely surprised. We had not spoken since I called him from the hospital. He had written a few emails to me, which I had skimmed, then ignored. “Is everything okay? Grandmother should be coming home soon, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “No, she’s fine. I just . . . I wanted to see how you were doing.”

He blinked. Then he told me things were going well, he would be able to wrap up loose ends more quickly than he thought. He didn’t realize until hearing about grandmother’s fall how bad things had gotten, and he would try to get home as soon as possible.

“In fact, I should be able to return before your spring semester. So you can go back to school.”

“That’s wonderful,” I said, surprising myself with how much I meant it. Even if I had to avoid Prof. Logan, I wanted to go back to school, to keep learning.

“But how about you come to Shanghai first? While I still live here. You can come before your semester starts, and I can show you around. I think you’d like it here.” For the first time, I heard the pleading in his voice.

“I can’t just leave grandmother and grandfather here.”

“Well, why don’t you ask them? I think they might like the idea of you coming here.”

I said I would, though I did not actually intend to. Still, it was difficult not to envision myself in Shanghai, walking along that same skyline that had been in Meng and Louise’s picture.

“Do you have Meng’s contact info?” I asked suddenly.

“Who?”