There are moments when I feel so lucky, feel like I am exactly where I should be, like I would not trade a single thing. We walked along the land our families had resided upon for generations. We had ended up so far away and this was not our home, not anymore, but there was a feeling to it, like it could come close to being a home. Like if grandmother and her mother, her father, her aunt, her grandmother, and everyone before them could see us, they would be happy, and maybe my happiness would infect them too, and make up even a little bit for the hardship they had to experience to see me to where I am now.

We sat down on a bench overlooking the water. It was like we were in Cambridge again, at the river. Though this one was so much bigger. People milling all around, stopping for pictures of the flashing tower across the way, the holiday lights. Nobody paid any attention to us. It was perfect.

“What are you going to do now?” she asked. “Once you’re back in school?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe I’ll change majors too. Something more in line with data policy or privacy—”

“Yes!” she exclaimed. “Join the social sciences. That reminds me, I brought you a gift.”

She gave me a card. I had to hold it up, angling it toward the streetlight to see what it said. It was a string of letters and numbers.

“It’s an account number,” she explained. “For one of those things where you can securely connect to a machine without being spied on.” She began to speak much faster. “I know you probably already have one. But I figured it’d be really useful for you to get past sites that are blocked here. And you probably got a cheap one and hacked together your own thing to enhance it, so I ordered you the most expensive one I could find. They don’t even have your email—that account number is all they have, so you can be truly anonymous. Something about how long it is makes it safe? You would know more about that than I would. The app has all sorts of buzzwords I’m sure you’d understand. End-to-end encryption, no logs, split tunneling? I don’t know what that is, but—”

“Stop,” I laughed. “No need for all this jargon. You’ve already seduced me.”

I was stupidly pleased when she blushed, stupidly pleased that she had gotten me a gift so strange yet so perfect.

“You’re only here for a week, right?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I sighed.

“Okay. They actually have a thirty-day free trial. So I’m not really paying anything. But I want you to know that I absolutely would.”

I laughed again.

“Grandmother would approve. Thank you. I love it.”