I still send grandmother messages even though she doesn’t reply anymore. Whether she has forgotten I am away, or how to type Chinese on the keyboard, or how to use her phone, I don’t know. But I send them anyway, a sort of comfort to myself.

When I took out my phone to look at my one-sided conversation with grandmother, Louise noticed. She squeezed my hand. I rested my head on her shoulder and let out a shaky sigh.

“You know what she would say,” Louise assured me. “How proud she is of you. How much she loves you.”

I nodded. After Reforging grandmother’s pencil, I knew her better than I ever thought possible, all her faults and mistakes, also her resilience and her love. And I knew that if her memory were not failing her, she would have had something fun to say, some funny emojis to send, probably two girls and a city skyline and a heart, for she had always been the greatest supporter of our relationship. She’d probably add something else, too, something in Chinese, a sly reminder not to forget that no matter how much Louise might like me, she would always be the one who loved me the most.

I sent her a message, continuing our one-sided conversation.

永遠不會忘記妳的愛 👩🏻👵🏽❤️♾

Louise squeezed my hand again.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

I put my phone away, and for a moment we sat there, my head on her shoulder, her hand in mine, enjoying the city. Then I turned to her and kissed her.

“Finally.” She smiled and kissed me back.

She said more than that, words that made my head light and my heart soar. But those words—

I think I will keep just between me and her.

Notes and Acknowledgments

There isn’t really an Arby’s Monica could have biked to in 2018. But maybe in a world that is a little more magical than ours, there would have been.

The bronze lions outside the Shanghai HSBC bank that Meng makes a wish on were mysteriously never taken by the Japanese, despite other bronze statues being taken for scrap metal. The Japanese did, however, take the Hong Kong branch’s lions (which were modeled after the Shanghai ones). The Hong Kong lions made it as far as a dock in Osaka before being spotted after the war and laboriously returned to Hong Kong. Remarkably, the Shanghai lions also survived the Cultural Revolution by being hidden in warehouses. They now hang out at the Shanghai History Museum.