Dinner is always prepared by grandmother and grandfather, with me observing. Then it’s the postmeal walk through the neighborhood, and finally, returning home, where I message Louise my 😞 😄 and hope our conversation might last late into the night. And if there’s something I need to process, I turn back to this journal.

Which brings me to yesterday, when, after our postmeal walk, grandmother called me into grandfather’s office again.

“How did you enjoy your time with the pencil?”

It was really a strange thing to ask about a pencil. I tried to reply enthusiastically.

“It was great. Do you have more?”

“Not a lot. I lost most of them after I came to America.”

“What happened?”

“There was a fire at home.”

I had never heard her mention such a thing before.

“What? Here?”

“No, when I was in California.”

“You were in California?”

“For a little bit. It was not a good time. Can I have the pencil back?”

“Oh. Yes, of course.” I was sad to part with the pencil. I thought it was a gift.

She held the pencil with her left hand. Her scars snaked from her palm down her wrist and into her sleeve.

“You will have to forgive me, Monica,” she said. “I have kept a secret from you, one that you had every right to. Of course you wouldn’t know to ask for it. But you know our family used to run a pencil company in Shanghai.”

She held the pencil tenderly, almost with a sense of wonder, though it was just a pencil. Was it possible her eyes were wide from fear?

“In Taiwan too,” she continued, “and even a little bit in America. Crafting the pencils was one part of it. We were very good at it, of course. But we could not have survived the wars with only that.”

She rolled up her sleeve. I used to trace my hand along her scars when I was little. They must have been more prominent then. Now they sag with her skin, pale and unnoticeable if you aren’t looking for them. She used her other fingers to splay her skin flat. The scars ran down her arm, curving, familiar.

I suddenly recognized the pattern. I found the carving on her pencil. It was the same—the tail of the phoenix flowed and curved in a shape that matched her scars.

She noticed my realization.

“These scars are remnants of that power. We called the power Reforging.”

“And what is Reforging?”

“The power to bring a story back to life. The power to understand a writer’s words, exactly as they intended them. The power of perfect connection.”

I shivered.

“And what did you use this power for?” I asked.

She made a strange sound then, somewhere between a groan and a sigh.

“Too many things,” she said, barely above a whisper.

I changed the subject for her.