With the time difference, I thought Louise wouldn’t respond until much later in the day. To my delight, she replied almost immediately.

omg! yes, that’s her name! ill ask about your grandmother today! do you have a pic i could share with her?

Something about the casualness of her message, her openness, drew me in, even then. Was it also her face in her photographs, the easy smile, the confident eyes? Okay, maybe. But there were so many questions I wanted to ask her. How had she run into Meng? Was Meng an attendee at economics conferences? Or maybe a volleyball fan? Was Meng a mahjong fiend? Did they play together?

I sent her two pictures. One was me and my grandparents outside the classroom where my grandfather used to teach. The second was from the summer before college, when I’d ransacked the attic and found a bag of used wooden pencils. I brought them down, photographed the pile, even took a few close-ups of the ones that still had their markings. Beautiful etchings that formed the outline of a phoenix. When I asked grandmother about them, she said they were from the pencil company and asked that I put them away. I noticed that a few of them—it’s hard to explain exactly—but some were hollow, as if the lead had fallen out, leaving only the wooden casing. Grandmother caught me staring down the barrel of one. She rested her hand over mine. Her hand, all loose, wrinkled skin, should have been soft and familiar. Instead, there was a rigidity to her fingers as she pulled the pencil away. I let her, of course, and we did not talk about them again.

whoa, awesome! will report back later today, your tmrw

I could hardly sleep that night. Summer was ending, which meant I had to wrap up my EMBRS work in the next few days, and the Pennsylvania humidity was awful. It was a tossing-and-turning-and-reimagining-algorithms kind of night. But the end of summer also meant I would be headed home to Cambridge soon, at least for a few weeks, to celebrate another birthday with grandmother, and this time I’d have a proper gift for her.

Louise’s message the next morning was all I could have asked for.

hey! i spent the day with meng. she was surprised to say the least! she wants to send something to your grandmother and she gave it to me. i can mail it to you when im back in the states? ill be back in two days!