“I have two requests,” he said as soon as our meeting began. Now that the semester has started, his time is short. “First thing, I’d like to use your story of how you connected with that person in New Jersey and reconnected your grandmother to her cousin. If that’s alright, could you send me the keywords that matched, whatever EMBRS turned up, and some info on what happened afterward?”

I readily agreed. It would be easy to pull from the EMBRS logs.

“Second thing. Since I’ll be away pitching, I won’t be able to make one of my lectures. Can you pull together a live coding demo? I’ve got freshmen this semester. I want them to see a real-use case of good version control hygiene, and you’re excellent at it. Throw together a sample project and show how you make commits, what messages you write, how you chunk out your work. If you’re feeling frisky, maybe show them some rebasing. We can arrange to call you in over video.”

So I guess I’m putting together a presentation for next week. I was just about to start brainstorming a sample project to use when Louise texted.

dude!!! did you make these? how do I heat it up?

It took me a moment to remember what she was talking about. It felt like a lifetime ago, when I carefully packaged the frozen meatballs and biked them to the post office.

no my grandmother did! I’m still apprenticing. do you have a steamer?

uh no I live in a dorm

just microwave it for a minute then

ill heat it up now!!!

Before long, my phone rang. I took a breath and picked up.

“Monica!” There was something sharp and unfamiliar about her voice.

“Are you alright?” I turned away from my computer. I imagined her at an urgent care, some sort of tear in her leg, ending her volleyball career.

“Yes, I’m fine.” She sounded on the verge of tears.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m just overwhelmed.” There was an unmistakable sniff. “They’re so good! I’ve only got one left now. I was starving, and this was . . . It was perfect.”

“I’m glad you liked them.” I couldn’t stop smiling; it was kind of stupid.

“Please thank your grandmother for me too.”

“I will.”

“It was so sweet of you. Really.” She paused. “I think this is one of the nicest things anyone has done for me.”

I gripped my elbow, the hand next to my ear trembling.

“It’s nothing,” I mumbled, running out of ways to fend off her gratitude.

“And the card! I’m going to hang it up on my wall. I didn’t know you could draw.”

“I haven’t in years. But grandmother gave me this really nice pencil, and I ended up drawing.”

“A pencil? Like the one Meng gave her?”