That was when she gave me the pencil. It was just like the ones I had found in the attic, the wood a striking black. The point wasn’t sharp, yet the lead still shone. At the opposite end of the point was a carving of a phoenix, wings raised.

And though the pencil was elegant, I could not help feeling disappointed. I had more tact than to demand if that was it, if really all Meng could think to give grandmother after seventy years apart was a single pencil that was just like the ones she already had in her attic. Instead, I asked if there might’ve been a note with it. Louise gave me a curious look and said no, it was only the pencil.

I tried to hide my dismay (I’m not totally socially incompetent!), thanked her, and changed the subject, asked how she met Meng in the first place. She said it was through a program that connects older people in Shanghai with those who want to hear and archive their stories. I told her that was amazing. She didn’t seem to believe that I meant it, waving her hand and reddening a bit, but I insisted.

I told her about EMBRS. How it was also in the business of connecting people through stories, that it was how I had found her.

“Oh? Is it a dating app?” she asked, which made me flush. I tried to explain that it was a new kind of search engine, a really good one, with more integrations to social media than anything else out there. That one day it would hold our life stories and connect people who did not even know they were looking for connections.

“Oh,” she said, and I couldn’t tell the emotion behind it at first—skepticism, or wonder? But she continued. “We have quite a bit in common, don’t we?”

Thinking back on those words still gives me this silly, fuzzy feeling. I didn’t want to linger over this too much, so I made my usual jokes about Prof. Logan, his pitches and cheesy product names, and when she laughed, I felt really, really good. I asked her what Meng was like, and she took her time responding.

“I mean it seems like a cliché to say she’s wise, but that’s really the best word. And she has a biting wit—she’d always make these snarky comments about what she called my ‘elite education.’ ” She smiled wistfully, and I got the sense that no matter how pleasant our conversation, New Jersey was not where Louise wanted to be right then. She recounted how she and Meng met at a park, how hearing Meng’s story made her rethink her own. When she spoke about stories, her eyes glossed over, like she was in a dream.

“Is that what you want to change majors to?” I asked. “Something to do with archiving stories?”