“My mom and I are nothing alike. Like, we might as well come from two different planets.” Dawn had told him that once when they were teenagers. But at that moment, Gyeong reminded Victor very much of her daughter on their first anniversary.

After taking off their shoes inside the front door, they found her mother in the kitchen, pulling glass Pyrex dishes out of the refrigerator.

“Sit! Sit!” she told them, waving them toward the kitchen table. “All I have to do is heat this up in the microwave. It will be ready in just a few minutes. Do you want some wine with lunch? I’ve got Riesling. Riesling goes great with bulgogi.”

“That’s what I said!” Dawn crowed, shooting Victor a triumphant look. But then she frowned and asked-signed her mother, “Are you supposed to be drinking the day before your surgery?”

“It’s okay,” her mother insisted, pulling down three glasses.

“Not for me, mom, thanks. I don’t drink,” Dawn said with a hasty glance towards Victor.

“You don’t drink?” her mother answered with a laugh. “You are no daughter of mine!”

Her mother had probably meant that as a little quip as she bent down to open a standalone wine fridge at the far left of the outer wall’s counter. But with her back turned, she didn’t see the way Dawn visibly flinched, as if her mother had slapped her.

Jokes like that, Victor supposed, were what the internet often referred to as “too soon.”

He also noted that the little fridge was nearly as stuffed with bottles as Dawn’s had been before Victor had Wayne clear it out.

“You’ll have a glass with me, right, Dawn’s Husband?” Gyeong said when she stood back up with the bottle. The bottle was already uncorked. And Victor wondered if her slightly flushed face had less to do with the windy day than this not being her first glass.

Dawn’s eyes darted between him and her mother, obviously distressed. And that was how he discovered the hard way, that he still didn’t love seeing her upset. Not unless he was the one who put her in that state.

“None for me either,” he signed to her mother. Not out of solidarity with Dawn, he insisted to himself. Rather because he wanted to stay sharp and clear for this once-in-a-lifetime meeting.

Her mother’s eyes widened. “Dawn’s Husband! You know sign language?”

Victor cut his eyes to Dawn, eager to see how she would explain this to her mother.

But Dawn just answered, “Yes, Mom, he knows sign language, too, and I’m just going to take this bottle from you and put it back in the fridge because I get that you’re probably scared and upset, but there’s no way you should be drinking the day before liver surgery.”