“Why did we stop going to the restaurant? Hanok House?”

“Your mother became . . . very busy after she opened her store. And when she lost that store in the riots . . . she had to work so much. It was a very difficult time. A lot of people lost everything—their businesses, their jobs. There was no time for anything but trying to recover, to survive. It was almost like living through the war again.”

Margot remembered stacks of smoke rising, blackening the air with a noxious chemical smell. A few miles from their apartment, the world had been on fire. On television, there had been a grainy black-and-white video of police officers beating Rodney King, an unarmed Black man, who later said, “It made me feel like I was back in slavery days.”

There were somber white men in suits, an acquittal. Bricks thrown, glass smashed, gates trampled. Buildings ignited into infernos that released towers of smoke into the sky. The National Guard stood on street corners in camouf lage with large guns.

Her mother cried in front of the television set. Her store, too, had been destroyed. Owning a business where she didn’t have a boss yelling at her, a place where she could bring her child to work, seemed too good to be true. All of it would be shattered, too. Because their life would be part of the lie that this country repeated to live with itself—that fairness would prevail; that the laws protected everyone equally; that this land wasn’t stolen from Native peoples; that this wealth wasn’t built by Black people who were enslaved but by industrious white men, “our” founders; that hardworking immigrants proved this was a meritocracy; that history should only be told from one point of view, that of those who won and still have power. So the city raged. Immolation was always a statement.

Her mother’s life was just one life in this wreckage. Margot was there to wade with her in what was left, salvaging together what they could. Their family of two might’ve been the smallest country, but it was the only place where they belonged in this world.

Margot wept, surprising herself. She didn’t think she had any more tears left in her today.

“Are you all right?” Mrs. Baek asked, reaching out and squeezing Margot’s hand. “I know that was a difficult time. That was a very difficult time.”

Miguel wrapped his arm around Margot’s shoulders. She had been embarrassed about bringing him to her mother’s store—that he would see how poor she had been—but now she was grateful he was there. He was like her in so many ways; they could both cry or laugh, feel on a dime.

“How’d you end up here?” Margot asked, sniffling.

Mrs. Baek handed her a napkin. “I got tired of working at the restaurant, so I saved and bought this shop in March earlier this year. This was the only place that I could afford. It’s hard, but it’s a little easier than working at the restaurant. I’m not on my feet all the time.” She focused again on Margot. “Your mom hasn’t been around for a while. I thought maybe she had gone to visit you, or maybe she had gone to Korea. Is someone sick?”

In eight years, her mother had never visited Margot in Seattle, not even for her graduation, and couldn’t afford to miss more than a day off work. To Margot’s knowledge, her mother hadn’t been on an airplane since she had arrived in the US twenty-seven years ago.

“She’s . . . dead,” Margot said, beating back the images that swelled of how tiny her mother had appeared on the ground. How Margot had fallen to her knees, screaming. “She died two weekends ago.”

Mrs. Baek gasped, covering her mouth with both hands, eyes welling with tears.

“When was the last time you saw her?” Miguel asked.

“A couple of weeks ago,” she said, voice trembling. A streak of red lipstick now on her cheek. She cried, dabbing under her eyes, pink and swollen. Eyeliner streaked gray down her face.

“Did anything seem off?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, catching her breath. “She . . . had been depressed for a while.” She squeezed the napkin in her fist.

“Alma, her friend with the children’s clothing store, said the same thing.” Miguel glanced at Margot.

“Do you know why?” Margot asked. “Did she mention anything?”

Mrs. Baek’s hands shook as she smoothed down the crinkled pages of the classifieds on which she had been leaning. It was obvious that she was considering what to tell Margot, like a grown-up protecting a child. Margot wanted to say, There’s nothing you need to hide from me anymore. I’m an adult now. I need to know.

“She was struggling. We’ve all been struggling, you know? There’s hardly any customers these days. It’s gotten so much worse. Nobody wants to come to a swap meet anymore. You should see the bathrooms, how dirty everything is now. The owner, the manager—no one cares about us anymore.” Fresh tears leaked out of Mrs. Baek’s eyes. She shook her head. “When did she die?”

“Over Thanksgiving weekend,” Miguel said. “We were driving down to LA. Margot found her on Wednesday—”

Mrs. Baek covered her mouth again. “Oh my God.”

“She had fallen down somehow. She hit her head.”

“Oh my God.” She held her head as if she might faint.

“The landlord heard her yelling at someone over the weekend.” Margot’s voice trembled, recalling the conversation in the garage. “He said she had a boyfriend of some kind, a man who visited her over the summer, and maybe I thought someone would . . . know who he is, or maybe if he was involved somehow.”

Rubbing the space between her brows, eyes closed, Mrs. Baek exhaled out loud.

“Do you know him? Do you know how I can—”

“That’s why she was depressed,” Mrs. Baek said.

“What?”

“He died in October.” She wiped the corners of her eyes.

“So it couldn’t have been him that was with her that night,” Miguel said.

“With her?” Mrs. Baek asked.

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Margot said. “Who was with her the night she died.”

“What was his name?” Miguel asked.

“I—I don’t know.”

“Was it Chang-hee Kim? Mr. Kim?” Margot asked.

“Oh, yes, Mr. Kim.” Mrs. Baek nodded. “I didn’t even know about him, their relationship . . .” her voice rising “. . . until after he died.” She propped herself up, elbows on the counter. “She was so depressed these past couple months, I kept pushing her to tell me what was wrong. Maybe something had happened to you.” She shook her head. “Finally, she told me about him.” She wiped her nose with a napkin.

“So, she kept him a secret from everyone?” Margot asked.

“She was ashamed, I guess. He was married.” Mrs. Baek’s voice cracked. “What was she thinking?” She sobbed, grabbing another napkin from inside the glass counter to wipe her face.

What would be the chances of this lover, the man in the obituary, being Margot’s father? Maybe Margot had deluded herself into thinking that he would be out there somewhere, that he would appear in her life somehow—dead or alive. Maybe she only wanted to see herself in him to solidify the mythology of her life, to make it real. But the only thing real was her mother’s body on the ground, and the knowledge that her mother was in a relationship with a married man, now dead as well.

“Could she have confronted my mother? The wife. Could the wife—”

“I don’t know. Maybe? Your mother never said much about her. I wouldn’t know that.”

“Why would she do that if her husband was already dead though?” Miguel asked. “Why? What would be the point?”

“I don’t know,” Margot said. “Maybe his wife found out something else, something that pissed her off even more. Or maybe it took a couple months to realize, after his death, that he was cheating on her? So she confronted my mom. Maybe she wanted answers. Either way, we have to find her.”

Mrs. Baek nodded as she wept again. Her friend, Margot’s mother, was now gone. Her makeup had become a mess—streaks of gray down her cheeks, lipstick smeared. She coughed through her tears, shuddered with a specific loneliness, one that Margot could recognize from her own mother. It was the loneliness of being an outsider.

Mina

Summer 1987

AS HER SPEED AND CONFIDENCE ON THE REGISTER grew, Mina began observing the different customers and their items. She tried to piece together their lives as she scanned and entered in codes.

White mushrooms. Three packs of tofu. Green onions. Garlic. Dried anchovies. Five Pink Lady apples. A bag of oranges. Toothpaste.

She even invented little games for herself, estimating how much a bag of produce would cost before she weighed it. Or guessing what a customer would make with her purchased items.