The cramped living room smelled of a used bookstore—a dust-covered breakdown of paper and ink—and thick cucumber cold cream. Stacks of books and newspapers on the coffee table resembled a fragile skyline that could topple to the ground. A fire hazard.

Margot sank into the velvet of an old hunter green couch—a vintage curbside piece that had been cleaned and now animated a space that resembled more of an office or a storage closet. On the flat-screen television between the living and dining areas, the Korean news had been muted.

In a gray dove-colored robe over a pink sleeping gown, frayed hem kissing her bony knees, Mrs. Baek crossed her arms beneath her chest, remote control in hand. Without her armor of makeup—the red lipstick, the eyebrows penciled into the slivers of a moon—she resembled a tropical bird plucked of its feathers.

“I wanted to ask you some questions,” Margot said.

Mrs. Baek crossed her arms. “About?”

The claustrophobia of the room closed in on Margot. What was she thinking coming here? But she thought of what she was searching for and steeled herself.

“Mr. Kim and my mother,” Margot said.

Mrs. Baek tightened the towel wrap on her head.

“I went to the swap meet today,” Margot continued. “Your store was gone.”

Mrs. Baek planted a dining chair in front of Margot and sat down. “I’m done.”

“With work?”

“For now.” She bit into a hangnail. “Did you see any customers there?”

“No.”

“I’ve been losing money for a while.”

Business was slow again today. Even all the Korean businesses downtown are closing.

The waitress expected Margot to refrain from mentioning Mr. Park, but she wanted to know if Mrs. Baek was safe. Even if her business had been doing poorly, it seemed odd that Mrs. Baek would close down her store right before the holidays—the most lucrative time of the year.

“Any other reason why? Seems like you closed things down pretty quickly.”

“I’ve been . . . planning this for a while.”

“What will you do now?”

“I’m not sure. I’ll survive. Don’t worry about me.”

“Will you go back to Hanok House?” Margot asked, knowing the answer but hoping that she could provoke some response.

“No, not there. Never again.” Mrs. Baek adjusted the knot on her robe’s belt.

Margot examined a stack of books on the coffee table, novels that she had read in high school and college herself. Difficult books. Beautiful books. George Eliot. Edith Wharton. Pages on pages like teeth once white, now yellowed. How a book was kind of like a mouth. Did stories keep us alive or kill us with false expectations? It depended on who wrote them perhaps.

“You read these?” Margot asked, noticing Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, one of her favorites, in a pile. A pang of sorrow filled her as she thought of that story, and its end. “My mom never read.”

“She hated reading.” Mrs. Baek leaned back in her chair. “Believe it or not, I majored in English. Like you.”

Those words, like you, wrung something in Margot’s chest. How much had her mother talked about Margot? Had she been proud of her?

Mrs. Baek planted her hands on her knees, ready to stand. “It’s getting late,” she said. “My sheet mask is calling.”

“Could I ask you about Mr. Kim?”

“I don’t know that much, to be honest.” Her voice trembled. “Like I said, she didn’t tell me about him until after he died.”

“Was he my father?” Margot’s heart thumped inside of her chest.

Mrs. Baek widened her eyes in shock.

“I found his obituary at our apartment. There’s a picture of him. He looks like me.”

Biting down on her lip, Mrs. Baek remained silent.

“It doesn’t make sense that they would be together otherwise. I visited his house in Calabasas, you know? He had this beautiful house, a beautiful life. His wife is stunning. He was living in an entirely different world. How could they have met? What would they have in common except for the past?”

Mrs. Baek inhaled deeply, staring down at her lap.

Margot leaned back, hands on the velvet couch again. “He owned some supermarkets. I remember my mother said that my father worked at the same supermarket as her when she first came to America. Why else would he—what else would the connection be between them? Or maybe they were just friends from back then? But every time I look at his picture—” Her voice shook. “I swear—”

“It’s him,” Mrs. Baek interrupted, brows furrowed. “You’re right. He was your father, Margot.”

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” Her heart broke. She needed air.

Mrs. Baek shook her head in response.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” Margot shouted—angry at her mother, Mrs. Baek, the world. Crying, she rose to her feet.

“Because your mother thought there was no reason for you to know. He was dying. There was no reason to tell him about you as well. What would be the point?” Mrs. Baek tightened the towel around her head. “She made that decision.”

“But it’s not fair. I would’ve rather known. I wouldn’t care that he was dying.”

“Maybe she just didn’t want to tell him,” she responded fiercely. “It’s a tough thing to find out when you’re sick. He had cancer. She was trying to protect you both.” She burst into tears and sobbed. “She was trying to protect you. She was trying to protect everyone.” She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her gray robe.

Margot plopped down again on the couch. Mrs. Baek stood and left the room, returning with a box of tissues that she handed to Margot.

“I still don’t understand.” Margot blew her nose. “And now—what? What do I do with all this information? It’s useless to me now. They’re both dead.”

Mrs. Baek sat next to Margot, held her hand. “The past is . . .” She winced, her eyes fixed on the carpet. “Sometimes, it’s better to forget. You have still so much ahead of you, okay? You have to . . . We have to move on, okay?”

“But I don’t want to, not until I understand. Whether it was really just an accident.”

“Your mother’s death?”

Margot nodded. “I’m not going to—to move on until I understand. I can’t move on until—”

“Until when? Until you realize it was not your fault?” Mrs. Baek’s eyes glistened. “Do you feel guilty?”

Margot’s cheeks burned. “I should’ve checked on her more often, visited her more often. Maybe I wouldn’t have . . . prevented anything, but also maybe I would’ve known what was going on in her life. I could’ve—”

“It wasn’t your fault, Margot.” Mrs. Baek squeezed Margot’s wrist. “It was an accident. A very bad accident.” Wiping the corners of her eyes, she said, “We all wish that we could’ve done something differently, right? But it’s not really worth revisiting. We all could’ve done things differently.” She focused on the piles of books in front of them. “That’s the problem with memory.”

Her mother could crack open a moment with her memory as if the present was nothing but an eggshell, spotted and frail. As a teenager, Margot had begged her mother once to attend a concert (she couldn’t even remember the band now). Even if Margot had secured a ride with her friend’s parents, which was a lie, her mother did not want her out at night.

“Do you know how hard I work?” her mother had yelled in Korean. “Do you know how hard I work? I haven’t done anything fun for years. Fun?”

“Why won’t you let me be happy?” Margot yelled in English with little care for her neighbors next door.

“You should be doing schoolwork. You should be at home. Do you know how lucky you are? Do you know what I was doing at your age?” Her mother jabbed her own chest with an index finger. “I worked in a factory all day as a child. Do you know what that’s like? I got sick all the time. Terrible things happened to children like us. We were all burdens. We were all mouths to feed. I had to learn to feed myself. There is no fun. There is no fun in this world.”

But her mother’s harshness was designed to protect Margot from what her mother considered to be a universe without shelter, without much kindness for kindness’s sake. Of course, her mother would perceive the world that way—so much of her identity was about the past. She was floating, like all of us, in history. Yet the taste of hers was particularly foul and dark, filled with smoke and flame.

Tears streamed down Margot’s face. She had to get out of this room. Clawing. She needed air. Gripping the arm of the sofa, she stood and moved to the door.

“Sorry to come by so late.” She placed her hand on the doorknob.

“Your mother . . . She was very lonely when she first came here.” Mrs. Baek offered this—a departing gesture perhaps to help Margot forgive herself, forgive her mother at last.

But Margot didn’t turn. She hated that word, lonely. She wanted to ask, What about me? It’s not my fault she was lonely. It’s not my fault that I was born. I was lonely, too. I was lonely. Nobody wanted me. But she remained silent, clenching her teeth.