“There aren’t many places left these days for a small business, I guess.”

“Yes, yes, that makes sense,” Mina said. “I should . . . get back to my store.” She forced a smile to obscure the quickening of her heart, the rising nausea, the cold sweat on her neck. “I’m sure I will see you around?”

Not that Mrs. Baek had wronged her in any way, but rather she represented a time that Mina had no reason to relive, a time during which she was particularly vulnerable, when she had first moved to America, when she had been so naive to think that she could run away from the past, when she had replaced the sorrow of losing her husband and daughter with the sorrow of losing a lover, a father to her child, when all the sorrows in her life threatened to undo her, and Mrs. Baek, the entire time, appeared so put together, so confident, educated, and thoughtful.

As soon as she entered her store, Mina sat down on the floor behind her counter, tending to that history: It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault, how she had longed to say this to Lupe in the station wagon on that day, the blood running down the side of Mr. Kim’s jaw, how she had thrown up in the toilet and Mrs. Baek wiped down her face like a child’s after his final phone call.

Mrs. Baek had entered her life one more time, like a ship that passed, churning water. But perhaps what terrified Mina the most wasn’t a resurgence of what happened, what could have happened, what had never happened, but instead something that Mrs. Baek threatened to offer—friendship again.

Why had Mrs. Baek fled Hanok House? Did she need her now?

Later that afternoon, Mina searched the swap meet for Mrs. Baek’s store—a sock shop—which turned out to be less than a minute away, around a corner she never passed, down one of the aisles toward the rear of the building. Both conservative pajama sets and lacy lingerie hung outside the store’s perimeter constructed, like Mina’s, of gridwall panels. She caught a glimpse of Mrs. Baek near her glass counter, organizing bundles of athletic socks.

“Mrs. Baek,” Mina called from the center of the walkway. Her heart was racing, as if she had been walking straight into the waves for someone who had been washed away, who couldn’t swim back to the shore by herself. For the past several hours, she had been steeling herself for this moment.

Mrs. Baek lifted her face, and upon seeing Mina, motioned for her to come forward.

Trembling, Mina threaded between tables, piled with undergarments, to the glass counter.

Her eyes couldn’t resist the pull of Mrs. Baek’s lips—red and perfectly lined. Now she remembered. A poster of a painting that she had seen once. The long lips stretched across a wide sky spotted with clouds in a faint snakeskin pattern. Women like herself rarely wore red lipstick, not only because a woman who wore it called attention to her face—carved with lines by a life of working long hours—but because red lipstick required the wearer to be vigilant about where they placed their hands on themselves, so as not to mess up or smudge their mouths, vigilant about the lining of their lips so that the color wouldn’t bleed into the tiny cracks that formed as time went by, as they had on both Mina’s and Mrs. Baek’s.

But she admired the effort Mrs. Baek had put into herself, apparently for herself. Mina wondered with what color she would adorn her lips. Not red. She always preferred soft pinks and berries—like the ones she used to wear when she was young.

“Everything okay?” Mrs. Baek asked.

Mina could not feel her feet, as if her torso and head levitated, legless, above the dull gray carpet. For a moment, she fixed her eyes on an English novel on top of the glass counter—Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

“Yes, it’s been such a long while,” Mina said. “I—I was wondering if you wanted to get dinner sometime?” The shyness of her own voice surprised her. Why was she so afraid?

“Yes, of course,” Mrs. Baek said, as if she had been waiting all these years for Mina to ask.

A weight lifted off Mina’s chest. “How about tonight or tomorrow?” she asked.

“Yes, yes, anywhere is fine,” Mrs. Baek said. “Just not—”

“Hanok House.” Mina smiled.

“Yes. Somewhere else.” Mrs. Baek smirked. “Tonight is fine.” Her neck appeared to grow red. “I was only planning on finishing that book.” She tilted her head toward the counter.

“Is it any good?” Mina thumbed through the pages, impressed by Mrs. Baek’s ability to read so many English words. She didn’t know a single person who loved novels like her.

“Yes, I read it a long time ago. In college,” Mrs. Baek said. “It’s sad but beautiful.”

Mina set the book back down and rested her hand on the cover as if she could absorb through its flesh some of her friend.

“But it’s full of terrible men,” Mrs. Baek said, shaking her head. “And I always hated the end.”

Short ribs, sugar, sesame, and garlic caramelized over flames, sizzling around them, accentuated by the sharpness of kimchi jjigaes and fish stews boiling in earthenware pots. Mina hadn’t had a meal at a restaurant in ages it seemed, not since she had dined with her daughter last Christmas. The assortment of banchan—seasoned soybean sprouts, acorn jelly, potato salad, tofu jorim, fried fishcake, grilled gulbi, kkakdugi—strummed her senses like pure sunlight pressing on seedbeds.

“Do you remember the banchan I used to bring home from work?” Mrs. Baek asked.

“Yes, of course. They were always the best.” The potato salad melted like a mousse in Mina’s mouth.

“I loved working there, in a way,” Mrs. Baek said. “I could just cook and it was simple. I guess everything was simpler back then.”

“The hours were very hard, though, right?”

“Yes, but I didn’t mind.”

Mina tasted the soybean sprouts—that delicate crunch between her teeth, the gentle sting of garlic and green onion, the mouthwatering sesame. “Why did you leave? I thought maybe you were tired of the restaurant.”

Mrs. Baek sipped ice water, staining the edge of the glass with her lipstick. How she left her mark, a signature of sorts, wherever she went. Mina’s own lips felt dry as she rubbed them together. She peeled a bit of dead skin off with her teeth.

“It’s complicated.” Mrs. Baek tapped the ends of her chopsticks on the table before gripping a cube of kkakdugi that disappeared in her mouth.

An unease ripened between them in the pauses of their speech.

“What is Margot up to these days?” Mrs. Baek asked.

“She lives in Seattle now. She went to college there. She works in an office, a nonprofit.”

“That’s wonderful.”

The waitress set the green bottle of soju and two glasses on the table.

“Would you mind bringing us some more banchan?” Mrs. Baek asked. She poured the soju with two hands. “Do you think she’ll move back to LA?”

Mina hadn’t had a drink in years, not since leaving Korea, but with her heart pounding now, her palms sweating, she gulped down the clear fluid, bolting toward some relief, the comfort of a blunted mind.

“I don’t know. She seems to like it there,” Mina said.

“Kids will do what they please these days. But she’ll be back, I bet. I’d love to see her again.” Mrs. Baek grinned. In the overhead light, her eyes were dark and dull as charcoal.

Mina filled both their glasses.

“Did you ever hear from her father?” Mrs. Baek nudged the plate of grilled gulbi toward Mina, who shook her head. The fish’s open mouth revealed the tiniest teeth. “What have you been doing these past years?”

“Working. Going to church. What about you?”

“Same. No church, though, of course.” Mrs. Baek’s chopsticks split the skin, gathering a bite off the bones. She laughed. “I never understood how you could hang out with the women there. So judgmental.” She slipped a translucent bit of bone out of her mouth.

Mina adjusted herself in her seat. “I never see them really except on Sundays.”

“That’s right.” Mrs. Baek nodded. “What ever happened to the lady who was your friend back then? Your friend from Seoul?”

“Mrs. Shin?” Mina asked. A pang of sadness. “While I was pregnant, I stopped going to church for a while, remember?” She exhaled out loud. “Eventually, I changed churches. We didn’t keep in touch after that.” An unacknowledged tension had risen between her and Mrs. Shin as Mina’s growing stomach became more and more apparent. The disgrace of it all. Even if she cared for Mina, Mrs. Shin couldn’t have a woman like Mina around influencing her children. She was ruined, wasn’t she?

But with Mrs. Baek, Mina could be, for once, human. They cared for each other despite their f laws, or idiosyncrasies, which were—in a certain light, even in the smallest gestures like Mrs. Baek’s red lipstick—acts of defiance and courage. They need not erase themselves.

“Will you retire soon?” Mrs. Baek asked.

“To be honest, I’m not sure. I’ll probably have to work until I can’t anymore, until I’m too old. I can’t really afford to retire.”