“I don’t want to know,” she said. Her heart raced.

Breathing deeply, he said, “Okay. But I can help you, before it’s too late. Your parents. What if they are still alive?”

Your parents. She almost dropped the receiver.

“I don’t care anymore,” she said, her voice rising. “I’ve already moved on. What if they’re dead? What is the point?”

“I can help you find them. I have someone, an investigator in Seoul that I use.”

“I don’t want to know.” She hung up the phone. “Don’t you think if I would’ve wanted to know, I would’ve tried myself,” she said out loud to no one but herself. “I would’ve stayed in Korea and waited like your mom. Why would I want to know them now? For what? So I can bury them, visit their graves? What is the point?” Tears streamed down her face. She wanted to throttle someone. She wanted to throttle the universe.

The phone rang.

“What?” she asked, relieved that he had called back.

“Meet me,” he said. “Why don’t we go somewhere?”

She breathed hard through her mouth.

“We can talk. That is it. I promise . . . I’ll be there. It’s different this time.”

She didn’t want to ride in his car, nor did they want to be seen in Koreatown together, so she agreed to meet at the end of the pier on Sunday night. Of course, she knew that he had chosen the place not for its seclusion, but because of the memories aroused by the air, the salt of the ocean, the lust of the carnival lights, and the rough wood boards that squeaked beneath her feet, providing the illusion of walking out on water.

She didn’t know if she would even recognize him and kept thinking to run away before it was too late, before he would pull her in like the waves, out into the ocean again. She had agreed that she would only meet him if he did not ever bring up the past, if he did not ever bring up where he had gone, what had become of his life since he had left LA, how long he had been living in the area, why he never made it to Vegas—especially his wife. She didn’t want to hear any of it. All she wanted to know was what he could offer her now, what he knew or could know, and how he knew it.

As she walked closer to the end of the pier, the screams on the roller coaster whooshed by, and she stared up at the Ferris wheel, flashing red and white. Tears filled her eyes. She hadn’t expected to cry. She hadn’t been to this pier for years. Her daughter would sometimes come on her own, but Mina refused to step foot again in this place, where she had let herself feel again. And here she was once more, overcome with an emotion that made her mouth dry, hungry for the sweet burn of the hot chocolate she could smell by memory, the first time she had had hot chocolate in her life. She thought for a second she must turn around, or jump off the side of the pier, amid the jostle of bodies around her, the street musicians. The water was calling her name.

But before she knew it, she had reached the end of the pier. Underneath the white glow of a tall lamp, a man sat on the bench, shriveled in a large black wool coat. She walked closer to him. He turned around and she, alarmed and desperately, sadly happy, caught a glimpse of his face. The world tilted beneath her feet. They bowed their heads at each other.

She could collapse, but she gripped the back of the bench as quickly as she could. She sat two feet away from him as if they were strangers.

She crossed her arms in front of her belly, ashamed of her body, and wept.

She could sense him trying not to look at her, although he wanted to comfort her. He reached into his coat pocket and offered her a handkerchief. She wiped her eyes at only the corners to not disturb her eyeliner, the makeup she wore. The tears, springing from her heart’s heaviness, the heaviness of a lifetime, almost seventy years, streamed down her face, and she didn’t care if anyone could see her.

She faced the ocean. The moon glowed, shimmering on its surface. She couldn’t glance at him again. She couldn’t see his face.

“You’re still cute,” he said.

Surprised, she couldn’t help but smile.

“You’re still pretty,” he said. “I don’t know if you’re nice anymore, though.”

She laughed, gently dabbing her cheeks with his handkerchief. “Why should I be?” she asked.

“You are right about that.” He sighed. “I’m so sorry for . . . everything.”

A tightening in her throat. She fell silent for a while. From the corner of her eyes, she watched him cross and uncross his legs. The water lapped the pillars beneath them. She tried not to shiver or appear cold in front of him.

Finally, she asked, “Did you ever find your father?”

“Yes, I did,” he said. “But it turns out, he died . . . a long time ago.” He cleared his throat. “Actually, I found out that he died shortly after we left him in the North. A bomb had been dropped near our house.”

Mina gasped and closed her eyes momentarily.

“I never had the heart to tell my mother that,” he said. “I always thought it’d be best to . . . let her wait it out. So . . . she died thinking that he might still be alive somewhere, or maybe she would meet him in heaven. But I couldn’t let her know that she had waited all those years for him . . . for nothing. That would’ve broken her heart, more than anything else, don’t you think?”

She could feel him watching her. For a second, she glanced back. The sight of him, old and small in his long coat, pained her. She remembered his arms, how she loved his arms, and she could see that he had grown thin, wasting away. She could hardly recognize him except for the softness of his eyes beneath his curved brows, the gentle line of his lips.

He cleared his throat. “Do you . . . do you want to know the truth? About your parents?”

Your parents. The words stung, stirring the ashes inside her heart. “I don’t think the truth matters anymore.”

“How is that?”

She held back tears. “Like for your mother. Why would the truth have mattered to her? Why would the truth matter now?”

“Because you have time.”

“There’s hardly any time.” She wanted to say, I’m almost seventy. What time do I have left? She wiped her eyes with the soft white handkerchief balled up in her fist.

“You still have time.”

How did we measure what we had left? Not in days or years for Mina, but with what strength remained. His days were numbered. He had said the cancer would overtake him before the end of the year. She wanted to hold him, but didn’t know how, after all this time had passed. Their bodies had changed so much. She could hardly recognize themselves under the weight of all the years—twenty-six of them—and what time could do to the body and the heart.

He placed his face into his hands, shaking.

“What is worse than the truth is where your mind goes,” he said. “How it wanders, how it refuses to let go. The things you imagine that could’ve happened. At least you have an answer. At least you can stop thinking at night. My mother was at the point where there was no more moving forward—all she had left were her dreams to keep her alive. You still have time. You still have so many years left, but also, no one has enough time. I just wish . . . I wish I had come here sooner. I could’ve tried to help you earlier, but . . . life . . .”

“You didn’t know.”

Of course, she couldn’t tell him now about Margot. What would be the point? Judging by the gold band on his finger, he was married now, might have kids of his own. The idea of Margot might shatter him. She would keep him from that knowledge, as he had protected his mother before her death. She would spare him.

And for Margot to have a father now, how could that help her, when he was on his way out of this world? She couldn’t trade the grief of not having a father for the grief of one dying. At least she had gotten used to the former, a familiar sadness rather than something frightening and unknown. Mina would spare them both. And she would allow him back into her life on her own terms.

Mina stared out into the wide ocean of obsidian, scintillating under the white moonlight. Once, behind them, they had ridden the Ferris wheel in a riot of light flashing in the still blue glow of night. Back then, every delicious second mattered. Every single breath.

Margot

Winter 2014

AFTER MARGOT HAD GONE THROUGH THE CONTENTS of the safety-deposit box on Monday night, she resisted the temptation to rush to Mrs. Baek’s apartment and sleeplessly waited until the morning. Only Mrs. Baek could help her understand the photograph from the safety-deposit box—her mother, a woman in her late thirties with a husband and child in Korea. Where was the other family, the pigtailed daughter in the red T-shirt and leggings?