The bank is in the financial district, a glass tower that reflects the sky so perfectly it looks like it is made of sky. Ziqi stands across the street for ten minutes before she crosses, watching the building shimmer in the afternoon light, watching people move through the lobby like fish in an aquarium. She has called ahead. Meilin agreed to meet her at a tea shop near the bank, her voice careful, neutral, the voice of someone who has been expecting this call for twenty-eight years.

Meilin arrives fifteen minutes late. She is heavier now, her face softer, her hair professionally styled in a way that looks expensive and tired. She wears a navy suit with a pearl pin. She spots Ziqi and walks over without smiling, her heels clicking on the tile floor.

"You look like her," Meilin says. Not a greeting. An observation delivered like a diagnosis. "Around the eyes. The way you hold your head."

Ziqi pours tea. Her hands are steady only because she wills them to be. "I found some letters. From my mother's graduate school years. From someone named Jiaming."

Meilin takes a sip. Her face does not change, but her throat moves too slowly, as if the tea has turned to something else on its way down. "Jiaming. Yes. Your mother's boyfriend. He was nice. Polite. Serious about his studies. Your mother was very fond of him."

"What happened?"

"I don't know. They broke up, I think. It was a long time ago. Your mother was very private. She kept her own counsel."

Ziqi notices that Meilin is not asking questions. She has not asked how Ziqi found the letters, or why she is looking into this now, or what Ziqi hopes to find. She is answering with the smooth efficiency of someone who has prepared her responses in advance, rehearsed them in mirrors, practiced them until they sounded natural.

"The letters end suddenly," Ziqi says. "In December 1999. He doesn't know why she stopped writing. He kept asking what he did wrong. He kept begging her to tell him."

"Young love." Meilin's voice is too light, too quick. "It rarely ends well. Someone gets bored. Someone meets someone else. It happens."

"Do you know why she broke up with him?"

Meilin's knuckles have gone white around her teacup. The porcelain looks fragile in her grip. "Your mother was very private. She didn't share these things with me. She made her decisions and she lived with them. That was her way. That was always her way."

She stands, gathers her bag, walks to the door. She does not turn around. "Your mother made her choices. She lived with them. That is all any of us can do."

Then she is gone, leaving behind a cup of tea that is still full, still steaming, as if she could not bear to drink it.

Ziqi sits alone with the teapot. On the bus, she types notes into her phone with thumbs that feel numb:

Meilin never asked why. Never seemed surprised. Answered too smoothly. She was waiting for someone to ask. She has been waiting for twenty-eight years.

Back in the apartment, Ziqi opens the box and reads the confused letters again.

Tell me what I did. I'll fix it. Whatever it is, I'll fix it.

She reads them aloud, her voice filling the empty apartment, and the words sound like prayers, like pleas, like the last words of a drowning man.

She thinks about her mother receiving these letters, reading them, choosing not to respond. The woman who taught her that feelings pass. That woman kept these letters. That woman preserved the evidence of a love she could not acknowledge, could not destroy, could only hide.

Ziqi lies down on the bed and stares at the ceiling. She does not sleep. She has opened a door she cannot close, and the draft from the other side is cold.