They drove back home in silence. The pine tree deodorizer swung like a pendulum. The night had ripened into a starless black while the streetlights glowed amber on steel and glass. From the periphery, she watched his arms, thin and muscular, guide the steering wheel, his leg press on the gas. She could say something. She could tell him everything. But what? What would that something be? What could she say without falling apart, revealing how broken and unlovable she had become? She had already told him too much.

As he pulled up in front of her dark house, Mina said, “I’m sorry about earlier. I just—”

“No worries. I understand.”

“I’m . . . It’s all so new.” She was ruined now, wasn’t she? She couldn’t even have a meal out and enjoy herself.

“Of course. Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m sorry.” She wanted to run out of the car. “Thank you for dinner.”

Before she shut the door, he said, “You’re very nice and pretty.”

She didn’t know how to respond.

“I mean that. You’re very nice.”

“Oh, okay.” She resisted the urge to cry. As a widow who had also lost her child, it seemed she had again become as invisible as she was growing up—alone without a family, a leftover from a war, an unwanted girl.

“Can we have dinner again? Next Saturday?”

She nodded. In English, she said, “Good night.”

Inside her room, she lay on her bed, thinking of Mr. Kim—his warm smile, the sadness of his eyes, his smooth arms—then her husband, the peck of his lips as he departed each day for work, and she buried her face in her blanket.

Tears leaked out of her eyes. She tore at the fabric with her hands, not ripping but gripping, wings flapping over a marsh at dusk, purple and glassy, until she was too tired to realize she was falling into a soft miracle, insects skimming the surface, of sleep.

AUTUMN SETTLED IN THE CITY. THE NIGHTS GREW colder, dropping down to the fifties at times, which seemed chilly in a place where houses and apartments didn’t have much for insulation and heat. The drafty home in which Mina lived felt colder than it was outside at night, and she bundled up in sweaters and blankets as she listened to the Korean radio or stood by the stove, cooking something for herself. Some of the local trees had lost their leaves, but the palm trees lining the streets persisted, ragged, swaying in that bright, smog-filled sky.

At the supermarket when no one would notice, Mr. Kim, lips curled, winked at her with an almost comedic force. Mina laughed, covering her mouth, when she wanted more than anything to kiss him, feel his warm animal breath. She wanted her face to tingle, her heart to thump against her chest. Be wild, like rubbing oneself in the dirt or plucking flowers and pushing them in her hair.

After that awkward first date, he still left gifts in her bin—a Hershey’s bar, a bag of salted peanuts, a Valencia orange with the most perfect navel—objects that aroused some softness, like a rabbit’s fur against her face. To know that he was there, to know that he was thinking about her was a strange but marvelous relief from the hardness of every day.

At the beginning of their courtship, her husband, with his long sensitive face, relaxed eyes, and mischievous smile, had brought her flowers and chocolates like the main character in an American movie. His kindness continued throughout their marriage, but not with the same intensity, of course. After so many years together, raising a daughter, too, their lives had turned toward the practical, to the questions of how they would provide the best life they could for her, what they would have to sacrifice.

So the romance had left them, but never the love. Every morning, he dropped in to kiss her, like a seagull diving into the ocean, before he rushed out the door. She would be eating breakfast by herself or getting ready in the bathroom, and he pecked her on the cheek or sometimes sloppily like a farm animal to say goodbye. He loved rituals, organization, patterns.

But to encounter these small objects—these ordinary gifts—now from Mr. Kim revived something in her that she had forgotten, stirring the coals of a small fire that she had believed had long since died. She began wearing lipstick—soft pinks and berries—which she purchased at a drugstore near the house. She still wore the same blouses and slacks, but she brushed and combed her hair, checking herself in a pocketsize mirror she kept in her purse throughout the day. She lined her eyes black with the tiniest flick at the end. All of this happened so quickly, within a week, that even the landlady, who rarely said anything about anyone’s appearance, noticed.

“Somebody’s living,” she teased.

With Thursday off, Mina, exhausted from a late shift the night before, slept in until noon, when pots and pans, metal surfaces, banged against each other. She hated loud noises, especially sudden ones, striking like the universe crashing down, and she didn’t know in which direction she should run. In her pajamas still, she exited her room and peeked through the open door of the kitchen, which always smelled of garlic and green onion.

With her pale and bony legs, Mrs. Baek stood in a gray T-shirt-like nightgown, clicking a burner on the stove. Her bun of curly hair hung low on her neck. Her forehead and nose gleamed in the room half-lit by sun.

“Ah, it’s been a while,” Mrs. Baek said, drizzling oil onto a pan.

Mina feigned a smile, yearning to return to bed. “Are you hungry?” Mrs. Baek asked. “I was just about to make something.”

“I might wait a little bit.” She placed her hand on her stomach.

“You sure? Sit down.” Mrs. Baek lifted a large bowl on the counter. “I have all this pancake batter. Fresh squid.”

Mina loved the hot crispy pajeon or bindaetteok fried in the open-air markets back home. The anonymous bustle and then the comfort of sitting on a tiny plastic stool as she waited to be fed. The women who cooked in each stall always seemed harried and gruff, yet their mannerisms were also distinctly soothing—as if underneath their no-nonsense approach was the tenderness of the family that they were each charged with providing for. They were women of great power and importance, and they knew it.

“I have some rice from yesterday,” Mina said. “Want me to heat that up?” She reached into the refrigerator for a large round Tupperware, cracked open the lid, and placed it in the microwave, where she stood watching the stove with Mrs. Baek.

“I saw you the other night,” Mrs. Baek said in a low voice, smiling as she tilted the pan to spread the oil.

“Where?”

“At Hanok House.”

“You work there?” Mina remembered the calming familiarity of the banchan—the spinach and soybean sprouts, the crunchy lotus root.

“Yes, I was in the back. I noticed you sitting with a man. I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“I see.” Mina leaned her hip on the counter. “I knew I recognized the banchan from somewhere.”

“Who is he?” Mrs. Baek asked. She ladled the batter onto the hot pan where it cooked almost immediately, the edges hardening.

“He’s a coworker. I work for him.” Her stomach rumbled.

“Oh, that makes sense,” Mrs. Baek said, still focused on the pan.

The microwave dinged. Mina scooped hot rice into two bowls from her drying rack.

“Do you like him?” Mrs. Baek nudged the pajeon with the spatula so that it wouldn’t stick.

“I don’t know. Maybe.” Mina settled in the breakfast nook, the wood benches cold despite their cushions. The smell of squid and scallion pajeon, hot and crispy, filled the kitchen. With her pale bird legs, feet covered in red house slippers, Mrs. Baek shuffled toward Mina carrying a heavy plate and a small bowl for the dipping sauce. The pajeon was perfectly golden and browned, sliced into quarters.

“Go ahead and have some. Let me clean up a little bit.”

Mina waited until Mrs. Baek slid onto the bench in front of her.

“Go ahead,” Mrs. Baek said.

“No, you first, please. Thank you for sharing.”

Mrs. Baek picked up her metal chopsticks, lifted a piece of the pajeon onto her bowl of rice. “He’s handsome.” She raised her brows.

Mina smiled, dipping a piece of pajeon into a tiny bowl of soy sauce and vinegar. “He is.”

“Is he nice?”

“Yes, so far, but it’s hard for me to trust anyone, I guess.” She sighed.

“I’m the same.” Mrs. Baek nudged the mak kimchi, Mina’s favorite, toward her. “You can never tell with men, you know?”

Mina nodded, tasting the mak kimchi. Perfectly tangy and ripe.

“I don’t think I’ll trust any man again,” Mrs. Baek said.

Mina wondered about what kind of history Mrs. Baek might have had, but she could tell by the resentment in Mrs. Baek’s words that to resurrect those experiences here might only shatter the safety, the precarious lack of judgment between them—two women, adrift in a foreign country, without any apparent family.

After eating in silence for a couple minutes, Mina said, “Everything you cook is delicious.”

“It’s hard to cook for one, you know?”