After dinner, Mrs. Baek, as a kind of peace offering, peeled and sliced two golden apples, which they enjoyed together in silence. Mina swallowed the fruit—bright and sweet and tart as if just plucked from the branch—with an intense satisfaction.

Despite all their efforts to forge their own lives in this foreign land as individuals, it was obvious: they needed each other. They reminded one another with shared food or words that life, although mostly mundane and sometimes painful, was still spectacular, full of wonder, especially when we pushed ourselves toward the edge, beyond our fears, as Mr. Kim had asked Mina to ride the Ferris wheel, and imagine another life, with him.

AT HIS ONE-BEDROOM APARTMENT OFF NORMANDIE Avenue in Koreatown, Mina and Mr. Kim would eat dinner after work and then—arms draped, thighs touching, fingers laced—they would watch the Korean news and occasionally an American show. Eventually, they would make their way to the bedroom to make love. Lying next to each other afterward, with Mr. Kim snoring loudly, Mina would sometimes stare at the ceiling, wondering what had become of her life, how it had all happened so quickly.

A couple months into their relationship, a TV special aired on the local Korean channel about the temporary reunification events for Korean families separated in the North and the South without any ability to communicate with each other for decades since the Korean War. These families had been torn apart, members lost, in the process of fleeing the violence and death that erased millions of people. How could they have known that one day their country would be split in two, severing them from their mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, children, without any palpable end in sight?

And the reunification opportunities were scarce. Tens of thousands of families remained on the waiting lists, hoping to be chosen by the lottery, not knowing if they would die before they got the chance to see their loved ones again.

Mina closed her eyes, yearning to change the channel. She couldn’t bear the volume of feeling, the faces stretched with a violence of so many emotions, the raw complexity in response to so many years lost between members of the same family on the screen. Grandmothers in hanboks wept, holding the faces of each other between wrinkled and spotted hands. Grandfathers cried and begged for forgiveness at the feet of the children, now adults, whom they had left behind, not knowing that the war and border would separate them forever.

But Mr. Kim remained transfixed by the screen, red creeping up his neck and face.

From a box that he kept on his coffee table, Mina handed him a tissue. Her heart cracked. “I’ll change the channel,” she said.

“No. I want to see this.”

On the television, the elderly offered testimonials on who they were missing and how much they hoped to hear from or see them again before dying. Tears streamed down so many faces. Hands clutched handkerchiefs and tissues as the reunited, dressed in their best suits or hanboks, dropped to the ground, grabbing each other as if checking to make sure that the bodies of the lost were real. A single human being could live an entire continent of pain and worry and longing.

“Do you ever wonder if your parents might still be there, in North Korea?” Mr. Kim asked.

“What do you mean?”

“When you lost your parents—where were you when you lost them?”

“I don’t remember. I only remember there were hills, dirt, people fleeing. That’s all I remember.”

“Do you ever think that maybe they never made it across?”

“No, I’ve never thought of that.” Heat rose from the pit of her stomach through her lungs and throat.

“But maybe that’s why they never found you,” he said, disturbed.

“Maybe. I guess there’s nothing to do about it now.” She stood to change the channel.

“No, not yet.”

“I don’t want to watch this anymore.”

“Just let me finish this, please.”

“I’ll go and sit in the bedroom.”

As she entered the bedroom and lay down, tears spilled from her eyes, soaking the pillowcase beneath her head. Why was he doing this to her? What did he know about her parents? How dare he assume that they hadn’t made it through? What kept her alive all these years was the thought that they were fine, maybe they had moved on without her, maybe they had another child, but they were fine. They were fine.

They were somewhere in South Korea. They had normal lives. They had moved on. They were fine. Fine. Fine.

She wanted to yell this to him. She wanted to scream, but she didn’t. She couldn’t afford to lose him now.

Ten minutes had gone by until she heard him stepping toward her. With her back facing the door, her body tilted like a canoe as he sat on the bed by her feet. He put his hand on her leg, which he squeezed in the softest way as if testing the reality of her presence in his life.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t worry,” she said, trying to disguise in her voice that she had been crying.

“I’m very sorry.”

A sharp sob escaped his mouth like a hiccup as he wept. She turned to see his face above hers, broken, before he covered it with his hand. She wanted to touch his face but didn’t know how, not at that moment.

“I . . . I should have told you this before,” Mr. Kim said softly. “I was hoping that I would see my father. Every time anything about North Korea is on television—I always hope to see my father.”

She sat up in bed. He bowed his head, staring at her legs, which were a kind of border between them.

“My mother, when she was pregnant with me, left the North with her brother and parents. My father had to stay behind for work. He wanted to take care of everything, the home we had. He didn’t want to just leave, but she never saw him again after that.” He paused to wipe the tears from his eyes. “No one knows what happened to him. My mother tried, but who knows? So many people back then, everyone just trying to get out. Maybe he made it. Maybe not.” He wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Anyway, I like to believe that if I saw his face, I’d know it was him. I’d know—there’s my father. That’s why I watch the TV.”

She reached to touch him as tears leaked out of her eyes. She wanted to be strong for him, but she couldn’t hold herself together.

“She raised me by herself,” he continued. “It was very hard. She did all kinds of things, just so we could get by. She could’ve lost me, too, when she was pregnant. There was so little to eat. It’s really a miracle that I’m alive. She was a very good mother.”

“Where is she now?”

“In Busan. Getting old, though.”

“She never remarried?”

“No. As I got older, I tried to convince her, but she always seemed to think that one day, she would see my dad again, and she wouldn’t want to tell him that she had remarried. I guess, she’s waiting. She’s been on the list for a while. But she doesn’t even know if he’s still alive or what. No one knows. It’s all a mystery.”

He wiped his eyes before lying down on the bed. She joined him. Her hand rested on the side of his face where she could feel the sandpaper of his stubble under her palm, her fingertips on his cheekbone. This man’s kindness emerged out of the cruelties of their lives like birds hatched on fields ruined by mines and barbed wire. She wanted to be kind, to be gentle, too. He was showing her that it was okay to try.

“I thought one day, I’d get rich.” His eyes brightened as if laughing at himself inside. “I’d come to America, get rich, and go back, you know? And if I had enough money, we could find him. But that doesn’t seem to be going to plan either. I’m sort of trapped here now.”

“We’re trapped together,” she said with a smile.

“At least I met you.”

“There’s still time.”

“Yes, there’s still time, but we’re getting old. All of us. Especially my mother.”

“How old is she?”

“She’s in her fifties.”

“She’s still young.”

He lowered his eyes. The tips of his fingers trailed her arm.

“Have you tried prayer?” Mina asked.

“I have, but God gives me the cold shoulder.”

“That’s not true.” But she felt that way on most days herself.

“I’m sorry about what I said earlier,” he said. “I’m sure your family is fine.”

Pipes tapped on the walls as the shower ran. In the next apartment, a neighbor snored.

Mina couldn’t fall back asleep. Her mind turned over Mr. Kim’s words like stones that clacked soothingly on a shore: She always seemed to think that one day, she would see my dad again, and she wouldn’t want to tell him that she had remarried.

What if his father was dead already? All those years his mother would have wasted, alone. But then again, what if the hope of never having to move on was what kept her alive? Maybe the tragedy of waiting was the only way she survived?

Would Mina be able to face her husband in the afterlife?

Would he be angry about Mr. Kim?