Mrs. Baek winced from the pain of her hand. “Hold on.” In the kitchen, she opened the freezer with a suctioning sound. She returned, plopping her body down on the hunter green couch with a bag of frozen peas and carrots for her hand.

Margot half sat on the arm at the opposite end. Miguel waited by the door, swaying a little to the Christmas music playing through the walls of the neighboring apartment.

“There was another family,” Margot said. “Before me. Do you know anything about them? There’s a photo.” She wiped her eyes with a sleeve. “A husband, a little girl. It must have been in the seventies, or the early eighties—before she came to America.”

“It makes sense.” Mrs. Baek sighed, closing her eyes. “She never wanted to talk about the past. I always figured it was because . . . she was an orphan, the war.” She opened her eyes again and looked at Margot. “But she mentioned a husband once, that he died in an accident.”

“What?”

“That’s all that I know. I didn’t press it any further than that. She only brought it up once.”

“Do you think that she could still be alive? The daughter?”

“I—I wouldn’t know.” Mrs. Baek rubbed between her brows. “Were there any papers? With the photo?”

Margot nodded yes.

“The only thing I know about—you promise to leave me alone after this, right? She found some papers. Your father helped her. He worked with an investigator. He helped her find some information on her parents, the ones she had been separated from in the war.”

“What? Her parents?” Margot asked, breathless. Her mother had never spoken of them, as if she had given up. But she hadn’t. She had found them after all.

“Her mother survived, I think,” Mrs. Baek said. “Your mother had these papers. That’s all I know, okay? Were they in the safety-deposit box?”

Margot nodded, remembering the pages of Korean words, illegible, inside that manila envelope—forms, documents, handwritten notes.

“So, she had another family,” Mrs. Baek said to herself. “A husband and a child in Korea. That makes sense.” She tossed the frozen peas and carrots onto the coffee table and squeezed her fingers as if they still ached.

Margot rose from the couch to find something for Mrs. Baek’s hand. In the narrow kitchen, which jittered under the fluorescent light and smelled faintly of bleach, she filled a plastic bag on the counter with ice cubes from the freezer, empty except for some dumplings and stiff gulbi. As she walked by the round dining table beside the kitchen, she noticed a red satchel had been tipped over, exposing its contents—a passport, lipstick, pens, a wallet.

Margot picked up the passport. Neither she nor her mother ever had one of their own. Mrs. Baek half smiled in the photo. The name read Margaret Johnson.

“Who’s Margaret Johnson?” Margot asked.

“None of your business,” Mrs. Baek said, lunging toward Margot. “Get away from there.” Miguel came forward from the entryway and grabbed Mrs. Baek’s arm. “Get away from that bag.” Her eyes flared.

“Margaret Johnson,” Margot repeated in a low voice. “But . . . isn’t your last name Baek? And your first name is Margaret?”

She snatched the passport out of Margot’s hand. “It’s my legal name. I never liked the name Margaret, but my husband thought it was a good name . . . Margaret like Margaret Thatcher.”

“Your husband?”

“Yes, but . . . I always liked the name Margot.” Her eyes softened. “I helped pick your name, you know. I guess you wouldn’t remember.”

Margot shook her head. The irony of being named by a woman who had been named by a man. How many names could one person have? And why did she now refer to herself as Mrs. Baek? Was it her maiden name? Or a fake? Could she have been hiding from someone else besides Mr. Park?

“Remember, we lived together in the same house when your mother first moved to America. I had . . . I had just left my husband in Texas.”

The Southern twang. Another life entirely. Almost another country.

Margot sat with her elbows on the dining table, forehead pressed into her palms. “What happened? You just didn’t get along with your husband?”

“No.” She shook her head. “He was the worst kind of person.”

“And Mr. Park? We overheard you fighting with him. At church,” Miguel said.

Mrs. Baek gasped, stunned.

“Has he been following you?” Margot asked. “Why did you—why did you meet him down there?”

Mrs. Baek burst into tears, covering her face with her hand. “You were there?” she asked.

“Yes, we heard everything,” Margot lied.

“I wanted to tell him once and for all to leave me alone.” She gathered herself, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her robe. “I didn’t think I’d be . . . in any danger at church. I didn’t even think he had my number. I changed it. But during the service, I got a message from him, letting me know that he was there, that he wanted to talk to me.”

“Is that why you closed the store? Is that why you’re leaving?” Margot asked.

Mrs. Baek nodded.

“Was my mother with Mr. Park?” Margot asked. “On the night that she died? Do you think it could’ve been Mr. Park who pushed her? He seems like—”

“No, no.” Mrs. Baek coughed.

Margot steeled herself. “The landlord of my building said that he had seen you—and Mr. Park following you—at the apartment, my mother’s apartment. He couldn’t remember when. In September or October.”

“What?” She opened her eyes wide.

“So Mr. Park knew where she lived,” Margot said, voice rising. “Was she with Mr. Park? Do you think she could’ve been with Mr. Park on the night that she died?”

“No. No.” Tears spilled down her cheeks.

“I don’t think she was alone that night. He heard yelling, the landlord thought he had heard her fighting with someone.” Margot’s heart raced. “Could he have pushed her?”

A grimace of pain appeared on Mrs. Baek’s face, shattered.

“Maybe he was trying to find you,” Margot said. “He could’ve pushed her, right?”

Mrs. Baek tossed her passport, slapping the surface of the table. She thrust her hand into the red purse and pulled out a black handgun.

Margot jumped. The last time she had been this close to a gun was when she and her mother had been robbed as they had parked in front of their apartment. Her mother had surrendered her purse to the stranger, whose face was covered. Any wrong move would result in bullets, blood sprayed on shattered glass. At ten years old, Margot had remained in the back seat, frozen—still as a deer swallowed in headlights.

She remembered her mother shaking and crying after the man had left. Her arms folded over the steering wheel, her head down, her hair disheveled. Margot had been too terrified to comfort her mother, who could never call the cops for help. She could never trust the police, never knew what she could be deported for and when, what could happen to Margot if she were taken away. She had worked so hard in this country for so little, which could be destroyed at any moment—either by criminals on the street or men in uniforms.

“Look familiar?” Mrs. Baek asked, checking on Miguel behind her. Holding the gun, her hand trembled. “Do you recognize this?”

Margot shook her head.

“This was your mother’s.” Her voice cracked.

Of course. Who else would protect them but herself?

“She wanted me to keep this in case—in case Mr. Park—” Mrs. Baek wept, her face bright red.

“What?” Margot glanced at Miguel, immobile by the door, frozen with fear.

“She tried to give this to me, to protect myself,” Mrs. Baek said, gently setting the gun on the table. The room relaxed. Margot could breathe. “They all worked at the supermarket together, before you were born. Mr. Park was the owner.”

“The same one where my father worked?”

“Yes.”

“So my mother knew Mr. Park from back then?” Margot stared at the muzzle of the gun, lying down but pointed in her direction.

“One day . . . there was a woman in his office. She had been screaming. Your mother said that your father stopped Mr. Park as he was attacking a woman named Lupe. Your father hit him.”

Margot covered her mouth with her hands.

“Your father left LA after that. He didn’t want to get in trouble.” Mrs. Baek’s eyes met Margot’s. “He didn’t have his papers. Maybe Mr. Park might’ve reported him.”

A beat of silence passed as Margot tried desperately to absorb this information. Finally she asked, “Did you know the entire time that you were dealing with the same Mr. Park, the same Mr. Park from her past?”

Mrs. Baek shook her head as she sat down at the table, where the gun rested between them like a border. Margot joined her and sat on one of the dining chairs. She had the urge to turn the gun so that it faced the wall instead of her. But at the same time, the idea of touching a potentially loaded weapon, reaching for it, and how that might cause Mrs. Baek to react, unnerved her. The gun remained where it lay—silent and volatile.

Sweat beaded on Margot’s face.

Miguel backed himself onto the couch, about ten feet away from them.