But the other part of her longed to remain in this city to recover something she had left behind—not just history or her past or her mother’s, but whom she had always dreamed of becoming. She had abandoned that side of herself here, too.

“Maybe you could use a distraction?” Miguel asked. “This guy I met invited me to go drinking downtown with some friends. I’m thinking dancing afterward at the salsa club. You’ll come?”

Margot stood outside of the apartment building as the sky glowed sapphire, and she turned to find the sliver of a moon. She could see inside people’s lives through windows—the flickering of television sets, bodies walking behind curtains, a little boy’s mouth, fishlike, pressed against the fingerprinted fog of glass. She could imagine the gills on the side of his face. She laughed.

“Nah, I don’t think so,” Margot said. “This is all you.”

He paused. “I know you’ve been through a lot, but it’ll be fun. You should come. I want you to come. If the guy turns out to be a dud, I’ll need someone to dance with, right?”

“You always dance with strangers anyway,” she said.

“But I want to dance with you,” he said. The sweetest words she had heard in a long while.

She closed her eyes. She felt as if he understood her, they understood each other, precisely at that moment.

There was nothing left to say except, “Okay.”

Wasn’t that the thing with words? It wasn’t just their surfaces—sometimes serene and shimmering, others violent, crashing, and brash—but what they, when carefully considered, conveyed: we are more than friends. We’re family.

ON NEW YEAR’S EVE, MARGOT LOADED UP ON SNACKS and booze at the nearest Korean supermarket, whatever she could get her hands on to feed the crew that would come over—Miguel and his new friends, a group of five or six people. Instead of imbibing at a crowded bar, they’d hang out at her mother’s mostly vacant apartment and carpool to the salsa club afterward.

Growing up, she and her mother had never invited people to their home. There was hardly any room, both physical and spiritual, for entertaining when her mother had spent six long days out of the week at work. The seventh day was always for running errands—grocery shopping, preparing meals, mailing payments for bills, or waiting in lines at the bank. There was never time for rest or celebration and Margot now wanted to change that if she could.

She maneuvered a cart through the produce section, which featured boxes of fruit as gifts, amping up the volume and variety this time of year. She packed several Asian pears in a plastic tear-off bag, then moved on to the most perfect Fuyu persimmons, smooth, orange, and firm. She had always been embarrassed when her mother had given people such odd and practical “Korean gifts”—the boxes of apples or even laundry detergent—when in reality, outside of America, these objects might have some rich symbolic relevance that perhaps Margot didn’t understand.

If she thought of the labor and resources that went into each piece of fruit—the water, the light, the earth, the training and harvesting of each plant—a box of apples could be special, a sacred thing. Perhaps in this land of plenty, of myth and wide-open spaces, trucks and factories, mass production, we lost track of that: the miracle of an object as simple as a pear, nutritious and sweet, created by something as beautiful as a tree.

As Margot considered the large pile of napa cabbage, the grooved white to pale green heads, a hand reached over in front of her. She jumped back and turned to see Officer Choi there. He looked different in his casual clothes—a heather gray V-neck sweater, a collared shirt underneath, and a pair of dark blue jeans.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Was that your cabbage?” He smiled.

“No. Actually . . . yes, that was my cabbage.”

“Here, allow me.” He grabbed the head, placing it in a bag for her.

“Wait, that one was . . . I don’t know, not cabbagey enough. How about that one over there?”

He laughed. “Okay.” He picked up the cabbage he had placed in her cart, put it in his own. He palmed another one at the top of the pile. “This one?”

“Actually, Officer Choi—the other one, the one with all the leaves.”

“Oh, I see. The one with all the leaves.” He crossed his arms across his chest. He looked clean and handsome, like a J. Crew model that wasn’t too snobby and also wore Hanes. Boxers or briefs? She blushed at the thought of his underwear.

“Call me David,” he said. “I quit.”

“What?” She gazed at him and, for a second, forgot how to use language entirely. “The police?”

“I mean, it wasn’t easy, but . . . new year, new me.” He shrugged.

“How come?” she asked, relieved.

“I was kinda burned-out anyway.” He inserted his thumbs into his pockets. “And something about what you had said to me . . . I realized why I joined in the first place.” He scratched the back of his neck. “You were right.”

Her three favorite words. “Really?”

“That first phone call? Remember how upset you were?”

She nodded, remembering most of the words. You might think we’re some kind of burden on your workload, but my mother worked her ass off, and she paid taxes like everyone else . . . People like my mother hold up this sham as much as you.

“Because you wanted answers, and you didn’t feel like you were getting any,” David said. “And that your mother deserved better.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“She did. She does.” He avoided her eyes. An ahjumma nudged her shopping cart into Margot’s. They moved away from the napa cabbage as she passed with a hmph.

“Why did you join?” Margot asked.

“I had an older brother who died when I was a teenager. Everyone thought it was suicide, but . . . I couldn’t believe he killed himself. So I wanted to help people if I could. There weren’t a lot of Korean officers—at least not back then. And I thought the cops were just blowing my family off because my parents didn’t speak English.”

“I see. I’m sorry,” she said, a heaviness building inside her chest.

“That’s all right.” He sighed. “I’ve spent the last couple years doing boring-ass paperwork, busting people who are trying—maybe in not the most legal or ‘moral’ ways, but trying—to survive. I wasn’t helping people in the way that I want to. And to be honest . . . I’m tired all the time. Really tired.” He shook his head. “Anyway, this is way too much—”

“No, it’s not. I’m glad to know. I’m just happy that you realized all of this.”

“What about you?”

What should she tell him now? “I think I’m . . . accepting it. My mother’s death. I’m getting there at least, knowing what I know about my mom now. I got a kind of closure from all this. Maybe an opening, too.”

“Good.” He rested his hand on his cart.

Silence grew between them and they exhaled at once.

“Are you making kimchi?” he asked, pointing his chin toward the cabbage.

She could make kimchi this week? “Ha, I wasn’t planning on it, but I guess now I am? I wasn’t even sure how long I’m staying.”

“Where?” he asked.

“Koreatown.”

She paused. Around them, last-minute shoppers perused and collected vegetables—yellow and white and green onions, chili peppers, knobs of ginger.

“Are you hosting tonight?” he asked. Another ahjumma bumped her cart into Margot’s.

“I’ve got friends coming over,” she said. “What about you?”

“I don’t have any real plans, so I’m going over to my parents’ house. My other brother will be there with his kids. It’ll be nice and chill.”

How does Officer Bae not have any plans? “How many kids does he have?”

“Two. You wouldn’t believe that he’s actually four years younger than me.”

Two grandmothers turned over the heads of napa cabbage, disappointed. One of them tore off a piece of leaf, popped it in her mouth, and nodded. Her hands were powerful and wrinkled—so much like her mother’s. How much Margot loved those hands that would create the long peel of skin before slicing the fruit for her. How much she missed those hands.

“Well, I’ve got a few more things to pick up,” he said. “It was nice seeing you.”

“Likewise.” She couldn’t help but smile.

He freed himself from a traffic jam of carts, bowed his head to other shoppers, excusing himself.

“David,” she called, self-conscious about her loud English voice in this space.

“Yeah?”

Startled, an ahjussi shot them both dirty looks. Those voices. American kids. How rude.

Smiling, she abandoned her cart temporarily, threaded herself through the crowd, and stopped a couple feet from him. “Now that you’re unemployed—could I ask you a favor?”