The gate opened with its metallic click.

My niece flew in like a bird, graceful in her ballet flats. She sat on the grass beside us and said, “Still chatting away? You two are inexhaustible. You haven’t moved? You haven’t even turned on the light! All the houses around are lit up; I thought you’d gone out. You’ve stayed out here in the dark this whole time?”

“Yes,” Claire Marie said. “Was your movie good? Where’s Clément?”

“Clément left me at the end of the street—he’s not coming in tonight. He’s got some work to finish. The movie was very good,” my niece said. “I really liked it a lot. What did you do?”

“We talked, as you see. We had a nice, peaceful visit. It was very good too. We didn’t notice what time it was. The hours went by fast. We talked about our memories of when we were young.”

“About your sweethearts?” my niece asked with an indulgent little smile.

I said, “Of course. Your mother had a few, like everyone else; I particularly remember a long-haired rock’n’roller your grandfather couldn’t bear to see in the house—he didn’t like his hairstyle. There were some terrible scenes.”

I mimicked Papa: “That boy, is he unaware that barbers exist?”

I’m very good at mimicking Papa. My niece laughed; her expression was vaguely incredulous.

“You don’t know what your mother was like, you can’t remember her as I do. Obviously, you didn’t know her when she was young. She was a fanatical dancer.” (I thought: fanatical dreamer.) “The kind that could dance all night long—which must seem incredible to you. That wasn’t your generation. You weren’t around for that era. It was before the year 2000,” I said. “We didn’t even have mobile phones then. Can you imagine?”

I was certain that those formulations meant nothing to Mélanie. “Before the year 2000” didn’t compute; not even “Your mother was a fanatical dancer” conveyed anything; the degree of separation was too great; too much time had passed; it was only a phrase that my niece might recall later, a sequence of words that would come back to her the way some words come back when you’re trying to remember, one of those phrases you hang on to when other memories fade: Mama really liked to dance, I think. Mama just loved dancing.

WHO REALLY KNOWS US? We say so few things, and we lie about almost everything. Who knows the truth? Had my sister really told me the truth? Who can know it? Who’ll remember us? With the passage of time, our hearts will become dark and dusty, like Dr. Zhang’s examination room.

A waiting room where you’ve been waiting your whole life. No sound from the other side. No sign.

I felt a kind of anguish. I kept asking myself, Suppose she was wrong? Me too, who is it, what is it I’m waiting for? Who has come for me?