The winter before Fiona left, her mother's hands went cold. Fiona remembered sitting at the foot of her bed and her mother behind her brushing through her hair, her fingertips catching the edges of her face. All her life, they had been warm. But even when the spring came they were still cold, as if holding onto that last winter, not wanting to let go.

"I missed you," said Mrs. Kim from across the cafe table. "Fiona?"

She let her eyes refocus and smiled. A warm breeze blew in from the street and tangled itself in the linen curtains. The memory drifted away. "Yes," said Fiona. "Sorry."

The cafe was nearly empty and for a long moment it was quiet. In the seven years since she'd seen her last, Mrs. Kim's hair had changed to a shade of silver that shimmered bright in the afternoon sun. It was only a few shades from her mother's cool blonde. Fiona took a breath.

"I missed you, too," she said. "I'm so glad we could meet."

Mrs. Kim smiled and cupped her small hands around her blue china cup. Other than her hair, she was exactly as Fiona remembered her, with her rounded cheeks and the crinkles at the corners of her eyes. It was still strange how much they looked alike. Looking at Mrs. Kim had always reminded her of the photo she kept of her birth mother, even though in the photo she could hardly see her face.

"How is Nathan?"

"Busy," said Fiona. "But he asked how you were."

"Oh," said Mrs. Kim. "Are you engaged?"

"No," said Fiona. "Not yet."

"I know you," said Mrs. Kim. "You picked out the ring for yourself."

Fiona felt herself blush. She thought of the little black box she had found that morning in the back of the bedside drawer in the hotel. It had only briefly caught her by surprise. Fiona had always told Nathan she wanted to someday visit Seoul. She had always planned on it being the place where her life came together at last.

"I wanted to take you around the city," said Mrs. Kim. "Is that okay? I know in your letter you said you'd be busy. But it's been so long—"

"I have time," Fiona said. "But would you—I thought—"

Mrs. Kim reached across the table and pressed her hand gently into Fiona's arm. Her hand was very frail, more frail than Fiona remembered, as if built from broken pieces of china and covered in a thin piece of lace. But it was as warm as it was in her memory.

"Would you take me to our hometown?"

Mrs. Kim drew away and looked down into her cup. It was empty. "Yes."

And that was how they left it. Fiona stood up and they went out into the street, and it was especially quiet for a Sunday. Mrs. Kim said the train out of the city would arrive in half an hour.

On the empty platform, Fiona went cold again.

. . .  

Mrs. Kim had arrived in town at the end of a long winter vacation. The first time Fiona saw Mrs. Kim, Fiona was walking home from the corner store, a stick of butter she had picked up for her mother tucked deep in the pocket of her coat. Above her the night sky was covered by heavy clouds, but the streetlights reflected on the drifts of snow and it was bright. A silver car rolled past her over the salt-melted ice in the street and pulled into the driveway of the house across the street. She stopped and pushed her hair out of her eyes.

After a moment the car door opened and a woman stepped out, very small and bundled so tightly in winter clothes that Fiona could hardly see her face. Fiona took a step and felt the snow sink through the fabric of her sock. She shivered. But then the little woman had turned around and was looking at her, smiling, and Fiona smiled back.

Inside, her mother was waiting in the kitchen, watching the woman carry cardboard boxes into her house through the dark.

"Mama," Fiona had said, unlacing her boots. "Who is that?"

"Mrs. Kim," said her mother. "She's Korean." She didn't look away from the window. A mixing bowl full of sugar sat on the counter in front of her.

"Like me," Fiona said, setting the butter on the counter.

"Yes," said her mother. "Like you."

The next morning Fiona pulled on her boots again and crossed the street. Mrs. Kim met her at the door wearing a set of red pajamas. The room behind her was full of opened boxes, and Fiona could see that one of them held a set of wood-framed photos of the sea.

"Are you okay?" Mrs. Kim's eyes filled with worry. She reached out and cupped Fiona's cheek, and her hands were very warm. Fiona winced as Mrs. Kim ran her fingers over the socket of her eye. It was tender and purple.

"I'm fine," Fiona said and pulled her face away. She held out the plate of cookies her mother had baked. "I brought these—"

"What happened?"

"Somebody threw a snowball at me."

Mrs. Kim looked down at the cookies and then up at Fiona's face. "I heard we were born in the same town," she said. "Do you remember it at all? Before it was gone?"

"No," Fiona said. "I was too young."

Even in the shelter of the porch the wind cut through her coat to her skin. Fiona could feel her mother's eyes on her, colder than even the air. She thought of the photograph tucked beneath the broken slat of her bedroom floor. Of the young woman that had drowned, holding her, and the blue house behind her on the shore.
. . .

"Did you ever get my postcard?" Mrs. Kim was turned away from her and studying the empty tracks below them. "I wasn't sure I had the right address."

"I did," Fiona said. She shook away the memory of the cold. "I'm sorry I didn't reply. I didn't know how to reach you."

"It's okay," Mrs. Kim said. "I know your life is very busy."

Fiona thought of the letter she had written to Mrs. Kim. The trip to Seoul was meant to be a surprise from Nathan, but she hated surprises and so he'd told her. By the time she had thought to sit down with a sheet of paper and a pen, the flight was only a week out. She found Mrs. Kim's address on the slip of paper at the bottom of a shoebox full of things she had kept from home.

"I loved Hawaii," said Mrs. Kim. "You and Nathan should go for your honeymoon."

"I don't think so," Fiona said. "Nathan wants to go somewhere cold. Like the mountains. He's bored of nice weather and sunshine and the beach. Did you know he grew up on the coast?"

"I forget he's so wealthy," said Mrs. Kim. "Good for him."

Fiona smiled. Her mother had said something similar when she'd brought him home. She'd been so happy that she'd baked him three kinds of pie. Fiona still remembered the way her eyes lit up when she opened the door and saw him standing on the step.

Mrs. Kim drew away from her. "The train is here," she said.

In a moment it was pulling into the station and its metal doors were sliding open. Inside it was hot and Fiona slid down in her seat. She watched through the window as the city whizzed by in a blur of colors and then was small behind them.

And Fiona remembered what Mrs. Kim had said the first time they met. How she had waved at her mother across the street and pulled Fiona inside the house. Her house always smelled like the ocean. Like a memory just out of reach.

"I remember," she had said. And that was where the stories began.

. . .

Somebody was shaking her awake. She opened her eyes and found that her cheek was pressed against the soft denim of Mrs. Kim's jacket.

"We're here," Mrs. Kim said. "I hope you had a nice dream."

Fiona smiled. She hadn't dreamt at all. She sat up, feeling like she should be embarrassed for falling asleep on someone's shoulder. Her mother would have said she was too old. But before she could say anything or even smooth her hair, they were filing off the train.

They had come a long way from the city. In every direction around the little station she could see budding trees and small newly built houses half hidden by hills. The air was clean and cool and steeped in the scent of something familiar and distinct.

"Remember what I said this would be like?" Mrs. Kim watched her as they climbed a flight of stairs up to the street. "I think I told you that day at the lake."

Fiona nodded. "You said it would feel like coming home."

"Yes," Mrs. Kim said. "And I said I wanted it to be like that for me."

Fiona remembered that day on the lake. Sometimes she missed being so young. She remembered Mrs. Kim picking her up that June morning and how hot it was even at dawn. She remembered that she had stayed awake the whole night before. On the grassy shore of the lake, holding Mrs. Kim's hand, everything was different. Nobody asked any questions about a mother and a little girl who could have been her daughter. It was nothing like going anywhere with her mother.

"I don't think you know how nice that was," said Fiona. "I don't think you know how much it hurt to come home to my mother that day."

"Don't say that," said Mrs. Kim.

But Fiona remembered coming home. Her mother's eyes had been glassy when she opened the door. Her hands had been cold then, too, just like they always were when Fiona had been gone. Her voice had been empty and sharp.

"There's the ocean," Mrs. Kim said, pointing.

They had reached the crest of the hill and stopped for a moment at the top, looking out across the town and at the shore below. The street beside them wove down between the hills and then swung around to follow the coast. Fiona realized that the familiar scent she had noticed was salt. She tried to pull her memories from a hidden place in her heart, but she could not, and found only the stories Mrs. Kim had told.

"Do you ever miss it?" Fiona turned to Mrs. Kim. She had taken off her jacket and was wrapping it around her waist. Beneath it she wore a bright red shirt. "Would you live here again?"

"No," said Mrs. Kim. "It'll never be the same."

Fiona nodded and they started down the hill. It would be a long walk to the shore and she knew from Mrs. Kim's pursed lips that now she wanted silence. Watching her face in profile, she saw something flicker across her eyes and was reminded of a photograph she had found in the shoebox in her closet.

It was an old photo from before she'd met Mrs. Kim. It showed Fiona standing in front of her house. She remembered her mother clicking the camera, and the scent of the budding tree behind her, and the chill of the grass against her feet. She remembered how her scalp ached from her hair being slicked back and the itch of the blue dress on her skin.

In the photo she held a shining plaque in her arms. An award from one of the beauty pageants her mother used to take her to, full of pretty blue-eyed Minnesota girls and blonde boys who turned their eyes away. She never won. And so that time her mother had been proud.

"Could you come to the wedding?" The words slipped out of her mouth without her thinking. "It'll be next spring. In California."

Mrs. Kim kept her eyes on the shore. They had turned down another street, and the sidewalk disappeared, so that now they walked on the edge of the grass. "I'm not sure," said Mrs. Kim.

"It would mean the world to me if you came," said Fiona. "We would pay for your ticket."

In the distance, the end of the street dropped down towards the shore. All around them the sky was fading to purple and Fiona was surprised at how quickly the afternoon had passed. Mrs. Kim was quiet for a long moment. She was watching the horizon.

"I don't think I'll be able to," she said at last.

Fiona almost opened her mouth to ask why before she realized that she already knew. A heavy feeling blossomed across her chest, swallowing up the false brightness of the memory of the plaque in her arms and her mother's smile behind the camera.

"It's strange," Mrs. Kim said. "How changed it is. With all the new houses. I thought I'd feel different. I thought I'd remember it more."

"You've never come to visit? I thought that was the point of coming back."

"No. I was always too afraid."

"Why?"

"Wasn't it like that for you? How come you never came home?"

Fiona watched the flicker in her eyes and thought of the beach on the Hawaii postcard. Mrs. Kim had written something on the back. She had asked how Fiona was doing in law school. She had asked when she would visit Seoul. And at the end, she had asked when she was coming home. Fiona had never known what she meant. And that had always made her ache.

They had reached the end of the street. Before them, the ocean opened wide and blue, shimmering in the last of the light. Out of the corner of her eye Fiona saw Mrs. Kim smile and she tried to do the same. But all she could think of was that smudged little word and the look on her mother's face in the rearview mirror.

"Look," said Mrs. Kim.

Fiona squinted down the street. At the end, just before it curved away to follow the line of the shore, was a little old-fashioned phone booth. It stood out against the sky, blue paint chipping away. Fiona moved closer to it and then all of a sudden she was opening the door and stepping inside, cut off from the ocean air and the beginning of the night.

The summer she had taken Nathan home was the last time she ever saw her mother. Shutting her eyes, she pictured the dinner they'd all had together at Mrs. Kim's house. She heard the clink of the silverware against the plates. She remembered gathering flowers into bouquets before dessert and she remembered Mrs. Kim and her mother telling Nathan stories over cake.

"I never knew you were adopted," Nathan told her later, wrapping her up in his arms. "You always talked so much about that blue house in Korea."

"I almost felt like I grew up there," Fiona had said. "Mrs. Kim knew what that village was like before the storm. She used to tell me about it."

"So, you've never even been?"

"No," Fiona said.

In the booth, she opened her eyes for a moment and blinked away tears. She should've known this place. She should've felt like falling into its arms. Mrs. Kim was somewhere behind her, waiting, but she didn't turn around. Instead, she looked out at the ocean.

And she remembered the end of that evening. How Nathan had walked back across the street alone and on the step of the porch Mrs. Kim had taken her hands.

"I'm going back to Korea," she said. "I didn't want to tell you until now."

"When?" Fiona asked, stepping away. "Why?"

"I want to be myself again," Mrs. Kim said.

Fiona hadn't known what to say. If Mrs. Kim left, this wouldn't be home anymore.

"Don't forget about me," Fiona had whispered at last, pulling her close.

But now, looking out at the ocean, Fiona realized she had been the one who'd forgotten. When she left home the next morning, she had drowned Mrs. Kim and the rest of her past in a hurricane of false dreams. She had lost everything dear to her once, long ago, before she could even remember. She could do it again. She could make herself forget.

Reaching into the pocket of her coat, she pulled out the photo of her birth mother standing on the bottom step of a porch. Her dark hair was loose against her smiling cheeks. And there was Fiona in her arms with her white dress soaked in sun. Behind them was the pretty blue house with white trimmings and flowers in full bloom.

Fiona had tried to find her, once. They told her she had drowned in the flood.

She picked up the receiver, her hands shaking. She dialed the number slowly, the one she used to know by heart, used to call from the nurse's office at school. The phone rang and she waited, closing her eyes against the night.

"Mama?"

On the other end of the line, it was silent, so silent Fiona thought she had hung up. But then there was a shaky breath and the sound of her mother's voice.

. . .

Later, when she hung up and turned around, she found Mrs. Kim had gone. Putting down the receiver, she opened the door of the booth and stepped out into the night.

Further down the shore, at the edge of the water and standing at the top of a hill, was a little blue house, just as Mrs. Kim had described it and how it looked in the photo of her mother. It was bathed in moonlight and the flowerbeds were full of stars. Mrs. Kim was right after all. She had been too afraid to come home.

Fiona pulled the photograph again from her pocket and knelt down into the sand. The sea lapped up onto her feet, gentle as a pair of hands, and Fiona smiled. Watching the horizon for a moment, she pictured the opposite shore, where she would be married the next spring. Her mother had said she'd be there.

She laid the photograph in the water and watched it soak through. On the top floor of the house behind her, the light flickered out. It didn't matter whether or not it was real. It only mattered that it was gone.

Madeleine Kleinerman is from East Lansing, Michigan. She currently lives in Atlanta.