Mon­day arrives, cast­ing a long shad­ow over Cyrus Shams as he waits in a Brook­lyn park for Sang Linh, an encounter he knows will stir emo­tions and mem­o­ries. He sits hunched on a park bench, his appear­ance disheveled, his mind tan­gled in a web of anx­ious thoughts about the upcom­ing con­ver­sa­tion. The weight of what this meet­ing could mean hangs heavy, as he won­ders how he will be per­ceived by Sang and how much of his own tur­moil will sur­face. As he waits, the park around him con­tin­ues its unhur­ried rhythm, the trees sway­ing gen­tly in the breeze, but inside, Cyrus feels every­thing shift­ing. His own feel­ings, com­plex and unset­tled, clash with the antic­i­pa­tion of the encounter. Final­ly, Sang arrives. Though she looks old­er than the last time he saw her, her pres­ence is instant­ly famil­iar. They exchange pleas­antries and sit, an awk­ward silence ini­tial­ly hang­ing between them, charged with the his­to­ry they share and the unsaid words wait­ing to be spo­ken.

Sang lights a cig­a­rette, offer­ing one to Cyrus, and as the smoke curls around them, their con­ver­sa­tion begins to unfurl. Sang recalls moments from their shared past, par­tic­u­lar­ly those sur­round­ing Orkideh, Cyrus’s late moth­er. She talks about her role dur­ing Orkideh’s ill­ness, offer­ing care, love, and atten­tion in ways that reflect the deep­er, some­times unspo­ken dynam­ics of rela­tion­ships. The con­ver­sa­tion sub­tly shifts toward the con­cept of roles—how, in many rela­tion­ships, there are those who “feed” and those who “eat,” the imbal­ance of care and depen­dence often defin­ing the emo­tion­al under­tones. For Cyrus, these words are jar­ring. As Sang speaks, he real­izes that his view of his moth­er has dras­ti­cal­ly changed. She was no longer the mar­tyr he once ide­al­ized but a woman who chose love, and not just any love, but the love of anoth­er woman, Leila, over the love for her own child. Sang’s rev­e­la­tion that Orkideh gave her flight tick­et to Leila instead of him cuts deep. It forces Cyrus to con­front an uncom­fort­able truth: his moth­er left him for some­one else. This dis­cov­ery leaves him raw, over­whelmed by emo­tions of betray­al, aban­don­ment, and anger.

As the con­ver­sa­tion con­tin­ues, it moves from pain into a more reflec­tive space. Sang begins to share her own strug­gles with anger and fear, acknowl­edg­ing how these emo­tions have shaped her life and deci­sions. She sug­gests that anger, although often viewed neg­a­tive­ly, can be a cat­a­lyst for change—a force that dri­ves action and trans­for­ma­tion. Cyrus lis­tens intent­ly, his own feel­ings of rage echo­ing in his mind. His anger, tied to his mother’s aban­don­ment, has been a con­stant com­pan­ion, fuel­ing his inter­nal bat­tles and frus­tra­tions. But as Sang speaks, Cyrus begins to con­sid­er that this anger, while destruc­tive at times, could also be a point of reflec­tion. Their con­ver­sa­tion begins to move into deep­er philo­soph­i­cal ter­ri­to­ry, touch­ing on the nature of loss, sac­ri­fice, and the com­plex­i­ties of love. What does it tru­ly mean to love, they won­der, and how does one rec­on­cile with the pieces of their past that remain unhealed? Their dis­cus­sion grows, becom­ing a med­i­ta­tion on the human expe­ri­ence. What fills the emp­ty spaces inside, and can those voids ever tru­ly be filled? As they con­tin­ue to explore these ques­tions, they find them­selves not just in dia­logue with one anoth­er but with their own his­to­ries and the ghosts of their for­mer selves.

By the time the con­ver­sa­tion shifts, snow begins to fall, gen­tly blan­ket­ing the ground around them. The world feels soft­er, qui­eter, as if the sur­round­ing land­scape, too, under­stands the heav­i­ness of their exchange. In a rare moment of lev­i­ty, the two share a laugh, a burst of unex­pect­ed joy in the mid­dle of their somber reflec­tion. This laugh­ter, though brief, brings a light­ness to the air between them, a shared con­nec­tion that tran­scends their pain. For Cyrus, this moment becomes a sym­bol of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of heal­ing, of find­ing com­fort even amidst the grief that has con­sumed him for so long. The snow con­tin­ues to fall as they sit togeth­er, side by side, in a qui­et com­mu­nion of under­stand­ing. They speak lit­tle after that, but their pres­ence togeth­er is enough. The weight of their con­ver­sa­tion lingers, but so does a sense of peace that they have both sought for so long. In this shared silence, Cyrus begins to real­ize that while his mother’s choic­es may have shaped his past, it is through con­nec­tions like this, through moments of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and under­stand­ing, that he can begin to heal and move for­ward. The chap­ter ends on this bit­ter­sweet note, with Cyrus find­ing solace not just in answers, but in the com­fort of com­pan­ion­ship and the deep, unspo­ken bond they share in the face of loss.