Sarah’s parents, Mei-Lin and Hung Chen did not grieve in the way that Irene's mother or Thomas's mother had grieved. They couldn't afford to.
They had four other children to feed. They had debts to pay. They had to survive in a country that hated them, that had passed laws preventing them from owning property, from testifying in court, from becoming citizens.
When Sarah died, they buried her quickly, in a pauper's grave because they couldn't afford a proper plot. They said the prayers they remembered from their childhoods in Kaifeng, the Jewish prayers that had been passed down through centuries of isolation, mixed with Chinese traditions that would have been unrecognizable to European Jews.
They mourned, but they mourned silently. Hung went back to work the day after the funeral. Mei-Lin washed clothes, her tears falling into the wash water, her grief expressed in the rhythm of scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing.
They didn't talk about Sarah. It was too painful. They didn't visit her grave—it was too far, too expensive, too dangerous for Chinese people to travel to the white cemetery where she had been buried in the segregated section.
Instead, they worked. They saved. They sent their sons to school—illegally, since Chinese children were barred from public schools in Massachusetts until 1885—and they dreamed of a future where their family would be accepted, would be safe, would be whole.
Irene watched them through the meadow-windows, and she felt Sarah's pain as if it were her own. She watched the Chens grow old, their hair turning white, their bodies bent from labor. She watched their sons grow up, leave home, assimilate, lose their Jewish identity in the melting pot of America.
And she watched Sarah wait, alone in her room full of books, reading everything she could find, learning Hebrew from books that the house provided, trying to maintain a faith that she had barely known in life.
"Do you think they're ashamed of me?" Sarah asked Irene one day, fifty years after her death. "Do you think they don't come because they're ashamed that I died? That I wasn't strong enough?"
"I think they're surviving," Irene said. She had grown wise in fifty years, wise beyond her apparent years. "I think they're doing what they had to do. And I think, when they come, they'll be so proud of you. Of how much you've learned. Of how strong you've become."
"But what if they don't come?" Sarah asked. "What if they die and I don't feel it? What if they go somewhere else?"
"They'll come," Irene promised, though she didn't know if it was true.
And they did. In 1912, within months of each other, Mei-Lin and Hung Carter arrived at the house. They were ancient, ninety and ninety-two, their bodies finally giving out from decades of hard labor.
They came together, holding hands, and when they saw Sarah—still nine years old, still small, still their baby—they fell to their knees and wept.
"We're sorry," Hung said, over and over. "We're sorry we couldn't save you. We're sorry we couldn't protect you. We're sorry we couldn't even mourn you properly."
"You did save me," Sarah said, holding them both, her small arms trying to encompass their frail bodies. "You gave me life. You gave me love. You gave me the strength to wait. And look—" She pulled back, showing them her room, the books, the knowledge she had gained. "I learned. I became what I dreamed of being. A scholar. Because of you. Because of your sacrifice."
Mei-Lin touched the books with trembling hands. "You learned Hebrew," she whispered. "You learned the prayers."
"I learned everything," Sarah said. "So I could teach you. So we could pray together. Properly. As a family."
They stayed in the house for a long time, Sarah teaching her parents the prayers they had forgotten, the traditions they had lost. They celebrated Shabbat together, the first time they had ever been able to observe properly. They spoke of their ancestors, of Kaifeng, of the long journey that had brought them to this moment.
And when they were ready, when they had said everything that needed to be said, they walked down the path together, into the deeper light, a family reunited at last.