Another reader asked about Aunt Wen. Lin described the source passage, the softened earlier English, and the decision to restore its intended relationship. She accepted responsibility for approving the change and explained that concern about reception had influenced her judgment. Fang sat very still. Mara asked whether readers should treat the novel as autobiography. Lin said no. Fiction could arise from experience without becoming a demand to identify every real person behind it. She would discuss the artistic choice, not expose private lives to satisfy curiosity. The answer held both responsibility and boundary. Nia admired it without imagining it removed the earlier mistake. A correction did not need to become absolution to be worth making.
A young translator asked whether Nia regretted sharing drafts with Adrian. The room waited. Nia had rehearsed other answers, not that one. She thought about the scene he improved, the biscuit packets, the note saying her version understood fear. "I regret what he did with my trust," she said. "I don't want the lesson of this to be that we should never share unfinished work." Collaboration required vulnerability. It also benefited from written roles, reviewable changes, and ways to speak independently. None guaranteed protection. They made difficult questions easier to ask before someone built an entire future around avoiding them. She admitted she was still learning how to collaborate without treating caution as a reason to disappear.
The final question came from a woman who worked nights at a hospital. She wanted to know whether returning to creative work after years of paid work elsewhere meant starting over. Nia considered the question carefully. She could not promise that every institution would recognize the experience people carried. But she did not think the years were empty. Service taught attention, stamina, memory, and how differently people spoke when they believed no one important was listening. Those skills did not replace literary study. They existed beside it. "I wasn't becoming a translator only when I had time to sit at my desk," she said. "I was still a person learning how other people used language."
The event ended with a reading from the final chapter. Lin read first. Nia followed in English, speaking a passage about a daughter opening a window after a long winter. The applause afterward sounded different from the movement of chairs at dinner. The first room stood to answer humiliation. This room had listened to a novel and the people responsible for bringing it across languages. Nia did not rank the moments. Both mattered. She simply noticed that this time she knew why she had been invited to sit on the stage. The reason was not hidden depths. It was work she could name, discuss, revise, and be paid for.
At the signing table, readers asked about characters, sentence choices, and whether the novel would make them cry on the train. Nia said possibly, depending on their relationship with trains. Lin laughed when Fang translated the joke. A woman handed Nia an old advance copy and asked if she should replace it. Nia explained the correction process and signed only the appropriate space after noting the revised credit. She did not damage Adrian's name or turn the inscription into revenge. The reader understood. Next came a student carrying a notebook full of her own translations. Nia could not review it that evening, but supplied the contact for a workshop. Saying no clearly was becoming part of doing useful work.
When the queue ended, Nia found Patricia near the back of the room. Her mother was crying quietly, trying to hide it with the unreasonable confidence of a woman who had watched her daughter do the same thing for thirty years. Jordan pretended to be fascinated by a poster. Dani took one photograph only after asking. Nia hugged them all and said she needed food. The declaration restored everyone to practical competence. They collected coats, checked the route to a nearby restaurant, and thanked the library staff. The technician who had managed the microphones asked Nia to sign a copy for his wife. She checked her name before writing it.
Outside, a reporter asked whether she forgave Adrian. Nia stopped. She had answered many questions that evening, but this one remained hers to leave unfinished. "We've reached an agreement that corrects the work," she said. "My private feelings aren't a public deadline." The reporter accepted the answer and asked when the paperback would appear. Nia directed him to the publisher. On the pavement, her family waited without trying to interpret her expression. She joined them. They walked toward dinner beneath ordinary streetlights, discussing which restaurant might still have a table for five.
Chapter 17