The Astonishing Color of After

A flashback to Leigh’s freshman year shows Leigh searching through some boxes in her family’s basement for evidence about her maternal relatives. While she is doing so, Axel stops by and tells her that he broke up with Leanne because he could not figure out who he was. Leigh tells him about the trouble she has been having at home with her mother.

All seems to be forgiven between them when they exchange their homemade Christmas gifts. Axel makes Leigh a projection to accompany the Lockhart Orchard music tracks. Their eyes meet and they exchange an intimate look.

Back in her Taipei bedroom, Leigh wishes she did not think about Axel because doing so reminds her of the day her mother died. She wonders whether she can control the memories, and she notes that when she lit the incense stick with the feather, it “mixed in memories that weren’t mine, moments I didn’t know had happened” (158). She lights a new incense stick and takes up the leaves she stole from tea with her grandmother and Feng.

Leigh observes the moment of her grandmother Yuanyang’s birth. As a baby, Yuanyang is adopted into another family. She is raised to be the perfect wife for the family’s son Ping, but all the while she wonders about her birth family.