Hey everyone! I'm back with another chapter! Thanks for reading and enjoy the story! Let me know what you think in the comments!

My grandfather didn't want us driving all the way back to New York by ourselves. He borrowed a neighbor's trainer that they use for dirt bikes and hooked up Mei's motorcycle.

The drive was nearly six hours. We enjoyed each others' company, singing along to songs on the radio, chatting a bit though some topics were avoided, and stopping for lunch in Rhode Island after we took a really big bridge. I had no idea the smallest state would have such a big bridge.

It took all day for us to get there, but we arrived to the city and made it through the city itself pretty quickly. We took second avenue down towards Nolita, then the Bowery to Columbus Park in Chinatown.

I spotted Soo-Ling waiting for us and told my grandfather to pull over.

"Mei Lin!" he yelled when he saw her get out of the car and cracked her over the head with an open palm, "Auntie has been worried sick because of you! You just forgot to mention to your mother that you would be gone for 3 days?! You're lucky she called me and not the police!"

"Ow!" she rubbed her head and pouted, grumbling under her breath, "She wouldn't have let me go if she new."

"Okay... Sorry, Soo-Ling, this was mostly my fault. I asked her not to tell anyone so my grandmother wouldn't be able to find us." I reached into Mei's bag and pulled out his card, "Thanks for this by the way, even though we didn't have to use it."

"Not a problem, I'm glad the two of you are alright." he reached up to take the card, rubbing the back of his neck with his other hand, "Did you find what you were looking for?"

"Yeah, my dad is dead, but I found my grandfather," I gave a small and sad smile, "Soo-Ling, this is Jimmy, my grandpa."

I pointed to the man behind me but he seemed to be avoiding the conversation.

"Come on!" I ran around the outside of the car and pulled him out of the drivers seat to come say hello, "He's a little antisocial, but grandpa, this is Soo-Ling, Mei's cousin."

"Jimmy?" Soo-Ling's brow furrowed as he tried to remember something, "You look very familiar."

"Nice to meet you." he held out a hand but didn't look at Soo-Ling.

"Wait a minute... You can't be-" Soo-Ling looked like he was losing it for a minute, and then he very calmly asked, "Your last name is Callenreese isn't it?"

"What? How did you know that?" I looked at the two of them, letting it linger on grandpa longer as his back straightened and he looked down at Soo-Ling.

"You knew my son didn't you?" he asked.

"I was at his funeral." Soo-Ling said, "If you mention Ash's name to most people around here they know exactly who you're talking about. Well, nowadays it'll only really get you a reaction from the 20+ crowd or gang members. Ash is a legend now, most people don't believe he actually existed."

"What the hell is going on right now?" Mei whispered to me. I just shrugged in response.

"Soo-Ling did you know my dad?" I looked at him with pleading eyes.

He didn't answer, he just put his arms around me as I felt his shoulders begin to shake.

After a while he said the same thing grandpa had.

"You look exactly like him."

I asked Grandpa to stay for the weekend, I would put him up in a hotel and he could come with us to see Soo-Ling tomorrow and hear about my dad from someone who knew him as a teen, the most adult he'd gotten to be. He declined. He said he was old, that he wanted to spend the rest of his days in the place his sons were buried and going fishing. He said his door was always open for me, whenever I wanted to come by and for as long as I wanted to stay. It was the most loved I felt in a long time.

"Thank you." I hugged him tight. "Tell dad I love him for me, please?" I asked before he set off back for home.

"Of course," he pat my head and smiled down at him.

Soo-Ling had given me an address before we parted ways. He told me and Mei to meet him there tomorrow morning. We did.

It was an apartment in a crappy part of town in an even crappier looking building. I went up and knocked on the door, 4C it read.

Soo-Ling opened it and smiled, "Welcome in, kid, this was your dad's apartment. None of us had the heart to move his stuff so it's all still here. We all chip in for the rent every month."

They had kept his place for almost 15 years? I felt like crying when I saw the place.

Books lined the top of a dusty wooden desk, old yellowing notebooks at open in front of the chair and a calendar reading 2017 stared down at me. I was only 2 when my father last lived here. I was almost afraid to touch his things. I reached out to touch what seemed to be a well loved book, but retracted my hand.

"Take it." Soo-Ling said, "Take whatever you want. If you want to live here, it's all yours. It always should have been yours."

"Thank you," I wiped my eyes and tried to put on a brave face as I picked up one of his books. It was The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, beside it sat The Garden of Eden and A Farewell to Arms.

I picked up A Farewell to arms and flipped to a familiar and well-worn page, there lay the quote, 'We would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the starts bright.' I reached up and brushed my hand over my mother's necklace as I admired the words underlined in red pen.

"Look!" I showed the page to Mei and Soo-Ling, "This is the quote my dad left in the locket."

Mei smiled at me but I couldn't read Soo-Ling's face. He seemed to just be taking this all in. It was probably hard or at least strange for him to see someone who looked so much like my dad in his apartment.

I set the book down. I reached up to another. It looked much newer.

"The Snows of Mount Kilimanjaro." I read aloud.

"Oh!" Soo-Ling's eyes went wide, "Eiji comes by every year for Ash's birthday and leaves some books. The rest of them are in the other room, whenever you're read. He left that one out here though because he used to say Ash was just like the leopard at the top of the mountain. I never read the book so I have no idea what that means, but Eiji said it's true and he knew Ash best. He could see all the things the rest of us couldn't."

"Really?" I started to think about the last time I read this book. I thought about the leopard at the top. I thought about Hemingway's description of the animal and suddenly I started to feel bad for my father whom I had never known. He must have been trapped with no way out, or lost in the storm of life. The leopard was a pitiful creature in that story. I hoped Eiji was wrong, the father I always imagined was smart and strong and loving. I didn't want to corrupt that idealized version of him.