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“All I could think of now was, Am I the little axe? Nami deserved space and privacy and a quiet, calm household. I was reluctant to intrude on that, but I also felt like she was the only person left who could understand how I really felt.”

In this quotation that occurs midway through Chapter 17, Michelle voices the fears she experiences surrounding her relationship with Nami. She wonders if she is the “little axe” that Nami’s fortune teller once spoke of, the thing that slowly eats away at Nami’s well-being as she continues to support the people she loves. Michelle is searching for connection and understanding in the time following her mother’s death, and believes she can find it in Nami, the last of her mother’s sisters. However, she knows that Nami has suffered so much between the deaths of Halmoni and Nami’s two younger sisters, and she worries that reentering Nami’s life will cause Nami more anxiety and emotional exhaustion. Michelle ultimately decides to pursue a relationship with Nami, a relationship that connects her to her Korean heritage and her mother’s past in the way she hoped it would.

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