Two days after the tape incident, Hannah’s Aunt Randah shows up uninvited and presses the buzzer outside.

“What the heck is she doing here?” Hannah’s father says when Randah’s upturned face appears on the closed-circuit screen by the apartment door. “I didn’t tell her you were here. Who told her?”

The question is not for Hannah. The tension in the air pulls through the middle of her stomach, though she doesn’t know who she’s looking at until her father tells her. She could have guessed. On the tiny black-and-white screen, her aunt’s expectant face looks so much like Hannah’s mother’s or her own.

Hannah’s father buzzes Randah in. As they wait for her at the open door of the apartment, her footsteps echo in the stairwell. She comes round the bend and floats up the last half flight like a black ghost, kicks her shoes off at the threshold without waiting to be invited inside, and sets down a large pink shopping bag with gold lettering. She hugs Hannah and kisses her cheeks, as though they’ve been parted for a week, rather than years.

“Your mother’s sister,” Lamees says in English.

“Ya shaykhah, she knows who I am,” Randah says.

Hannah has no memory of her. Here is a person who knows who her mother was in the beginning, someone who might give a clue why she would hide Hannah from the family and the family from Hannah.

Randah keeps her headscarf on and gives her abayah to Lamees. She looks Little-House-on-the-Prairie-ish in her pink long-sleeved blouse and a plain brown skirt that grazes the tops of her bare feet.

Lamees ushers them into the sitting room and instructs Mary to bring refreshments: a tray of Pepsi and orange soda in bloodred goblets. Randah, Hannah’s father, and Lamees exchange what seem to be pleasantries in Arabic. They sit on floor cushions placed around the perimeter of the room. The television is on, tuned to news on the English-language channel. Fouad and Fadi lounge on their stomachs on the floor. Hatim naps in another room.

“How are your children, Randah?” Hannah’s father says in English.

“Your father is worried I’ll take you,” Randah says. “Like your mother did. But I’m not my sister. He has nothing to worry about.”

Hannah can hardly believe how quickly the hostility between Randah and her father has come to the surface. She wishes to be anywhere else but here. And yet. It is the first time anyone has confirmed her father’s version of things.

That ubiquitous air-conditioner noise fills the room, like ice water in a glass. Hannah’s father sits straighter. Hannah sits straighter, too.

“I’m surprised you’re here,” he says. He is taking care to speak in English, Hannah thinks. He wants her to hear his disapproval.