But she has a phone number that’s probably good. She changed her own number years ago so her mother couldn’t reach her, figured out how to keep it private so her mother couldn’t find her again, like she always seemed to. But on purpose, in case she ever needed it, Hannah saved her mother’s number. Not at Hamza’s encouragement; on her own she’d done it. Written it down on a piece of paper because she didn’t trust her SIM card. In the end, the SIM card worked. It worked so well, her mother’s name is in her contacts twice.

She texts the number. If her father were dying, she would want someone to tell her.

“Your father is in the hospital. I’m going next week. Randah wants me to ask you to come.”

Immediately, regret hits her like a hangover. She should have told Hamza to do it, or given the number to Randah. Why hadn’t she? Why hadn’t she thought of that years ago?

It’s a relief and an annoyance that she gets crickets from her mother in return for her message.

“At least she knows,” Hamza says over tater tots and pizza on Takeout Friday. “No one expects her to go. Her Saudi passport is probably decades expired.”

When Fareed was younger, she rarely talked about her mother in front of him because he worried about everything—his grades, whether his parents would come home or end up in a fiery car crash, whether things cost too much, whether he was coming down with chicken pox (it was acne). So much worry was strange, she thinks, for a kid who grew up with stability she never had. She’s never told him about her childhood. She never explained why they didn’t see her mom. His Syrian grandparents were doting and visited often. There was no reason to tell him the truth about Sadie.

She wonders if she should tell him now.

Her phone begins to buzz. It’s her mom.

“Thank you for the message.”

She can’t do this alone. She puts the phone on speaker so Hamza can hear.

“What’s up, Mom?”

“When are you leaving for Jidda?”

“Monday.”

“I think I should go,” her mother says. “I think that’s probably what I should do. I don’t know… How is my father?”

“He’s in intensive care. I couldn’t book an earlier flight.”

The teakettle whistles. Hamza removes it from the stove and pours water into a teapot with mint and two Lipton’s tea bags.

She tries to put herself in her grandfather’s place. If she were on her deathbed, who would she want there?

“I don’t know if I can get a ticket,” Hannah’s mother says. “I have to go to Washington first, to the consulate, for a temporary passport.”