That’s how I knew he was alive, and he might one day come back. I wanted him back. When you came upstairs, I pretended to be asleep, but I was thinking.

At breakfast the next morning, I said, “When will Baba come?”

W was drinking a cup of coffee, tapping it with a fingernail. I looked at her, because she’d talked about him. She’d said his name. She mimicked blowing a raspberry at me, a silent warning that I’d said something wrong.

You held my chin and turned my face to you. Your eyes were cracked like China bowls. “Don’t talk about him.”

I ran upstairs and burrowed under the comforter, where it was dark and muffled and I couldn’t hear anymore. My warm breath settled onto my face, and my tears disappeared into the flannel sheets. I fell asleep. I dreamed I died. I dreamed you died. I dreamed my father lived and didn’t want me. He was happy we were gone.

After my nap, I steered clear of the bay window, sat next to you, followed you into the bathroom, nuzzled your leg whenever you stood still, swung my leg over yours, and snuck myself into your lap whenever you were sitting, as though I were a neglected cat.

We ate lunch with W in the round eating nook in the kitchen, at a metal patio table laid out with olive-green place mats. The nook looked out onto the driveway and the chain-link fence separating W’s yard from the neighbors’. Spindly rosebushes leaned into a peeling white trellis.

“You’ve been here six weeks,” W said. “You must be dying to get out. Let’s go to the movies.” She spooned into her mouth leftover rotisserie chicken and the rice with almonds and raisins you had cooked the day before to supplement it.

“We can’t go,” you said. “You know why.”

W stared you down, unblinking. You told me to put my hands over my ears. Your lips moved.

W turned her head from side to side like an owl. She pushed my hands from my ears.

“Come on, let’s go. You can’t stay inside forever.” She sawed the flesh off a drumstick, speared the meat with a fork, held it up in the air, and waved it around. She liked to be dramatic. I don’t think you liked that side of her. You took her plate of bones to the sink and slid them into it. W got up and with two fingers removed the bones and tossed them into the trash can. After she sat down again, I walked over and stepped on the foot pedal, listening to the lid slap-slapping.

“You should cut your hair.” W shook her cupped hand, and I realized she wanted me to come to her. I shuffled over, sliding along the tile with my socks. She patted the top of my head. “Both of you.”