Letting people come to their own conclusions, rightly or wrongly, is the best way to hide. Whether or not she’s Indian doesn’t entirely matter; she senses Jimmy hires her because of some sort of affinity he feels.

Six months pass quickly, a long time for her at any job. Jimmy’s a kind boss. He lets her leave for fifteen minutes in the middle of her shift to pick Emma up from the school bus stop, and he doesn’t mind if Emma roams the rows of indoor and outdoor plants like a shop cat. He lets Lara take home finjan-size pots of cacti with delicate spikes and six-packs of waxy begonias for her yard.

“I thought you hated plants,” Emma says one day while Lara lets her water a row of Jimmy’s herbs with a long wand-like hose. Lara breathes in mint, sage, cilantro, basil. Citronella tries to crowd out the other scents. She’s surprised Emma remembers such a small detail from five years ago. It had been true that Lara had no appreciation for greenery. It had been true that she didn’t understand why W cared for so many houseplants in Toledo.

In this desert world, different than the one Lara grew up in, she craves the tiniest, crankiest bit of green, of life.

EVERYTHING

Once a month, while Emma is at school the next town over, Lara calls her parents from the phone booth on the corner of Main. Rolls of quarters weigh down her purse, and the booth heats up like the inside of a greenhouse. She’d stay cooler using the pay phone tucked inside the grocery, but this one is more private. These phone calls to her parents are less frequent than her haircuts and often a waste of money. Nothing said. She can’t let them know where she is, can’t trust them with her secrets.

The pattern has persisted for years: For months she won’t call them. One morning, without fail, she wakes up barely able to breathe, needing their voices if she is to go on.

Today was one of those mornings. Emma didn’t want to go to school. She refused to get up from the floor in front of the television after Lara switched it off. Minutes later, she put on her shoes and backpack and walked out of the house in the opposite direction from school.

“I’m running away!” She slapped her backpack as she walked. “I’ve got clothes in here.”

Lara followed her down the sidewalk. She glanced over her shoulder. Behind them a few kids were gathering at the bus stop. She couldn’t make a scene. At times when she is losing control, the words accumulate in her brain in Arabic, but she can’t speak them out loud. In the process of translating her anger, something gets lost. Maybe that’s a good thing. In English, she sounds more reasonable than she feels.