They kiss outside in the milky moonlight, serenaded by the sound of cars crunching through the parking lot gravel. She wishes she could tell him everything—she’s not ashamed of any of it—but she has seen parked across the lot a man wearing mirrored sunglasses, reading a paper. It’s like something out of a detective show. A realization hits her: it can’t be a coincidence that she called her parents a few days ago and here he is. Does it always happen that way? She’d thought the men were sent by Muneer.

She tells Chris she’s not ready for the night to end and they go inside. She leaves him at the bar, saying she needs to use the ladies’ room. Her nerves are elastic pulled tight, by her need for him on the one side, by her fear of losing her daughter on the other. If her parents and Muneer find Emma, they’ll want her back in Jidda. And that will mean Lara will have to go, too.

She’s tasted too much freedom to go back to Jidda, or to share her daughter with Muneer again.

She walks out the back door, drives home, packs the car. She drives to Jimmy’s praying the whole way that the man hasn’t arrived there first, vowing to do a better job of disappearing.

FOUND

1987

APPARITION

When Jameel calls to say he’s seen Hanadi in Cleveland, Muneer is in the Akhbar al-’Urus newsroom. He grips the phone uncomfortably between his neck and shoulder, to keep his hands free, though he’s not taking notes on this call and questions evaporate from his brain.

He concentrates his thoughts into the front of his forehead, and the din of the newsroom recedes. As Jameel relates how he saw Hanadi sitting shotgun in a rust-colored Corolla—how he saw a girl he’s certain is Hanadi—Muneer’s heart stops. His vision falters. He can’t handle the stress of uncertainty, but he finds himself wanting to believe.

“Black hair with dyed-blond streaks. A nose with a bump like a knuckle. That’s your nose.” Jameel recites the details and analysis as though reading from a journal. She wore a black T-shirt. The fingernails that came up to brush the hair behind her ears were painted black. Jameel says Hanadi hovered in his vision as the cars moved in tandem for long enough for him to paint her face in his mind before the Corolla sped up and she was gone.

“Are you sure? She was in a moving car. You haven’t seen her in sixteen, seventeen years.” In a way, Jameel has never seen her because when he did, she was a baby Muneer transferred into his arms.

She is seventeen, old enough to drive in the States, nearly old enough for college. A different child than she was the last time either of them saw her.