The beige garage doors are closed. It is summer, but it is the middle of the week, the middle of the day. Everyone must be at work. Most likely the garage is empty.

“How do we know this is the place?”

“This is it. I remember. I want you to stay in the car until I know the mother is not there.”

Jameel parks three houses down and gets out. Muneer watches him walk over to the swing. The bumpy oak roots, thick as biceps, nearly trip him. Jameel touches the frayed end of the swing-rope, the busted wooden seat. Scrapes the flaky red paint with his fingernail.

He approaches a window at the side of the house closest to Muneer. He cups his hands against the window, presses his face to his hands, and peeks inside.

Muneer rolls down the car window when he sees a neighbor watching shrewdly from across the fence, an older woman in green Bermuda shorts with short gray hair. A phone rings inside the house, inside where his daughter might be. It stops. Muneer calls to Jameel, “Ya sheikh, hurry back here.”

He wants to barrel forward, but if Saeedah takes Hanadi again, God knows if he will have a second chance to find her.

“What are you doing?” A teenager comes down the front steps in blue plaid pajama pants and a baggy white T-shirt with the words Howard Jones on it.

Hanadi. Muneer is out of the car, standing on the front lawn, in the middle of a flower bed, saying her name.

“What?” she says. The side of her head is shaved close, but the rest of her hair hangs to the middle of her back. If only he could see through her skull into her thoughts.

“Hannah, go back inside,” the neighbor says. “Arnie and I will call the police.”

Hanadi’s jaw moves side to side, and she looks straight into Muneer’s eyes. “What do you want?” she says.

He’s bowled over by the shock of recognition and burst of love, like looking into a newborn’s eyes. Jameel is by Muneer’s side, an arm around his shoulder, holding him up. He whispers into Muneer’s ear in Arabic: “Tell her you’re her father. Tell her.’”

“I am your father.” The words come out in Arabic, and she doesn’t understand. He says them again in English.

“No.” The girl touches her ear, as though not wanting to hear. “No. You’re supposed to be dead.”

The neighbor shouts at them. “No trespassing. Scram. Leave. Her. Alone.”

“Don’t call the police,” the girl says to the neighbor. “Don’t call my mom.”

She steers her gaze between Muneer, Jameel, the neighbor. He wishes she’d let her eyes land on his again, so he can see the dark brown he’s missed.