Hannah punches the radio back on and tunes it to classical. She doesn’t adjust the volume. Chords swell between them.

Twenty minutes in, at a stoplight, he forces words out.

“What do you want to know?” he says.

“I didn’t ask you to come here. I mean, I’m glad you came, I think. But I don’t want anything from you.”

She speaks above something that sounds like Beethoven, but he can’t be sure. Mozart, that’s the other one. Jameel would know, but Muneer has never known too much about European composers. The drama of swelling violins fits.

“You’re my daughter.”

“I don’t know you. You’re not going to try to take me with you or something? I’m tired of moving. I want to stay here.”

It puzzles him that she wants to stay with the mother who lied to her, dragged her from place to place, robbed her of everything. The envelope and the ticket are in the glove box, but he truly doesn’t know the answer to her question. He’d thought he would find her when she was little. She’s nearly grown, and he hasn’t come up with a different plan than to bring her home. What will she do in Jidda? Study at the American school?

What will her mother do to keep her here?

“What should I do?” he says. Words that have been stuck in his throat for years tumble out like a confession, as though he were the one who’d done something wrong. “Your mother took you from me. She made up a story that I was dead. She tricked you.”

“Stop the fucking car. Pull over.”

“Watch your mouth,” he says, and immediately regrets it.

“I will jump out of this car and walk home.”

He pulls into a strip mall parking lot. “You’re going to be late.”

“Don’t talk about my mother. You don’t know anything about us.”

He begins to swear in Arabic, and he can’t stop the torrent coming from his mouth. “God take her, God damn her, God forgive me.”

Tears coat her cheeks in a sheet. “Stop yelling at me. I don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the years we were apart.”

“Why now? Why did you come back now?”

“I prayed to God to bring us together. I looked for you. Your grandparents looked for you.”

There’s no box of tissues in the car to hand her. No way to change this series of events that God wrote for them. But God brought them back together, and Muneer has to be thankful for that.

He asks if she wants him to drive her the rest of the way or find her a taxi.

“Drive,” she says.

He thinks of her mother and the fateful drive that led to their marriage.