“No.” Her voice didn’t break. “It’s been bad since moving here. But the last few months, since Lyall died, have been even worse.” Above us were the two dark shapes of Anita and her ajji, blending into each other. Anjali Auntie’s eyes flitted a few centimeters to the right, locking on the taller, slimmer figure. “Ani must be furious at how little I told her.” Her bark-colored eyes locked on mine. “But I haven’t seen much of her in the last two months. She has secrets, too.”

I looked away, flushing.

So up the steps we went, Anita’s mother’s elbow crooked through mine, until the four of us stood looking down at the sand-and-pebble bank. We were alone, us and the slow, gurgling rapids.

“Ajji won’t be able to make it down,” Anita said. Lakshmi Auntie spoke quickly in Marathi, gestured, and then tapped the basin.

Anita blinked very fast a few times as though to beat back emotion. I had almost forgotten my own heightened pulse from earlier in the day when I’d seen three words beaming up from my phone: I love you. It seemed wrong that the declaration had not been followed by a sudden stabilizing of the world.

“Anita,” I said, still gripping the basin. The gold clotted at its edges like dairy left in the heat. It seemed eons away from what I’d been stuffing into my pockets and bag at the expo. “Can I have a word with you?”

She glanced over the water, at the lowering sun, and said, “Yes, but quickly, Neil.” And I was consumed with a version of the feeling I’d had all the time as a child, that sense that privacy draped her, that she could not or would not lift it long enough to look directly at me. Except this time she turned, followed me a few paces away from her mother and grandmother, and let her lips briefly brush my clavicle. I felt the hot poignancy of her breath on my T-shirt, on my chest hairs. Her hands gripped the basin; her touch was so light that it was at first just there for balance, but then, before I knew it, she had taken the full weight of it out of my hands and into hers. The air felt icy on my palms.

“I just wanted some help,” I said. “From this gold. I know it’s too late now, I know it’s probably not potable, or whatever.” She was shaking her head rapidly. “I’m not asking for it. I’m not. But I want you to understand why I let it make me crazy. I just wanted something to make everything less scary. Sometimes I can’t imagine ever feeling at home anywhere in the world, or with anyone at all.”