It had become a relief to be with Mourad, actually. She looked forward to their talks after work. At least with him there was nothing to hide. They knew exactly who the other was and why they did everything the way they did it. They were in agreement, by now, on everything that was important to accomplish in their relating. Mourad was solicitous of Heather on the street and near windows. He made a point to hold her hand anytime they were outside. In cars, they were particularly affectionate.

When she picked out clothes in a department store, Mourad helped. “Beautiful,” he said, about an orchid dress. “Try this one,” he said, carrying a filmy skirt no one at her law firm would wear. She tried them. In the mirror, she looked at herself in lavender. Rafik would have called the dress corny, a word Heather was sorry she taught him. Everything that had any sweetness in it, Rafik made it corny. Lahouari, whom she missed terribly, was corny. So were the proverbs she put on the wall. And the cards she left on Rafik’s pillow.

So she bought the orchid dress. Mourad was happy. The proud look stayed on his face as they took a transparent escalator to another floor of the mall and made their way past store windows with tiers of tiny silver cameras, spotlighted emerald and diamond rings, and a giant stuffed panda in a toy-store palm-tree glade. Even though he had been to malls before, they were still a spangle circus to him. She could feel him trying to look casual. Other people were rushing and rattled. They were busy and get-me-out-of-here. But Mourad was excited; he wanted to linger.

“Let’s buy lunch,” he said, as if suggesting a waltz on a star.

It was new, made over for her, the most ordinary thing. Lahouari had been the first to acquaint her with these kinds of makeovers. To him the dead-ended everyday—that she had stopped seeing—was a pinwheel of delight. An elevator made him smile. Bubble wrap threw his head back in a yelp. A bookstore in Cambridge hushed him. She knew his family was smart: a novelist in Europe was an aunt or something, and his mother was a doctor. But by the time Lahouari came along, the troubles in Algeria—terrible violence that he described to her—were too great and everything had gone too wrong for him to go to college or taste what the rest of his family saw as their due. And now, he was crammed in a tiny Everett apartment. Lahouari, even there, would see something she couldn’t.

She looked at Mourad. He was watching a boy in a starched white apron toss broccoli in a wok. She could smell French fries. Someone walked by with a gyro. There were all kinds of choices.