She didn’t do that with Mourad. She had let him take her hair and settle it over his chest. He had put her head in the crook of him, some way, and made her hair drape onto him. He had a wide, wide chest. It looked almost malformed when he was standing up, because he had short legs. But lying down, and when he held her, it was nothing short of heaven. And when she had been overweight, at least when all this mess started, which turned out to be not a mess but the best thing for her, if not for Aziz and Ghazi, Mourad had taken in all that she was and loved what was spectacular and made do with what was not anything special and pretended—as she did with his nose and his chin and the too-short legs and the cratered skin and the not very imposing dick—that she was his finest flower. Sometimes, she didn’t know how it began, but sitting on the bed with Rafik and him out in the living room, she knew. It began where she was least lovable. Mourad began there, with his unsought attention, with his unbelievable poetry of physical approach, and he had made her a woman who would forever be aware that such things and ways existed in the world.

After a while, Mourad opened the bedroom door. When he smelled that combination of nail polish remover and Coca-Cola that was her smell, he was overtaken with relief that she was still, in the most immediate way possible, his. He told her Hank Bridges had been transferred out of Boston for misconduct, which meant everyone could come home. Rafik and Kamal were on the defensive, fearful that Mourad would turn them in. He did little to clear away their fright. He hoped they might leave Boston because of it. “Rafik was always criminal, even in school,” Mourad said. “But he was small scams. I thought America changed him.”

It would be horrible if Mourad ever found out about the U-Stor-It. She’d never set foot in it, but she promised herself she would find the key while Mourad was at work and throw it away. Mourad looked at her as if he were angry. It was like he had learned her so well, he knew her plan.

“He seemed—dangerous—to me tonight,” Mourad said. He was quiet a moment. “But Rafik is a snivel. A dandelion of a person.” He muttered those words in Arabic without realizing it. Heather waited for the translation. His face relaxed. He took both her hands and kissed them. Whatever he’d said didn’t matter.