The highway was empty, he learned, because it was under construction, and when he reached the barricades, the signs were draped and hidden. It wasn’t until he ran down a ramp and onto another highway that he saw where he was. Downtown Boston was in the distance, and East Boston was another long way.

Aziz woke up thinking about asylum. It was not even six, and Mourad was up for work. Aziz could smell the syrupy coffee his brother liked to make.

Aziz glanced at the blue bucket when he walked into the kitchen. The leak was off today. There had been no rain since the U-Stor-It night. “Brother,” Mourad began. “The asylum. My green card, it gives you a ‘legal family member.’ Stable. Working. My supervisor will write a letter. And you have a safe job now. Ghazi watches for you.”

“Mourad, that Charlie Stone, he is not a lawyer.”

“What is he then?”

“Con man. Or police.”

“What would police want with Ghazi?”

“He’s illegal. Stowaway like me.”

“Aziz, there are ten million like that in this country. They have no time to watch all of them.”

His army tour—it had bent him, Aziz thought. Mourad was right. No one here cared or watched or noticed him, never had.

They heard the front door, one of the locks. Then the second lock. Mourad screwed up his face in a question. They were pushing back their chairs to see when Ghazi came into the kitchen. The blood on his face was a scrim the color of mud. His lips’ deep cuts had clotted and frozen and broken, then bled and clotted again. He started pulling off his ski jacket, undoing his shirt buttons. His chest was a black purple where the air bag had exploded against him. Aziz shuddered. It was as if someone or something from his army tour had walked continents and found him.

Mourad was helping Ghazi off with his things. “I need hot water and I need towels,” Mourad said to Aziz. “Here, here, sit here.” Mourad guided Ghazi to a chair. He cleared the kitchen table and put the blue bucket on the floor.

“Get me clothes,” Ghazi said.

“The hospital is what you need,” Aziz said, turning on the hot water in the sink.

“You do not understand,” Ghazi said.

Something in his voice halted them.

“Get everybody up,” he said slowly.

“Everybody?” Aziz said. He meant, Even Rafik?

“Yes. Everybody. There is not much time.”

Aziz woke the Three from their living room mattresses. Lahouari looked at him with questions, Hamid and Ali too. “Hurry. Hurry,” he said.

They stretched and yawned into the kitchen, wearing blankets like capes. Heather was in a bathrobe, her hair in tangles. She was dipping a towel in a bowl of soapy water and daubing Ghazi’s face. Aziz’s eyes flew around the little room. Where was Rafik? As if he heard his thoughts, Ghazi said, “Rafik never came home last night.”