“And where are you going in Shkodër?”

The young woman in the seat opposite me, still wants to practice her English.

I smile, she’s friendly, but I shake my head.

“It’s . . . a private matter.”

“You look very thoughtful.”

“The landscape is beautiful.”

I turn back toward the window and the world outside the train, trying to show her I don’t want to talk more.

The images won’t stop.

Pounding and pounding to get in or maybe out of my head.

The image of five men sitting at our kitchen table with their questions and Dad refusing to respond anymore. Because the riddle is complete, now the questions are the same as before—they want to know where Dad hid something, and I don’t understand what that is. Dad stays silent, so they say that Eliot is gone and Julia is gone and soon maybe Mom will be gone too. Dad is crying. “Zoltan. For fuck’s sake. Why?” I’ve never seen Dad cry before. He’s given up. And he’s about to answer when Mom throws herself over the table and screams “Quiet!” It goes almost as fast as it did when they shot my big brother and big sister. But this time Mom starts it. She spits at the man who is talking—straight into his face. Saliva runs down from his sweaty hairline to his cheeks. And when he shoots her I see where the shots hit her head. One a little to the side, the other right in her forehead. Then he turns to Dad. “Now you can’t have any more kids.” They grab hold of Dad’s arms, pull him across the floor. “But you can still meet a new woman, think about that.” Pull him through the hall, all the way to the front door and force him into the chair there. For a moment, almost like a flash, it feels like Dad looks straight at me. From the chair up to the slightly open cabinet door. As if we look at each other, and speak without words. And he says it: “The computer. Everything is in the computer in the second desk drawer in the master bedroom.”

All of it is so crystal clear.

The man who shot Mom goes and gets the computer. Tells Dad to open it, and Dad does so, and they all stare at the screen. Until one of them slams the computer shut and says “good” and someone else is standing in the way so I can’t see what happens, and I don’t really hear what they’re talking about, but I hear the shots. Those strange, muted bangs, two times. Then they go. Take the computer. Close the front door behind them.

That’s it.

That’s as far as I get as I stare out through the train window.

That’s where my memory ends. I don’t have any more.