“A hot topic,” said Cameron. “Hot enough to send me back to the liquor cabinet. Get you anything?” He didn’t ask Carolyn.

“No, thank you. Actually, I’d better be going. I’ve taken up a lot of your time.”

The Chandlers made conventional protests. Carolyn walked her out. Under a backyard goal, the boys were playing one-on-one, to all appearances best friends. Jenna watched for a moment. She knew nothing about basketball, but it was obvious that Josh’s size was a great advantage, which Karim countered with agility and deception. Where had he learned all those feints and fakes, clever little lies told by the body? She shrugged off a shiver. The quick knife in the night in Alexandria.

Walking home, she glanced sidelong at her son. Love and sadness welled in her; he was growing up so fast! Only yesterday, he had been a baby. Then, in those first years when they were learning a new world together, they had been as close as two people can be. And now—too soon!—she could sense the beginnings of distance between them; already in his face, with its heartbreaking black eye and its newfound secrecy, there was the outline of the man to come. She reached out and tousled his hair. He squirmed away but grinned. It was an American moment, she thought, like a snippet from some TV commercial. In al-Remal, a mother wouldn’t treat a male child so familiarly, not at Karim’s age. But, of course, Karim knew nothing about that. He was an American. She was one herself—or nearly one. My God, she had even become a Red Sox fan. Her English carried hardly a trace of accent, and most of that vaguely Dutch, from Miss Vanderbeek. Karim had an accent, too: pure Boston.

An all-American boy. But had she done wrong? she asked herself for the thousandth time. She had gone to the Chandlers to defend her son’s heritage, but hadn’t she robbed him of that far more fully than any schoolboy insult could? Karim knew nothing of his nationality.

As for religion, there were mosques in Boston, but she had never taken him to one. She had taught him a little about Islam—but a little about other religions, as well. Then there was his personal birthright: he was a royal prince, yet far from knowing that, he did not even know his true father.

She had enrolled Karim in the prestigious Commonwealth School, which, ironically, accepted him readily because it was hungry for “minority” students. But she understood that, in some way, this was a concession to the remnants of her aristocratic memories and fantasies. Karim had no such illusions.

Someday, she would tell him the truth, she promised herself. Meanwhile, what was the point in questioning herself this way? She had done what she had to, and it was done.