Josh waited. “My father immigrated from Pakistan when he was seventeen.” Ah. So that’s where Josh got his dark hair and eyes. “He worked ninety hours a week for ten years as a janitor and a farmhand before he could buy his first piece of land. Thirteen acres. He ended up with eight thousand. I was the first person on either side of the family to finish college. My mom didn’t even finish high school.”

Christopher stopped to let that sink in. Or just to gather his nerves, maybe. Josh had to hand it to him; he wasn’t tap-dancing around.

Josh wasn’t really here to listen to the story of his invisible grandparents and their American dream, but it was interesting. Pakistan. He was Pakistani. Cool. He’d have to do some reading on the culture and history. After all, it wasn’t his ancestors who’d dumped his mom.

“Is your mother also Pakistani?” Josh asked.

“No. She’s white. Her parents didn’t approve of her dating a . . . well, they had ugly words for my father. So they kicked her out, and they got married when they were really young.”

“You think they’d approve of you walking out on your pregnant girlfriend?” Josh asked, his voice almost amiable.

“God, no. I never told them. They . . . were so proud of me. I was supposed to be proof that they’d made all the right choices. I wasn’t supposed to be an idiot and get a girl pregnant.”

“And yet you did.”

“Yes. Joshua, I have no excuses here. I was scared and selfish and entitled and weak. I couldn’t go back to MIT, and so I dropped out. I—” His voice broke. “I just stayed. Like a coward. Like a selfish asshole.”

He wiped his eyes. Josh was unmoved.

“The longer I stayed, the easier it got. I told myself your mother would go back to Sweden.”

“Why would she go to Sweden?” Josh asked. “She grew up in central New York. She spent one semester in Sweden. She’s a second-generation American. She knows maybe ten Swedish words.”

“Oh. I . . . I thought she was from Sweden, for some reason.”

“Wrong.”

“Well. It doesn’t excuse what I did. But that’s what I told myself. She was back there, they had . . . uh, better healthcare and, oh, shit, I was so stupid and self-centered and grasping at any straws. Call it magical thinking or wish fulfillment or me just pretending she’d floated off to a better life, becoming a doctor. After a while, I believed it. I pictured her in Sweden, having the baby—you—there, raising you there.”