The first time he realized that Karak knew, they were climbing back into the car to go home from the park. A moment before Jivan joined them, Karak looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “You have a new interest, is it?” Ram looked away, he could only look away, but Karak slapped Ram’s knee affectionately, forgiving the transgression and dismissing it all at once, as if Ram’s infidelity were nothing. Ram was filled with a hot shame, a knife in his gut as he thought of Padma, but he could not help going back to the Mexican—that was how he thought of her in those moments. The Mexican. He felt shame for that too.

He sensed Jivan growing more and more distant with him, but he was not certain. Did the man know about him? Was he disgusted? He had spoken with Jivan so often about Padma, about his son. Ram began to avoid Jivan, never spending any time alone with him. One day Jivan asked Ram to drive him into town. As they passed the barrio, Jivan said, “You know that area well, don’t you?” Ram’s muscles tensed.

Ram said only “Bhai-ji,” and his heart hammered against his ribcage. Of course he did not know the barrio well; he did not go there openly, the Mexican men and Adela’s family would never tolerate it. But he knew what Jivan meant. He did not wish to lie, to him of all people.

Jivan did not meet his eye. “I wish you did not know it well. But a young man has certain needs.” Jivan sighed. “We must survive. We do not always have the luxury of keeping our values as if we lived among our people.”

Ram did not know what to make of this comment. He felt a judgment in Jivan’s words, but he felt better now that Jivan knew. Ram was, in a way, once more an honest man, as if he had stepped out of the shadows into a circle of light.

Perhaps Adela sensed it too; one afternoon, lying in the seamstress shop, their bodies half in sunlight, half in shade, she said, “Tell me about this—” She was pointing at the scar on his leg. It had been where the man in Hambelton had pounded on his shin, the oddly long wound that had kept him lying by the side of the road before he was able to stand and limp home.

“It is nothing,” he said, “an injury from long ago.”

She ran her tongue along the length of the scar, as if she knew it was not from long ago. As if she knew it was a wound that America had given him. The nerves skittered at her touch. The sensation ran up his leg and along his spine, sent a shiver into his skull. “I do not believe you,” she said, teasing.