She picked up the phone and dialed. She wondered if there was a way not to tell him about her mother. She did not want him to feel sorry and offer condolences. She knew he would be sincere, that he would be genuinely sad, and at this moment, she wanted no tenderness from him. The phone rang many times and eventually a woman answered.

“Hello,” she said.

Although she had heard Devesh speak English to his parents, she was taken aback, and she stumbled. “Umm, yes, is Devesh there?”

“One moment please.” The woman used Devesh’s same precise phrasing, the same semi-British accent. She had to be his sister. The woman called his name. There were bits of loud conversation in the background, lots of voices, and she wondered if she was interrupting a party.

When he answered the phone, his voice sounded very deep and very far away.

“Hi,” she said.

“Josie?”

“Yeah.”

“Finally. I called my house and your cell; I even tried Mary’s, but no one answered. Where are you?”

She paused. She looked at the kitchen. She looked at the black marble countertops and the Sub-Zero freezer. She looked at the pizza oven her father had installed and the shiny copper pots that hung from the ceiling.

“In the kitchen,” she said.

“In what kitchen?”

She paused. “A big kitchen?”

“Josie, where?”

“My parents’.”

“In California? Why?”

“Um,” she said. She would say it and the words would zoom through thousands of miles of optic cables, and she would not be able to get them back. “My mother died.” She had not said it aloud, and she swallowed the m’s and dropped the last d.

“What?”

“My mother….” She had spoken little of her mother, and then only to tell him they weren’t close. “She died.” The static on the line seemed to jump onto her tongue.

“Oh my God. Oh, Josie. When? Are you all right?”

“Yes; I’m fine.”

“Josie. Oh, God … I’m sorry.” He was saying all the things she knew he would, and she wished this were a cordless phone so she could go outside and smoke a cigarette. “I’ll fly out there tomorrow. I’ll try and get a flight.”

“No.” She knew she had answered too quickly and too resoundingly.

“Why not?”

“Just because.”

There was a long agonizing pause, and Josie could feel his restraint through the phone line.

“How did it happen?” he finally asked.

“Heart attack.”

“Oh,” he said. There was another pause and then, “I’m sorry. I’m just … I’m so, so sorry.” His concern was making all the muscles in her neck contract.

“I should go,” she said.

“No.”

“It’s two-thirty in the morning here.”

“Are you sure you’re okay? You sound … I don’t know … unwell.”

“My mother died, Devesh.”