“You I’m sharing with Pierre. And Leigh—” She can’t bring herself to complete the thought. Completion implies a decision made. “What if I can’t do this by myself?”

She’s had this conversation with him before, knows what he’ll say—“You can,” he says, “you’re the strongest person I know”—and she’s always found his words reassuring, but today she feels strangely empty. A life is turning within her, and what has she to offer it?

She’s not strong the way Tahera is strong, the way she suspects Arshad is. All her childhood she’d been confounded by Tahera’s enthrallment with things she remained blind to: a perfectly purple jamun, a line of poetry, a rainbow. Arshad had stood on this bridge, his eyes focused on the cap being swept away by the breeze until it was no more than a glittering speck. They have something she doesn’t have, never had, may never have. Even Amina—she recalls the look on Amina’s face as she sang.

They are like this bridge—anchored, and held upright and strong by their unshakable faith in the rightness of their devotions and their ecstasies and in their capacity to bear the weight of them. Her strength, on the other hand, lies chiefly in her ability to raise anchor and sail away, and reestablish herself elsewhere, in more favorable waters. They’re the bridge, she’s the ship beneath, tramping from port to port.

Fiaz puts an arm around her, gives her shoulders a squeeze. “You know you can always count on me to play the doting uncle. As long as I don’t have to change dirty diapers.”

“What use are you then?” She swats him, masking her disappointment in playfulness.

Fiaz jokes, but this is his way of hinting at the limits of what he’s willing to do for her child. Pierre doesn’t want children, and Fiaz doesn’t regard himself as free to make a choice for himself. Would he agree to more if he weren’t with Pierre? That’s not a question she can ask him. Fiaz will continue to show her and her child many kindnesses, and she has to be satisfied with that.

She’s startled by the ship’s warning horn as it sails into the bay. The kitesurfers and sailboarders zipping back and forth by the bridge race to get out of its path.

She leans against Fiaz and lets him bear some of her weight as they walk up the incline from the bridge to the parking lot.

27

Nafeesa’s comment—how good Seema and Fiaz look together!—unsettles Tahera. It hadn’t occurred to her to suspect more than friendship between them. There’s something about Fiaz that is too reassuring—too nice, too normal—to imagine him as Seema’s lover. But perhaps her mother knows something that she does not.