I nodded and mumbled something in response. They were gone. I watched them from the living room window, their backpacks bouncing with every step, as they turned the corner. I was left alone with Janet. Everett had left early in the morning to assist with something at the church. I wondered if he would wear a short-sleeved shirt, as he had on Sunday, or if he would wear something to conceal the scratches I hoped I’d left on his forearms. I wondered if the God in the church would know where the scratches had come from.

Janet poured herself a cup of coffee and cream, the metal spoon scraping the inside of the cup as she swirled dark and light into one.

“I’m waiting on word from Ann,” she said, as if I’d asked her a question. “We’ll get you into school soon enough. I have some lovely books you can read until then to help guide you.”

I plodded back up the stairs, feeling as heavy and out of place as an elephant in this house.

I sat on the corner of my bed, looking at the bed where Shawna had slept, her quilt now perfectly tucked in at the corners. I knelt on the floor and looked under the bed, where I spied a small metallic cylinder. I pulled it into the light and saw that it was a roll of round candies, the same ones Everett kept in his jacket pocket and sucked on as we drove to church the previous morning.

I let the roll drop from my fingers and tumble back under the bed. I pulled my knees to my chest and leaned against the nightstand, watching dust motes float in the sunlight. Janet hummed downstairs, a tune that didn’t seem to have a melody.

I thought I had felt every shade of dark in the weeks since the coup, but I’d been wrong.

Boba had read me the epic Shahnameh in parcels, reciting couplets about kings and queens and mythical winged creatures. On my fortieth day of life, my father had held me in his arms. Milk-drunk and dressed in a pink crocheted sweater knitted by my grandmother, I had seemed to him to bear a striking resemblance to Rudabeh, daughter to the king of Kabul in the Shahnameh. Like her, I had eyelashes like a raven’s wings and a face that glowed like the moon.

Does that make you a king, Boba?

A crown wouldn’t fit a square head like mine, he had replied, rapping his knuckles against his head. I’d laughed, because Boba made the funniest faces when he talked about himself. And besides, crowns come and go despite men’s best efforts. He had cleared his throat and recited a verse from the Shahnameh:

Luxury and caresses, one’s fortune had been

Before cast into an abyss he’d never seen;

Another lifted from the pit and placed on a throne