“The soldier, Shair. He came to see me in clinic as a patient. I confronted him.” Mom’s jaw goes slack. I don’t know if she’s more surprised that he reappeared or that I didn’t tell her about this right away. I tell her every last detail about our encounters, even confessing that I’d gone to his apartment building. “That monster has just been living his life. He’s never had to pay for what he did that night.”

“Aryana, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be in contact with him. And you certainly can’t be his doctor.”

As expected, Mom is protective and rational.

“I know. But he might be my only chance to find my family, to know who killed them.”

Mom looks conflicted.

“Look, I know it’s hard to think of it this way, but he did get you out of there that night. And he took a lot of risks to get you to me.”

This is not the first time Mom has tried to get me to see things this way.

I think of the way Shair looked at me in the hospital, the way he corrected the security guard who mistook me for a nurse. But I am still angry.

“I’m not interested in being his redemption,” I say, my voice carried south in the breeze. “I’m going to make him tell me everything.”

A congregation of ring-billed gulls skitters over the choppy waters, then returns to the ground in search of food.

“What if he doesn’t have the answers you’re looking for?”

“He does. He has to,” I say resolutely. “Otherwise, why would he show up in my life now? The universe can’t be that sadistic.”

I dare not blame God, even though I am not a religious person. Sometimes I regret that the faith I was raised in slipped away from me like a silk robe. I hold on only to the core, the belief that there exists a Creator and that heaven and hell are real.

Necessity isn’t just the mother of invention. She’s the mother of faith too.

The rest of it, the fasting, prayers, and holidays, mean nothing without my family or even a community. Growing up, Mom opted for a Unitarian church, an institution that probably grew out of necessity too.

“What if I speak with him?” Mom suggests. “Maybe I can get him to open up. What do you think?”

She isn’t surprised when I shake my head. I will make him answer me, even if I must go to dangerous lengths to do it.

There are people in this world who return to watery graveyards—weary doctors, shell-shocked journalists, children of war. These are the people willing to cross hell’s gates to prove life and loss are intertwined currents, capsizing some ships and righting others.

Chapter 47