“Indigo, it’s a delicate matter,” Tilly added. “Do you remember the first conversation we had? You found me walking along the Kabul River and stopped me to tell me how much I reminded you of your grandmother.”

“Thought you might shoot me on the spot.”

“I was just short a gun and a bullet. But then you told me about your grandmother. About what a hero she was. How she’d practically walked through fire to rescue her two children from a burning house.”

“It’s true,” Patricia agreed. “She really did save two kids.”

“Indigo, have you ever wondered what you would do if you’d been there?”

Indigo didn’t reply.

“Things are fiery here. There’s a child here that needs saving. And when you have a chance to save a child, you don’t overthink it. Heroes just do it, like your grandmother did, and that’s why you were walking along the Kabul River talking to strangers about her.”

“Whoa, a child?” Indigo exclaimed. He shook his head and raised both palms in protest. “An actual child? No, thanks.”

“Indigo, let’s just hear them out,” Patricia said gently.

“You know what? Here’s what I think we should do. Let’s just forget we had this conversation,” Antonia said.

“Forgotten,” Indigo insisted. “We’re definitely not looking for this kind of trouble.”

“This isn’t trouble,” Tilly said. “How could you call a child trouble?”

Indigo stood then, and Patricia rose with him. Antonia walked to the door, ready to see them out. It might have ended there. They might all have walked away from that living room if Patricia hadn’t put her hand on Indigo’s shoulder.

“Baby, remember what you read to me in Bamiyan when we slept under that great Buddha?” she asked. “The bright light of seeking can blind a person from finding anything at all. We’re not looking. We’re finding.”

I cracked the door open a hair in time to watch Indigo fall back into his seat with the weight of stones.

Chapter 17

“The soldier who brought you here,” Antonia said, as she took slow strides across the living room. “I knew I’d seen him before. He was guarding the new minister of education. I had a meeting with him just after the coup and that man—you say his name is Shair?—was standing outside the office. I’d forgotten until this morning. I sat down to call the minister and that’s when I made the connection.”

“So that’s how he knew you!” Tilly exclaimed. She was sewing buttons onto a caramel-colored suede vest with fringes, a costume for the upcoming performance of a musical called Oklahoma! that Antonia and her colleagues were putting on.

“Must be. And it wasn’t a bad idea. Star is safer with us than anywhere else right now. He must have followed me to this apartment,” Antonia explained.