He now sat watching the cursor blinking in the Google search field—“Aizel” and “drone” had turned up nothing—and the sounds of story time lilted behind him. A woman was reading aloud in a cheerful voice: “Look at that bag pretending to be a monkey. Look at that cloud that thinks it’s a star. Look at that house that wants to be a lady. And that man trying to be a car.”

The rhymes were making him sleepy; her voice was so soothing. A toddler boy yelled, “I can’t see!” and was shushed. Marwan half wanted to go over and join them on the rug in the children’s section so he could see the illustrations.

He thought maybe he should just leave, but now Eden was on her way.

What would he even do with proof? Would it really matter to his father? Probably not. He wasn’t even sure that was why he was here. But if it wasn’t that, then what?

Life felt like unfinished business—with his father, with Christos, with Eden, and with the device most of all.

But if they even found out where it had come from, what would they do? Go there? And do what?

Eden slid into the seat next to him.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” she said. She looked at his monitor and said, “Making progress, I see.”

“I want to find, like, proof that it existed and that it all happened the way we think it did so I can explain to my dad that it really did look like a bomb.”

“I’ll tell Anjali now, but I’m not sure I’ll ever tell my mom,” Eden said. “I actually told someone else a few days ago, though. I guess Aizel never found out.”

“Who did you tell?”

“Just a friend,” she said.

“Please tell me it wasn’t Julian,” he said.

She shook her head—“Of course not”—and felt like an idiot about all that again but didn’t want to indulge the feeling. “This morning I ran into the guy you saw my mother with.”

“And …?”

“And nothing. I mean, he of course acted like nothing was going on. Then he messaged my mother and was like ‘I just saw Eden’ and she told him to stop texting her. He was my dad’s best friend for like ever.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“When I asked her about it—”

“Wait, when did you do that?”

“Last night,” Eden said. “She said he’s one of her best friends so it’s hard for her.”

“That does sound hard,” he said.

“What’s hard about it? He’s married.”

“I mean, hard to know where that line is between friend and something more, I guess?”