She looked at herself in the mirror for a second and felt like deep in her eyes she looked sad and that it had nothing to do with the makeup. She went across the hall to the bathroom and used cotton balls and eye-makeup-removing liquid to take off her mascara and shadow and liner, and her eyes stung, then, so she turned on warm water and grabbed a foaming cleanser and washed her face. She patted it dry when she was done and looked in the mirror again.

Same ole Ilanka.

She’d always believed her father was pretty quiet about his work because it was boring, and she mostly agreed that software and data and all that crunching sounded like a big snore. That was what he always said. But what if … what if it were something more?

She regretted deleting the thread. She should have written back to confirm it was just spam.

But what if it wasn’t? Was it possible it was a message from …?

No. Couldn’t be.

Eden

EDEN

They’d made popcorn and put a movie on, but her mother was texting like crazy through the whole thing. “Who are you texting?” Eden finally asked.

“I don’t think you’re in a position to question my phone use right now,” her mother said.

“Sorry,” Eden said. “I thought we were supposed to be bonding.”

Her mother gave her a look; then that look softened and she said, “You’re right. Sorry.” She got up and plugged her phone in and said, “Can you pause it? I have to go to the bathroom.”

“Sure.” Eden paused the movie and waited for the bathroom door to close, then went to look at her mother’s phone. A text from NH: You can’t cancel. It will look weird.

It was alone in the window but clearly part of a longer conversation. So her mother was deleting as she went? Why hadn’t Eden thought of doing that with all her device threads?

She heard the toilet flush and rushed back to the couch.

Her own phone was plugged in next to her mother’s, on Do Not Disturb, and it was hard to just sit there and wonder what was going on. She’d texted Marwan to apologize for lying. Not knowing whether he’d written back was a form of torture. And the movie, a super smart and funny British romantic comedy about two music-obsessed teenagers, wasn’t helping. Because why was she suddenly imagining her and Marwan together? Like as a couple?

If it weren’t for the device, he probably wouldn’t even give her the time of day. Once this was all over, they’d probably go back to barely speaking.

At the end of the movie, with credits rolling, her mother said, “I’m gonna shower.”