Two weeks later, I packed a bag and left. I signed up for the program at the Center online, with the copy of her credit card she’d given me for emergencies. I bought a plane ticket with it too. I used it to pay the cabdriver. She said nothing. She said nothing at all to me for two weeks, and then I was gone. You see I had to go. You see I had to find him. It wasn’t her fault; it was mine.

Love can’t be owed, you know, no matter the chain of reincarnations. Not to a parent. Not to a child, even. People are wrong about that.

“What are you doing here?” Serena said. She was slightly blurred from sleep. I said nothing, suddenly unsure of myself. Standing in the kitchen, holding the match. I wasn’t used to seeing her look so flammable.

“Come in, I guess,” she said. I followed her into her tent, and she curled up on her bed, tucking her feet underneath a blanket for warmth. Half-asleep, with no chance to plan or organize, she was briefly identifiable as that sad girl whose mother was dead, who slept in a milk barrel. She didn’t look capable of hurting anyone that night, only of being hurt, of being left. It made me want to leave, seeing her that way. No: it made me want to caress and destroy her at once, like that pretty fish, like my own mother.

“I have to tell you something,” I said.

15