* * *

After dinner, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling and thinking of an excuse for why I could not accompany my mother to Meena’s wedding. The simple fact that I didn’t want to would not be enough. It had to be a strong enough reason that neither of my parents could object. Like a serious case of aviophobia. Or mono. Or pregnancy—but not quite as drastic. As I went over the different scenarios in my mind, I heard a soft knock on my bedroom door. I sat up as the door cracked open. It was my father.

My heart began to race. My mother must have sent him to talk with me, I thought, panicking. Is he going to try to convince me once more to go to India? I don’t even have a good excuse yet! Feeling flustered, I tried to steady the emotions rising inside.

“Leila, beti? Can I come in?” I nodded, crossing my ankles and resting the tip of my chin on my knees. He walked across the room and took a seat next to me, pushing aside the comforter. Neither of us said a word. The only sound was the ticking of the clock above my bed. I waited quietly for my father to say something, anxiously wondering what it was that he wanted.

After a few silent moments, he finally turned toward me. “Tell me,” he said gently. “Are you okay, beti?”

I wasn’t sure if it was the simplicity of the question or the concern with which he asked, but my eyes suddenly moistened. Not once in the past seven weeks had I—or anyone else, for that matter—stopped to check if I was okay. The truth was, I wasn’t. Everything was not okay. After what had happened with Zain, my life felt like it had scattered into pieces and all I wanted, in that one moment, was for someone to fix it.

When I was a kid, I would always run to my father whenever I had a problem. When I accidentally killed my goldfish in third grade because I filled its bowl with hot water instead of cold, my father was the one who helped me flush Fluffy down the toilet. When I fell behind in AP Geometry freshman year of high school, my father sat with me for hours each night teaching me his Indian shortcuts until I finally understood every problem in the book. When I failed my driver’s test the first time around, he spent the entire weekend in the empty lots behind the South Street Mall showing me how to parallel park. And even after that, when I rammed our minivan into an adjacent vehicle while attempting to park at the post office, he climbed into the driver’s seat and took the blame for it so I wouldn’t have my learner’s permit revoked.

I consistently relied on my father for his comfort and generosity, but as I’d grown older, I’d come to him less frequently because I felt like I had the capacity to figure things out on my own. For the first time in a long while, however, I realized I was in over my head. If only my father could fix my broken heart, my dejected self-esteem, my sense of hopelessness, my uncertainty in love. I had no idea how he would do it, but I just needed to hear that everything was going to be okay.