“When my wife, Priya, and I first married it was, as they say, heaven on earth. She was younger than I, but, also as they say, she was wise beyond her years. Plus, she was so beautiful. A perfect shape, magnificent skin, a smile that…” He pauses, as if he is recalling the shape, the skin, and the smile. “And then, merely a few months into the marriage, while I was an ob-gyn intern at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, she became pregnant. Could there be better news for a couple who loved each other so much? We were joyful. A baby girl. We named her Devangi, a goddess.”

Sarkar slows down his driving, and he completely stops his story.

I feel that he wants me to ask the question that I ask: “So what happened?”

He pauses, then, “I returned one morning—three o’clock, after a difficult delivery. My wife and Devangi were missing, gone.”

“My God. Where to?” I ask.

“The police in New York were totally not interested in the case. I think they believed we were just peculiar foreigners. So then I thought maybe Priya had gone back to her mother’s. I hired two different investigators in Northeast India. A waste of money. The most and the best that I have heard is that my wife and child have crossed the border into Nepal.” Sarkar spits the word out again: “Nepal! Nepal! Of all places. That bitch Priya might as well have gone to the moon. Or she might as well have taken the baby into hell itself. That is how impenetrable Nepal is.”

Sarkar is once again silent. I have noticed that he ignored some of the GPS suggestions, and I think we are driving somewhere in Brooklyn’s East Flatbush section, an area as impenetrable to me as Nepal is to Sarkar.

When Sarkar speaks again, he speaks quickly and honestly. “I traveled to India. I hired detectives. Nothing. My wife and my baby have left the face of the earth, at least they have disappeared from my part of it.”

I now speak as slowly as he has spoken fast. “I am truly sorry for your problem and your loss.”

“Thank you, Lucy. And I know you well enough that I suspect you mean what you say.”

Suspect? He suspects? He’s not certain? WTF?

I say nothing, and Dr. Sarkar moves on to the story’s wrap-up.

“So…when my wife and daughter vanished, I would wake up very early, and most usually I was waking up all alone. Most days I was, of course, going to the hospital, going to work. But on Sunday mornings I felt terribly lonely, and for some reason I would drive into Brooklyn. Brooklyn seemed to lift my spirits. I don’t know why. I’d buy a buttered bagel and black coffee and park near the Botanic Garden and relax. It worked like magic.”

He looks at me, and we both smile.