“Thank you. I appreciate that.”

Gertrude had an accent, though not a British one. It sounded German, slightly guttural, breathy. The thought had occurred to Shan, when she first discovered the index card with Gertrude’s contact information, that Gertrude had been a former lover of her father’s, the woman he left her mother for, his overseas mistress. But it was clear her affection toward him was maternal.

Shan had been searching online for Deepa Khanna too, for about a month. But she hadn’t gotten anywhere. She wondered why she bothered chasing a grandmother who had never wanted anything to do with her. She wondered whether she was replacing her grief over her broken marriage and miscarriage with a fresh wave of grief for her long-dead father and her estranged grandmother. Her identity had begun to be defined by the holes family members left behind. Perhaps she needed to move forward, not backward.

So she quit searching completely, concentrated on her next steps—putting the house up for sale, finding a place to live, looking for another job. She had placed her father’s box of personal affects into a larger moving box, sealed it shut.

And yet, here was Gertrude.

“You said he was living in India at the time of his death?” Gertrude asked.

“Yes. He and my mom separated when I was five,” Shan said. “We stayed in Seattle, he moved to Delhi. Mrs. Enzenebner—”

“Gertrude. Please call me Gertrude.”

“Sorry. Gertrude, can you tell me how you knew my father?”

The rhythmic creaking in the background on the other side of the line now went silent. “I was his babysitter,” Gertrude said. “Though that title doesn’t adequately convey what Vijay meant to me. I came to love him like a mother loves a son,” she said tenderly. “I never had children. He was it for me.”

“Oh,” Shan said. Her father had never even mentioned a Gertrude to Shan. She felt sorry for her, how vested she had been in him emotionally, how it didn’t appear her father returned the affection equally. It seemed the list of people her father had abandoned was a long one. There had been many broken hearts in his wake.

“So, you must have known Deepa too,” Shan said.

“She was my friend, my best friend. She and Vijay moved into my building soon after Deepa’s adoptive parents passed away. Deepa had been trying to raise Vijay by herself while teaching full time. During those four years, the three of us formed a sort of makeshift family.”

Something didn’t add up. Deepa and Gertrude were friends, but not good enough friends for Gertrude to know that Shan’s father died three decades earlier.

“When was the last time you heard from either of them?” Shan asked.

Gertrude sighed again. “Vijay was eleven. Your grandmother and I had a fight, a serious one. They moved out of my building a few days later.”