Their evolving friendship was an odd one. What forty-one year-old wanted to spend time with a sixty-five-year-old? Since Shan’s miscarriage, Chandani had come to believe an older widow and a younger divorcée could have quite a bit in common. They were both trying to figure out who they were without their long-term partners and how to stand on their own two feet again.

For Chandani, it was nice, this allegiance. Their friendship made her feel useful for the first time since Harjeet’s death. Shan had found in Chandani a conduit for her culture, her heritage, for the country of her family’s origins, and Chandani found in Shan someone who took great interest in her memories of her childhood and young adulthood in India. Not long after Chandani told Shan that Harjeet’s sister died in a refugee camp raid during Partition, Shan revealed that her father moved to India in 1981 to search for his own father who disappeared during Partition, and more recently, that her estranged grandmother had written a book of poetry under a pen name and dedicated it to Shan’s missing grandfather.

Funny, wasn’t it, how one person could unlock the mysteries of another like the combination on a safe?

There was something about the age of forty, that sort of midway point of life, when people started to feel the need to be connected to the generations before them. Last night, Kush called. They had a long talk. It was the best conversation they’d had since she moved down to Atlanta. He told her he was planning this fall to go to Kolkata with Physicians Abroad for six months. He’d take a side trip to Amritsar to visit members of the family he hadn’t seen since he was a small child. She didn’t know what compelled him to do this, after so many years of distancing himself from his heritage. But it appeared that at age forty-two, he was going to search for his own roots, much in the same way Shan was now searching for hers.

A waiter approached the table, took their orders. They handed over their menus, sipped on their waters.

“Thanks for meeting me,” Shan said.

“I love this place,” Chandani said. “They make the best samosas in town.” Her first meal in Atlanta was here, at this Indian restaurant. It was also her first meal in a restaurant since Harjeet died. The rest of the food was so-so—she could get far better Indian food in New Jersey. But the restaurant had come to symbolize something for her—taking that first scary step in a new life alone. She was glad this time to bring a friend.

Shan nodded, pulled the sleeves of her long-sleeved shirt over her thumbs, glanced down in her lap.