Last week, while they were perusing books at the local bookstore, Chandani asked Shan whether she was happy. It was a question Shan hadn’t asked herself in years. On the outside, she possessed all the markers of a tragic individual. She was still very sad about the miscarriage but she wasn’t unhappy anymore. Amid the pain, she had found a way to be content. The two greatest stressors in her life, her job and her former husband, were gone. Maybe that’s how the state of happiness manifested for adults—autonomy and the ejection of toxicity.

The door to Andersen Hall was propped open. She stepped inside. It was an intimate room with dark, wide-planked hardwood floors, cream-colored drapes. The early evening light bled through the crack between them. Three antique sofas lined one wall. Wood chairs with low backs and armrests formed semicircles around the makeshift stage.

Students in long flowing dresses and blazers milled about. Wine glasses and longneck beer bottles dangled from fingers. Four silver platters overflowed with sausage rolls, croquettes, cheese balls. Shan picked up a dish, piled on a few bites from each platter, hid in the corner. On the plane ride over, she thought about where she should position herself during the reading, wondered if, after thirty years, Deepa would even recognize her.

The size of the crowd decided it for her. She had no choice but to stand at the back, camouflaged by other attendees.

A young man in dreadlocks and a dark suit walked to the center of the room, stood behind the microphone. The audience hushed. “Welcome students, faculty, and members of the community to our fourth poetry reading this semester.” A side door opened as he spoke. Two men entered the room followed by a woman with a shock of white, waist-length hair dangling past her bottom. She wore flared, silky pants, a loose-fitting sweater with a wide collar. Glasses perched on the top of her round face. She flowed into the center of the room, studied her seating options, chose the far end of the sofa. She crossed her legs at the knee, laid a book with a few loose papers on her lap, rested her glasses on the tip of her nose.

Thirty years ago, at their first and only meeting in London, Deepa’s stark black hair had been pulled back so tightly from her face, the roots tugged her skin toward her ears. She seemed stern, cold, had reminded ten-year-old Shan of Cruella De Vil. Would Shan have viewed her differently, would she have extended her grandmother more compassion, if she’d known Deepa had watched her own parents die in a burning building and had been separated from the boy she loved? Deepa’s face had a softness to it now. Shan hoped that meant she had found some semblance of peace.