Deepa nodded, as if she had needed this confirmation, as if all these years she’d been wondering this very same thing—whether her son’s daughter had been as affected by his death as much as she had. Either her grandmother was the most callous person Shan had ever met, or she was so mired in her own grief she couldn’t see past it to anyone else’s.

“Why didn’t you ever try to find me?” Shan said. “Why didn’t you want to know me?”

Deepa tugged her dupatta over her shoulders. “It seems so simple to you, doesn’t it? Whatever this is that you feel—my rejection of you—it’s bigger than that. It’s not personal.”

“How is it not personal? My father went to Delhi because of you,” Shan said. “He died there, alone, without the family he left behind. It’s hard not to take that personally.”

Deepa stared at her hard. “I never wanted Vijay to move to India. He moved because I finally gave in to him and told him his father’s name.” She took another puff, fumbled with the pack in her lap. “I shouldn’t have done it. I regret it more than you could ever know.”

“Just his name?” Shan asked. “Did you tell him anything else?”

“I didn’t know Amir for long. I didn’t even know his birthday. All I knew, all that I remembered, was that Amir had a sister named Laila, that their family’s name was Rahim, and they moved to Lahore after Partition.”

Lahore, the same city her father had planned to visit before he died. “Amir had a sister?” Shan asked.

“Yes. She was younger.”

“If Amir and Laila were in Pakistan, why would my father move to Delhi?”

“That’s where Vijay found a job. But he wasn’t just searching for Amir. He also wanted to find my parents’ clinic in Delhi and talk to anyone who might have known them. He wanted to find my school teacher, Madam Grover, who I lost touch with soon after moving to London to see if she ever heard from Amir. Your father did, eventually, plan on making his way to Lahore.”

“Did you ever try to find Amir?”

Deepa lit another cigarette. She brought it to her mouth. It shook in her fingers. She let it drop to the ground and stubbed it out. “I was living in London with a new baby, taking care of my godmother when she was diagnosed with cancer, and then my godfather after his stroke. I didn’t even know Amir’s parents’ first names, or the name of the aunt they were staying with in Lahore. But I did write multiple letters to the government in Pakistan and to refugee organizations. No one could find them.”

“I couldn’t find Amir in the Partition Project,” Shan said.