In the darkness, her vision strained to translate the outlines of shapes into familiar markers. A tall square box with shutters—her mother’s favorite sari stall. A pyramid glowing in the moonlight—the Sai Baba temple. A thickly veined mass—the wide trunk of the old banyan tree. She hadn’t walked to the clinic in a while. It was further away than she remembered. A trip she thought would take her ten minutes on foot would take at least twice that long.

She panted. Her calves pinched with every step. Her dupatta slid off her head, flopped against her back. At the market, she slowed down and tried to catch her breath. She cut through its deserted aisles, between clumps of rickshaws. The drivers were curled up on the benches, snoring.

“Hey, sexy girl,” called one of them. He propped himself up. “Are you looking for me? Come,” he motioned. “We’ll have a good time.”

She darted around him, the border of her dupatta just barely out of the reach of his fingertips. She turned a corner and dashed down the length of the alley where she last saw Laila and Amir. In a few days, they would board a train north to Pakistan. If she couldn’t change her parents’ minds, she would board a train south to Bangalore. The distance between her and Amir would stretch the length of the subcontinent.

At the end of the alley, she smacked into a vegetable cart. It knocked the wind out of her. The vendor, who’d been dozing on the ground next to it, woke. “Watch where you’re going, filthy girl! Your father should beat you for being out so late by yourself!”

She bolted around, slowed when she reached the main road.

Sleeping bodies lined either side of it. More refugees. She leapt over skewed limbs, mothers nursing infants, children huddled into tiny balls against the sides of their fathers. A small boy wandered between bodies, searched for a place to rest his head.

She resumed running.

The dupatta’s knot drifted up her neck, over her mouth. She yanked it off, cut diagonally through the park. She was almost to the clinic now. One hundred more meters until she reached her Papa-ji, until she could finally confront him alone, beg him to close the clinic and come with her to Bangalore.

In the final stretch, her other chappal slipped off her foot. She ran a few paces back, dropped to the ground, patted her hands in the darkness. Finally, her hand met soft, worn leather, a toe loop. She raised the pant of her salwar, slipped on the chappal.

She limped the last stretch.