She had known something then too. There had been something about him, how he stood in the twilight, smiled at his little sister, how his dimples folded into his cheeks. She hadn’t known exactly what. Only that being with him made her feel more real, less like an actor in a film. She laid her hand on his heart, felt the force of its beat travel through her palm, up the veins of her arm. He would be her new family, her new home. “I knew it too,” she said. “Yes, I will marry you.”

“I will never be able to bring back your parents,” he said. “But I promise I will always take care of you. I will make you happy again.”

A dog barked in the distance. “I should go,” he said. “Before Bala returns.”

She grasped his shirt, pulled him closer. He could not leave her now. Not in this moment, when he’d just offered her a light, a reason to live beyond the next grueling second. With him near, she could replenish her lungs with oxygen, force out the smoke that continued to singe her airways. Besides, Bala would take a while. She was slow, picky. One hour at the market very easily turned into three.

“Amir, my husband. Don’t go. Please stay,” she whispered in his ear.

Her friend Kamila had told her what happened on the night the bride and groom married. Deepa hoped at least one part of her friend’s revelation was true—that a physical act sealed a couple together, for all eternity, made them a family forever in the eyes of God. She inhaled deeply, took his hand. She led him to the sofa, placed his hand on her breast.

“Deepa, no.”

She shut her eyes. How could she make him understand? How could she make him know that her life could only begin again with him, that he was the only person who could lure her away from her own death?

“Our souls are already married,” she said. She opened her eyes. “That is all that matters. That we are husband and wife before God.”

He touched her cheek, brought his mouth to hers. Lips, teeth, tongues connected. He lowered her to the sofa.

She slid her kameez over her head. His gaze took her in. She did not feel shy or embarrassed, like she thought she would. She only felt closeness with him.

He kissed her breasts softly, rose to kneeling, peeled off his shirt. When he lay back over her, the heat from his skin radiated through her body. She ran her hands along his shoulders, his arms. For three days, grief had suffocated her. She thought she would never feel alive again. But this, this she could feel. This felt real.

His kisses ran over her chest again. His fingers found her waistband, slid inside, probed between her legs.

“Deepa, is this … is this really what you want? Shall I keep going?”