Her teacher took her hand. “You should know, Deepa, that hundreds of thousands of refugees are stranded. Some are starving and becoming very sick. Typhoid fever is tearing through the camps. It might be too risky for Amir to return to Delhi. It might take him much longer to reach here than you think.”

She had considered this. But Amir was strong, healthy. From what Deepa had read, it was families with young children and the elderly that were having the most difficulty making the journey. “Amir’s just one person,” she said. “He’ll be able to take care of himself.”

Madam Grover nodded, slipped the note in her pocketbook. “I’ll give everyone your address, Deepa. And if I see Amir, I’ll give it to him too.”

“Thank you,” Deepa said. Hot tears sprung from the corners of her eyes. “He’s all I have left. I need to be with him. I need him to find me.”

“He will.” She took Deepa’s face in her hands. “You’ve been through so much. You’ll get through this too.” She removed a paper from her purse, wrote something down, handed it to Deepa. “Here’s my home address. Please write to me, Deepa. Let me know how you’re doing. And keep up with your beautiful writing. It will keep your parents alive in your memory, preserve who they were, what they meant to you. In time, the writing will bring you some semblance of peace.”

Deepa shifted in her seat. “I don’t write,” she said. “I just wrote that one poem for Amir.”

“You wrote that poem about Amir. You wrote it for yourself, to process how you were feeling.” Madam Grover rose, adjusted her dupatta.

“Madam Grover,” Deepa said. “One more thing. Did you ever hear from you cousin? Or her family?”

Her teacher smiled, touched Deepa’s cheek. “How thoughtful of you to ask,” she said. “I received a letter just yesterday. She is safe. She and her family made it to Ahmadabad. I’m going to visit them over the next school break.”

“That’s wonderful,” Deepa said. If Madam Grover’s cousin had made it safely over the border, Amir could too. Such news gave her hope.

“It’s a lovely city, Ahmadabad,” Madam Grover added. “From what I’ve heard, Hindus and Muslims live in relative harmony there. If you and Amir choose to return to India, it might make a nice city for you both.”

Deepa smiled. She did not know whether this was actually true, whether there really was a place in India where they could be safe as a married couple or raise a family some day. But she appreciated the sentiment. “Thank you, Madam Grover. Thank you for saying that.”