She couldn’t recall the fall itself, though she remembered the aftermath, lying on the couch watching Bugs Bunny cartoons with a big bandage taped to her foot. “Yes,” she said softly. “I do.”

He patted her head, kicked off his shoes, shoved them in the cubby. They stepped through the grand entryway.

A lush lawn, the size of several soccer fields. A path made up of different-shaped stones fitting together like a jigsaw puzzle. A pool of water, long, rectangular, shimmering.

Just looking at the water made her feel cooler. “Can we go closer?” she pointed.

“Sure,” he said.

She broke free, dashed between tall narrow bushes. Her new gold chains shimmied against her shirt’s collar. At the lip of the pool, she knelt on her cotton pants, peered over the water. Strings of algae drifted like the tentacles of jellyfish. Mosquitoes the size of moths skated along the surface. The reflection of the Taj Mahal—the rounded dome, the four towers—glowed like a full moon in a dark sky. It spread to the edges of the pool. She swirled her finger. The Mahal remained unblemished among the ripples.

She leaned over farther. Her breath quickened. She could lose her balance, tip into the pool, head first. Still, farther. Her forehead erased one of the towers and then eclipsed part of the central arch. She raised her eyebrows, stuck out her tongue.

Her father lowered himself with a grunt. His hand dove beneath the surface, cupped, poured the water over his head. In his reflection, she spotted the matching depression in his chin, the similar squared angle of his jaw, the identical slight, straight nose. She traced the image of his cheek with her thumb. She had not noticed before how much she resembled him. His skin tone, a deep brown, perfectly matched her own.

Her mother’s skin was a creamy white, like almost everyone’s in Seattle. Shan had to claim or be claimed by her mother to prove their shared genes. Complete strangers would ask Shan, “Oh, are you adopted?” They asked her mother, “Is she your stepdaughter?” Here in India, Shan could see herself in her other parent, could match her skin to the skin of so many others around her. For the first time, she looked like everyone else, even though every Indian seemed to know she was an American.

She removed her hand from the pool, flicked off the beads of water. “Let’s go,” she said. “I want to see it up close.”

They rejoined the crowd and followed along the path. With each step, the dome sprouted higher into the bright, cloudless sky. Its girth widened. When they finally reached the platform they began a steep ascent.