She opened her eyes, straightened in her chair, reread the last line of the letter again.

If you knew why he moved to Delhi.

Of course she did.

A pressure deepened in her chest. She slowed her breathing, expelled all of the carbon dioxide before taking in clean oxygen, just the way her respiratory therapist had taught her.

Shan Johnson signed the bottom of the letter. It was a strange name for the daughter of Vijay Khanna. There was a physical address, an email address, and a telephone number. Gertrude wondered what this Shan really knew of her grandmother, understood what trauma could do to a person, how it could make them unknowable. She assumed, given Shan’s questions, that Deepa had shut Shan out too.

Gertrude leaned over to the wall, tapped a blue button.

Kathy’s voice came over the intercom. “Yes, Miss Trudy? What can I get you?”

“Would you mind coming by my room, please?” Gertrude asked. “I need help dialing an international number.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

London

November 8, 1958

When his mother’s voice rose sharply on the other side of the wall, Vijay startled in his seat, spit the straw out of his mouth, set his orange soda down on the kitchen table. He closed his Eagle comic book, the latest one in the series, which Miss Trudy had bought for him the day before.

The exchange grew more heated. There were whisper-shouts, like the sound the television made with white squiggly noises when the programs were over. He strained to listen. His mother’s heels pounded the parquet wood floors. It was the first argument he’d recalled Ma and Gertrude having.

He broke off a piece of a blueberry scone, chewed it slowly, thoughtfully, wiped the crumbs on his pants. He crept to the door dividing the kitchen from the living room, leaned on it, pressed his lobe against it. It was warm from an afternoon of baking.

He couldn’t make out individual words but his mother’s voice was shrill.

She was not the most affectionate person. Her tenderness was doled out in small doses, like medicine for a cough. She administered tight hugs and cheek kisses once in the morning, before heading off to work, and again at bedtime, before flicking off the light, and otherwise moved through the world with a sort of impersonal calm, a formality that made her seem immune to anything.

He pushed on the door slightly, until the opening was wide enough for him to hear them at full volume.

They faced each other by the coffee table, his mother in her long dress cinched at the waist, stockings, Miss Trudy still in her apron, bare feet. He watched the rises and falls of their chests. They hadn’t noticed him yet.

“He doesn’t have a father, Trudy,” his mother spat.

“He does, Deepa! And all Vijay wants is to know who he is!”