When Ruth got home, Raj was still not back. She looked over what she had written, appalled, imagining what he must have felt. Her filthy little habit; her mother’s voice. She would put this away. After allowing herself just one final entry, which she knew she wouldn’t be able to get out of her head otherwise, she unlocked the attic door, climbed up, made her way through a hazard of old furniture and boxes, and placed the notebook in a pile with a few dozen others. She knew she should burn them but couldn’t. It was her art, in some way, an emotional counterweight to the empathy she had felt afflicted by almost all her life.

Just as she was padlocking the attic door, the phone rang, shocking her. Her first thought was that it was something to do with Raj.

She ran into the kitchen and snatched up the receiver. “Hello?”

After a moment: “Ruth, it’s Judy.”

As ever, Judy now left an indeterminate silence.

“Yes.” Ruth’s body clenched with a visceral dislike of this woman.

“Did you get Annie back okay?”

“Yes. Yes, I did.”

Another silence ensued. Ruth was so worried about Raj she didn’t have the patience for this.

“Judy, what do you want?”

“What I said today.” She hesitated. “What I said to you. I was joking.”

“Yes, you told me.”

“You see, the thing is you made a joke earlier about that Englishman—”

“His name was Oliver. He lived with me for two years. You met him on numerous occasions.”

“Yes. Him. You’d made a joke that you stayed with him because he was hygienic.”

“Yes. Is that all then, Judy?”

“But that’s why I made a joke too.”

“Judy, you told me at the time you were joking.”

“Thank you.”

This hoarsely whispered thank you seemed to express genuine suffering and gratitude. All at once Ruth felt—as if she needed to feel this any more intensely right now—as impatient and cruel as her own mother. She became aware of her posture, the way she was holding the phone, looking up at the ceiling, her tongue running over the edges of her teeth, her other hand canted impatiently against her hip. When she was a child, her mother, in this exact posture, would roll her eyes as if she were on the phone with all the stupidity in the world. And Ruth would feel special, protected inside her mother’s impatience and contempt because it was never directed at her. Indeed, it was a way for her mother, obliquely, to express love in the implicit comparison of this venal, idiotic, ugly world with her beautiful, clever daughter. It was a thicket of thorns around them, protective and isolating.

“Don’t worry, Judy,” she said more softly.

“What would I have to worry about?” The defensive harshness was back. “It was a joke.” A sound then, like a sob, and the phone was hung up.