Instead, I think of our house, always full of noise—the television in the living room, NPR in the kitchen, a record playing upstairs, as if it were full of people. And yet, oddly quiet. The constant rotation of young faculty at our dining room table. The silences of my parents, sitting side by side on the sofa. Holding hands but rarely talking, rarely looking at each other. My father’s sudden change from free-wheeling journalist to agoraphobic researcher. His overprotectiveness and disapproval of my job. Me never feeling good enough. Of needing to be like a son, but that was wrong, too.

“Your father just wanted to protect you,” my mother says, reading my thoughts. “After what happened with Henry—if anything happened to you,” she blinks at the ceiling, “I think he’d be completely lost.”

Her computer pings. A meeting reminder flashes on her screen.

A memory of spraining my ankle at basketball practice. My father white-faced, shaking with anger. Screaming that I was off the team. His fury when I joined the force. Why don’t you do marketing? Public relations?

“Helena?”

Amina stands in the doorway, concern written across her face as she looks from my mother to me and back again.

“Let me get you some water,” she says, and disappears. I listen to the sound of her footsteps fading down the hall. But I can’t look away from my mother’s face. It’s as if I’m seeing her—truly seeing her as the woman she is and not the person I imagined her to be—for the first time.

“I don’t understand,” I say finally. “Why do I know German?”

My mother rubs the bridge of her nose, her fingers drawing small circles outward until they reach her temples.

“I don’t know.” She sighs. “It’s possible you heard the nurses in the hospital. They talked to you every day. Held you while I was with Henry. I spoke to you in German, too. Somehow … it made everything easier.”

I’m staring at the student artwork on the wall. “Heimat” is painted in the colors of the German flag, and I know it’s German but don’t know what it means.

“It could be associated with trauma,” my mother’s saying. “The high stress of the fire sent those memories, those words, flowing back. Or perhaps you just pieced everything together from so many hours spent in my office.” She gives a small smile. It’s meant to be a joke, but there’s no laughter left in me.

I close my eyes. The shades are drawn, the light is dim, and I see a menagerie of tubes and wires. Hear an orchestra of beeps, voices, and alarms.