“Tell me,” she says. “Tell me everything.”

Lidia opens her door, gives me a hard look. It’s Labor Day, but she’s made a point of meeting us here at the office. “Where I grew up, they’d bring out a switch, Rania. Running off like that! You should have heard those shelter folks up in my face all the time.”

“We’ve talked about it,” Ammi says. “Rania says she’s sorry.”

“I do?”

“Rania!” The old Ammi is back.

I bow my head. “I’m sorry,” I mumble. I look at Lidia. “Truly. I didn’t mean to scare everyone.”

“All right then. Come into my office.”

Ammi and Kamal stay in the waiting room while I sit across from Lidia. First I unfold a piece of paper and pass it to her. “This is roughly what Salim Uncle told me. He promises he will send a statement that’s notarized.”

She folds the paper and sets it to the side. Her chair squeaks as she rolls closer to me. “Okay. On to you.”

I give her my notebook, where I wrote down my memories, best I could remember. Her brow bunches as she reads. She sets it down and pumps me with more questions, so many questions. I tell her about the time I came into the bedroom and Abu was lying in the dark, his head bandaged. The calls in the middle of the night, Ammi slamming the receiver down. The men who took me for ice cream.

“So you lived with danger even after your father disappeared?”

I shut my eyes. The Wellfleet pond rushes up: a space of green surrounding me. My own breaths, the slashing motion of my arms. That word—danger—glimmers up from the murky pond bottom, like a knife. There it was, all along. I clutch it, hard.

“Yes,” I say firmly. “We lived with a lot of danger.”

“You were scared?”

Another word, locked away. A little sob escapes. “All the time.”

When I blink my eyes open, I’m drained and sweaty. I’ve been grasping Lidia’s wrist, leaving tiny indentations. I yank away.

Lidia is very still. “You did good, Rania.”

“Will it make a difference?”

“I’m not certain. We’re back to waiting on the appeal. But we can file your statement and Salim’s, as a supplement. Once in a blue moon they actually send an application back to the original judge for reconsideration.” She taps her pen on the pad. “You’ve given us more context. The peril both you and your mother were in. Your biological father. We may want to rethink the terms by which we’re applying. It might be easier in some ways. Sometimes domestic violence…well, it plays into a certain—”

“Story,” I supply.

“Yes.”

We sit facing each other, suddenly awkward.

“You know, it was Carlos who told me to do this. Tell you about my memories. He thought it could help.”