We’ll send someone, the ICE officer said.

I look down at her cart. “Would you like some help, taking that in?”

Mrs. Flannery reels backward, offended. “I am an independent woman!” She swivels around, dragging the cart down the hall. I can hear her fumble for her keys, scrabbling with her bag’s zippers, but I don’t say anything. Ammi always tells me: Stay polite—she’s just an old woman, bitter because her own daughter never visits her.

Back in the apartment the first thing I see is a flat plastic package sitting on the table. My graduation cap and gown that I picked up the other day at school. I hurl it into our bedroom closet, not caring that it’s crumpled next to my shoes. Folded on my dresser are my new, swingy pants from Ammi for Eid. Pieces start falling into place: how Ammi didn’t want to go to a party, like we usually do—distant friends we rarely see. Instead she made koftas and rice and put out a platter of sweets and dates. Then she sat us down in the living room to give us our presents. “It’s better just us!” she exclaimed. But her eyes were shadowed, her hands so pale. This Ramzan she’d done the night shift again and again, saying she was too tired from fasting during the day to celebrate. Now I see all she was holding inside while holding tight to us.

I make supper for Kamal and watch over his homework. The whole time I can hear my mother’s voice ringing inside me, like rusty bells: You never knew what it was to grow up so fast.

What about me? I want to say back. This isn’t exactly slow going.

But it was always her story, not mine, that loomed over us. How she’d met Abu at university—she was the same age I am—a spunky girl, daughter of a military man. They’d drink cups of chai at the student canteen and argue all the time. Abu came from the wrong kind of family—poor, Shia, not even from Lahore. She knew her family would never approve. But he was brilliant. He had a tongue like a sword, slaying the dragons of corruption and intolerance. From the time he was a little boy, he knew he was going to be a journalist.

He just didn’t know he would disappear as one.

Or that he’d disappear from me too.

Maria Auntie comes over as I finish washing up. She puts her arms around me. “Don’t worry. Lidia will take care of everything and get your mother out.”

“But you…you can be our guardian, right?”