When I step outside, it’s as if a curtain has been ripped back: the muggy air, the buildings, and the people surging to the subway are a thick, stony wall. Not letting us in. I think about Hema Auntie’s house, the hedges and the shimmering pool. Why isn’t that possible for us? All our wily luck, remaking ourselves here, in this place we learned to seize as ours, without Abu. I belong here, in New York: in a subway car, jammed next to everyone else headed somewhere—a thousand lives, a thousand possibilities. Now I have slammed up against something hard, ungiving.

I kick and kick a low concrete wall until my toes are throbbing.

Sitting in a subway car later, Lidia’s conversation gnaws at me. I unwrap my new notebook and start jotting thoughts, memories. Something about that gate in our building in Lahore. It wobbled and screeched against concrete. Hakim let me help him soap down the cars, dunking the big sponge in a pail of sudsy water. He kept pictures of his family taped to the little booth. He was missing two teeth in the front. His hands felt like leather but they were kind. Where were we going? Ice cream. Pistachio, my favorite, at the shop across the street. But no. A smudge of a man so big, his shoulders block Hakim.

I’m so busy chasing down fragments, scribbling, when the doors ding, I realize I’ve almost missed my stop. Grabbing my bag, I rush out, to make my last classes. I don’t have a chance to hang with Fatima, but as the last bell rings, I rush again, to get to Kamal’s school on time.

When he bursts out of the doors, clutching his Machu Picchu project under one arm. We three worked for hours on it, carefully laying strips of newspaper and paste, then Ammi and me watching as he painted the model. Now his whole face is lit up. His friends josh him and he spins a few times, laughing. My heart wrenches. I’ve got to keep him away from all the bad news, somehow.

The phone rings; there’s a hollow rushing noise, then a woman asking if I’ll accept charges from Sadia Hasan. Ammi! My chest starts knocking. I remember what Lidia said, about all those other clients. What if it’s my mother, saying goodbye? What if she’s heading to a plane? I accept the call; Ammi sounds like her usual, brusque self. “Have you found your uncle? Did you speak to Mona?”

I glance at Kamal, indicate we should stop and pull away a few feet. “I did but she didn’t know anything. She sent me to Hema Auntie—”

“You went to Hema’s?” She sounds angry.

“She’s the one who had Salim’s address. Why are you so mad?”

There’s a tugging on my arm. It’s Kamal, impatient.