“I forget you went to med school for Mom, too,” Suhani admits. “For all of us.”

She absorbs a truth that she usually pushes to the far corners of her mind: her parents shifted their entire lives and never looked back, all so that she and her siblings could do things they never had the chance to. She pictures Dad at her age, standing behind a cash register at a gas station in the middle of the night, masking his anger while customers mocked his accent, not being able to afford any phone calls to the family he left in India, and playing with the three of them whenever he was home, regardless of how exhausted he was.

Unlike Mom, he’s always kept his emotions to himself. But maybe he doesn’t do that because he wants to. Maybe it’s because he always thought he had to.

He nods with understanding, then looks away from her. “You know I’m not the only one, right? No, never mind.”

“Never mind what?”

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” Dad says, lowering his voice.

“About what?”

Dad sighs. “Did you know Zack was willing to do the same thing?”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“You apparently told him the story of how I was determined to win over Mom’s parents, even if that meant changing my career path.” Dad has the peaceful look that he gets whenever he talks about a happy patient story. “And when Zack thought we or our community wouldn’t accept him, he called me and told me he’d go to medical school if that’s what it took.”

“Zack said that to you? He never told me. . . .” Suhani tries to picture her husband in a white coat or hunched over fat textbooks for hours. After his dad left, Zack thought it was his responsibility to do what he could to help his mom. He started with working at a movie theater in high school and, eventually, at McKinsey after he graduated from Dartmouth. And even though he’s always been interested in Suhani’s work, he’s maintained that he could never study for so many tests or be in school for years.

“He didn’t want you to know,” Dad says before he tells her about how Zack asked him to coffee and then said he’d do whatever it took to prove he was serious about Suhani. “And, ironically, this was the same week that something else happened. And I always wondered if the universe was sending us a message.”

“A message? About what?” Suhani sits on the island.

“Ah, so Natasha never told you.” Dad raises his chin into the air, a look of recognition on his face.

“Told me that Zack was willing to be a doctor?”