“What’s so funny?” Huda looked a little miffed.

“You’ve got to add mind reader to your list of talents.” She draped her arm around Huda’s shoulder. “I was thinking the exact same thing.”

Huda gestured north toward a line of tamarisk trees with tightly curled purple buds.

“Why don’t we head toward Eighty-Second Street?”

Ally stiffened.

“Did you say, Eighty-Second Street?”

She eyed the purple tamarisk and the silver stretch of water. Did Miriam Pachachi misspeak when she said Yusra lived on Eighty-Second Avenue? Did she mean Eighty-Second Street? Ally’s pulse jumped at her wrist.

“My mom had a friend who lived on Eighty-Second Street.”

“Is that so?” Huda stared at her, but all Ally could see was her own reflection in the dark sunglasses. She glanced over her shoulder. There was no one else on the river road. Only her and Huda, and the breeze hissing through the trees.

“They worked together.” Ally dug the yellowed photo of Yusra in her nurse’s cap from her handbag. “I don’t know which house she lived in, only that it was on Eighty-Second Street, close to the river.”

As Huda inspected the photo, the ache Ally carried inside expanded.

“Let’s check it out,” she said, and set off toward Eighty-Second Street. Huda hurried after her.

“How will you find her?”

“I’ll knock on doors.” Ally tried to sound confident. “Someone might recognize her.”

“Knock on doors?” Huda gaped. “That will never work.”

Huda was right, of course. On Eighty-Second Street, doors stayed locked. Windows barred. Occasionally someone cracked open a gate, glanced at the photo, then quickly said goodbye.

“I’m sorry, my dear. It looks like we’re in the wrong place.” Huda glanced at her watch. “We should go if you want to make it to your aerobics class on time.”

Ally spotted a cheerful row of potted geraniums at the very end of the road, abutting the river.

“One last try,” she said, and hurried forth.

Huda followed her through the gates of a plant nursery stocked with rosebushes, bougainvillea, and palms of every size and shape. The nurseryman—a skinny fellow in a grass-stained dishdasha—was napping under the fat-leafed canopy of a fig tree. Ally grabbed a lemon sapling in a plastic pot.

“Maybe if I buy something it’ll loosen his tongue.”

“It’s better if I do the talking,” said Huda. “Otherwise you’ll end up paying a pharaoh’s ransom for that little plant.”

Huda coughed loudly to wake the old man. He opened one eye, then clambered quickly to his feet. Ally offered an as-salaam alaikum, then Huda launched into a stream of fast-flowing Arabic. Ally waited by her side, smiling awkwardly, trying to follow along as the two bartered over the lemon tree.

“He wants fifteen thousand dinar.” Huda rolled her eyes. “It must grow golden fruit.”