“I know you’re bored. And it doesn’t help that I’m away so much.” Tom paused near a shuttered souvenir store. Two letters had burned out in the fluorescent sign above the doorway, leaving dark gaps like missing teeth. “But this is why you’d be better off in Jordan.”

“But what about my book?” Suddenly, Ally’s eyes stung with unexpected tears. “And what about my mom? As weird as it sounds, I feel like Baghdad is finally giving me a chance to know her.”

“You have an aunt in America, right? Why don’t you get in touch with her?”

“Aunt Bernice is in a nursing home. Early-onset dementia.”

Tom sighed, but this time, without frustration. He reached for her hand.

“Once, I heard my dad on the phone with my grandma.” Ally stared at the slabs beneath her feet. “He said it wasn’t cancer that killed my mom. It was a broken heart.”

“A broken heart?”

“When I asked him about it, he claimed Mom was depressed because of the cancer, and that’s what he meant. But I could’ve sworn he was holding something back.”

“Like what?”

Ally shrugged. She’d often wondered if postpartum depression had drained her mother of joy. Had Ally sucked the serotonin from her mother’s body, smuggled it across the placental barrier under the cover of nutrients and oxygen, so that she thrived while with each passing year her mother withered away? Her father denied it. He told her, Please, let it go. No good comes from dwelling in the past.

The thing is, Ally longed to remember more of the past, something other than the burning feeling when her mother’s bony fingers touched her cheek. A familiar rush of guilt swept through her. A better daughter would remember more than that. A better daughter would know how the smiling woman in the photo became the woman in the darkened bedroom. All she knew was that here, in Baghdad, she felt closer to the answer. If she left now, she’d never find out.

“I understand.” Tom lowered his voice. “But don’t go poking around. You could get us kicked out. Please, think about that.”

“Okay,” she mumbled reluctantly.

“If you plan to do more investigating, talk to me first. Don’t do anything rash.”

“Okay, all right, I’ll talk to you first.”

A light flickered in the souvenir store behind them. The door rattled, startling Ally and Tom. A middle-aged man with fat cheeks and an even fatter mustache stepped onto the sidewalk.

“As-salaam alaikum.” He grinned like he’d just won the lottery. “Come inside, dear friends. Join me for a cup of tea.”

“Thanks, but some other time.” Tom turned away.