At the coffee shop I was delivering the wrong drinks, mixing up orders, forgetting to froth the milk or add cinnamon. “I said iced,” customers would complain. “Not extra hot.” I’d smile as their words bounced off my brain like flies off a window screen, refusing to allot even minimal mental space to anyone other than the ambassador’s wife. I pictured our future ahead: lots of traveling. We’d swim in the Mediterranean, make love while tan and salty, eat mussels and drink Sancerre. All of my fantasies were steeped in simplicity and abstracted away her husband, her son. My mother.

“Tell me a secret,” she demanded one afternoon.

I asked what kind of secret she wanted. At the time, she was my biggest secret. I struggled to think of something else. I started wetting the bed my freshman year of high school, I told her.

“What?”

“I had to go to a doctor about it,” I continued, her interest shrinking my inhibitions. “And he sent me to a psychologist who told me I did it because I was afraid.” I laughed, hoping that she would, too.

She didn’t. “Afraid of what?”

I hadn’t expected her to ask for details—she rarely did—and I hesitated before answering. “I used to hate going to bed because my parents would always wake me.” My mind wandered to shattered glass on their bedroom floor, patches of water staining the white walls. I recalled my father’s bloodied teeth as he elbowed his way in front of my screaming mother to tell me what she’d done. “He hit me first!” she would cry. “Call the police!”

I remembered Karim and me riding in the back of a cop car to the station at three a.m. We sat in a waiting room, not knowing where exactly they’d taken our parents. We held each other and wept until someone came and offered us blankets and candy that neither of us wanted. When we returned home the following morning, I went to our neighbor Heather’s house instead of to school. I needed sleep but couldn’t bear to be near my parents, so I napped in her bed while she went to class. The next day at school, an official-looking man pulled me out of homeroom and asked me questions about my mother. He kept telling me our conversation was private, that I didn’t have to worry about him telling her. But I didn’t say anything, because what if he did tell her? What would she do to me then?

I looked up and realized that the ambassador’s wife still hadn’t said anything. “Anyway,” I said. “I guess I was afraid even while I slept.”