raced of its own accord. Could her mother have taken her own life? And if she had, then how had her father died?
At home, Deya hardly spoke to her sisters. In school, she dragged herself from one class to the next, unable to focus even on Sister Buthayna’s literature seminar, which she normally enjoyed the most, sitting forward in the very front row, her nose buried in whatever book they were reading. Staring out her classroom window now as Sister Buthayna read a passage from Lord of the Flies, Deya wondered if her grandmother was right. Maybe if she hadn’t spent her days curled between the pages of a book, her back turned to the world, she’d have a better grasp on her life. Maybe she would know how to let go and move on. Maybe she would have realistic expectations for her future.
After school, she rode the bus home in silence, lifting her eyes from the window only when they reached their stop. She and her sisters walked down Seventy-Ninth street toward home, Deya moving quickly, as if she could outrun her thoughts, and her sisters trailing behind, dragging their feet along the snow-covered sidewalk. It was a cold, overcast day, and the air smelled like wet trees with a faint hint of something. Car fumes. Or stray cats maybe. It was a Brooklyn spice she often smelled on the seven-block walk to and from the bus stop. There was an empty coffee cup on the corner pavement, blue-and-white cardboard, crushed and mud-stained. She caught sight of the gold letters printed on it—WE ARE HAPPY TO SERVE YOU!—and sighed. She couldn’t imagine a man coming up with that line. No, it must’ve been a woman.
Something caught Deya’s attention as she turned the corner onto Seventy-Second Street. Farther down the block, a woman was lurking outside their home. Deya stopped to watch her. The woman was tall and thin, dressed in American clothes, with her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Deya couldn’t tell exactly how old she was from where she stood—thirty perhaps, or maybe forty. Too young to be one of Fareeda’s friends, too old to be one of her sisters’. Deya moved closer, staring.
The woman approached their front stoop in slow, careful movements, looking around as if she didn’t want to be seen. Deya scanned her face. She couldn’t map her features, but she felt as though she had seen the woman before. Something about her seemed so familiar. But who could she be?
There was something in the woman’s hands: Deya couldn’t make it out from where she stood. As she watched, the woman placed the thing carefully on their front stoop. Then, all at once, she turned and ran toward a cab waiting at the curb and disappeared inside.
Deya looked behind to find that her sisters had stopped and were talking among themselves. Something about Fareeda marrying them off, one after the other, like dominoes. Good, Deya thought. They hadn’t noticed. She walked ahead, scanning the street: the cracked pavement, the dead grass, the green trash cans on the corner block. Everything seemed normal. Everything but the white envelope on the doorstep.
It was likely nothing. Her grandparents received mail all the time. Still, she snatched the envelope off the concrete. As she squinted at it, she realized why the woman had moved with such careful steps. The envelope didn’t have her grandparents’ names on it. Instead her own name was handwritten across the front in bold ink. A letter. For her. That was unusual. She tucked the envelope away before her sisters could see.
She waited until dark to open it, pretending to read a book until she was certain her sisters had fallen asleep. Then she locked the bedroom door and pulled the envelope out. The letters of her name—DEYA RA’AD—were still there. She hadn’t dreamed it. She opened the envelope and looked inside. It wasn’t a letter but a business card.
She pulled the card out and held it up under the lamplight. There was nothing unusual about it. Small, rectangular, crisp at the corners. Three bold words—BOOKS AND BEANS—took up most of the white space on the front, leaving room for a few lines at the bottom:
800 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
212-r e a d m o r
She flipped the card over. There was a note handwritten on the back in pen: ASK FOR MANAGER.
She ran her fingers over the card and imagined the strange woman doing the same. Who could she be? Deya closed her