I wanted to grab his cigarette from his rough lips. I wanted to burn my flesh—any cigarette-sized section of flesh—with it. Then, for just a second, I wanted to burn his flesh instead. Perhaps I wanted to see physical pain in his eyes because I couldn’t see my own pain, not really, not clearly. I was horrified by my thoughts, but my horror did not quiet them.

He would smile, perhaps relieved by my unaffectedness. Sometimes Yasmeen cried. I thought two crying daughters would be too much for him, so I trained myself to wait until I was alone, in my closet or in the bath. My father would wipe Yasmeen’s face, hug us both, ask us if we wanted chocolate milk.

“Good girl,” he’d whisper in my ear. I was good because I was restrained. My father, I believe, carried a lot of hurt from his relationship with my mother. He did not like to see the related pain radiating from his daughters’ eyes.

Those letters taught me about longing. Reading them in front of my father taught me to hide it, often even from myself. I know now what a dangerous kind of denial that is. It leaves you ravenous. It makes your seismometer vibrate when the phone call you are shocked to discover you have been waiting for your whole life offers you precisely what you are terrified to want: Hello, Nadia. This is your mama.

She’s coming down the stairs as I’m going up. She’s wearing a thin shirt. My left hand brushes her left hand. She turns around and takes my hand in hers. Between her thumb and four fingers I place my four fingers. Between my thumb and four fingers her four fingers are placed and we slowly walk up the stairs. Not for a moment longer can I bear not to be inside her.

In the darkness our guests will begin arriving, boots off at the door, coats on the bed in my study upstairs. For a brief moment each guest is in the silence of a room in someone else’s home, divesting themselves of unneeded warmth. They can hear music from unseen speakers: Gladys Knight’s “Since I Fell for You.” Their eyes rest on my botanical drawings and on the framed photograph of John Coltrane. Then they come down into the hubbub.

She places her hand on my fist. Her hand covers my fist. I let my hand fall open. She moves her hand down and crosses her wrist against mine and now I’m almost asleep. When and where were you happiest? My one remaining contact with wakefulness is the flat inside of her wrist resting on the flat inside of mine, as though each wrist were seeking the other’s pulse. I listen for the soft beat of blood through the skin. I listen as best as I can in the dimming stillness. I slow my breathing and soon I hear nothing.