In bed, Sarla lay awake longer than usual. Her mind did not unspool into grand plans; instead it tabulated small truths. She thought of the feng-shui of kindness and the ledger-keeping of memory. If you fix a sari, you are not only mending cloth—you are preventing the unraveling of a dignity that could lead to further loss. She thought of the boy who wanted to leave, whose dreams were bright and brittle. She thought of Ramesh and his cigarettes and how he’d cried one day when his father died, the pipes of his grief muffled by pride.