“I know, dummy,” Agnes says. “But you’re not allowed to hurt yourself. I don’t care how tired you are.”

Grace nods. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Agnes says quickly. Grace can’t see her, but she hears the salt water in her voice, and her stomach lurches. “Just don’t scare me like that.” She clutches Grace’s hands, her palms, her wrists, where on Agnes’s there are moon craters. The terra firma skin there has been brutalized and torn up and scarred over. “Don’t hurt yourself.”

“I won’t,” Grace mumbles clumsily. She grips Agnes’s hands back, tight as she can. “Just tired.”

“Okay,” Agnes says. “Okay, Porter. We’re gonna go home, okay?”

Time passes in a blur. There is Agnes, ever-present Agnes who doesn’t let go of Grace’s hands. There is Ximena on Grace’s other side, who holds her up. There is Raj, who curses and helps Grace into the car. He looks into her eyes, kisses her forehead and says, “Hey, little sis. You good?” He presses quick, insistent kisses on her face.

There is a long, quiet ride. Agnes doesn’t buckle up. She sits as close to Grace as possible, so close she might as well be in her lap. As the trees and roads and buildings race past, Grace hears Ximena and Raj talking in whispers up front.

He carries her, bridal-style up to Ximena’s bed.

“We’re having a sleepover,” Ximena says. “That sound good, babe?”

All four of them squish together in the bed. They hold Grace together, hold her bursting seams closed. Eventually she tumbles into a weary, dizzy sleep.

Nine

It is as if the first mournful tears shed serve as permission from the vast, black, formidable universe for Grace Porter to feel all that she has been pushing down, folding up, holding back. All the frustration, all the spitting anger, all the bitterness at relying on the goodwill of networks that were never created with her in mind. If she wants to be her own version of Professor MacMillan, she will have to meet her own people, find her own right fit.

Raj tells Baba Vihaan she’s sick. She’s sick, Baba, don’t worry. She’ll be fine soon. She says she’s sick for almost a week before the guilt churns like a real sickness and despite all of them telling her to stay home, she makes the trek alone to the tea room.

Baba Vihaan is a stern, sweet man. His eyebrows are dark and furrowed, but when he smiles, it warms you from the inside.

He waits for her in the doorway to his office, keen eyes on the way Meera clings to Grace and doesn’t want to let go. Eventually, they have to part, even though Meera almost refuses to go. She walks Grace the few feet to the office and tilts her chin up.

“Grace doesn’t feel good,” she says to her baba. “Be nice to her.”

“And you go be nice to our customers,” he says, pushing her away. “Come in, Grace. Rajesh said you’ve been ill.”

She shrugs, slumping into a chair. Feeling ill would be good. Feeling ill would mean she could take some medicine, drink some soup and sleep it off. Instead, Grace feels bone-tired. She feels like she is drifting in space, calling back to command, Houston, do you copy? and there is a purposeful silence.

“Yeah,” she says. “That’s actually what I wanted to talk about, Baba Vihaan.”

She sees a flash of fear on his face and immediately feels guilty for causing it.

She remembers Meera and Raj’s mom. Mama Niya was a kind, beautiful woman, draped in gold bangles and bright scarves and glittering designs. She didn’t say much, couldn’t say much, because the oxygen tank that trailed behind her took up all her energy. She had a commanding presence that not even the cardiomyopathy could take. She could bring Raj down with just a look, one Meera is still trying to perfect.

When she died, the tea room closed for two weeks. Raj and Meera and Baba Vihaan stayed home. Grace received occasional texts and one sobbing, hysterical phone call from Meera, hiding in the bathtub away from her family and whispering her grief to Grace through a staticky phone line.

“I’m not sick,” she says hurriedly. “I think everything just sort of caught up with me at once.” Things are not going my way, and I dealt with that by getting married in Vegas. “I put my head down and grit my teeth for a long time, and I never stopped to consider if it was good for me. If—if things would be different now if I had been honest with myself from the start about what I would need and how I would get it. I haven’t been—” She starts to pinch her skin and catches herself. “I haven’t thought about myself or taken care of myself for a while now.”

“You worked hard for a very long time,” Baba Vihaan says. “Meera admires you so much for it. My Niya was like that, a hard worker, never taking enough time for herself.” He sits back and stares at Grace. “I wish you could have known her better. You are a lot like her. Meera and Rajesh, they are like me. But you, I see her in you, like you really did come from us. Working too hard, thinking all the time.” He taps his temple. “You get lost up there. She did it all the time.”

“I’m not lost,” she says. “I’m—I just need time to—shit.” She grimaces. “Sorry.”

He laughs a low, gentle chuckle. “You get it from Meera and your white girl. The one skinny like a bird,” he says. “Terrible mouths, those two.”