The airport was crowded in the specific, chaotic way it always was on a Sunday evening, families and traders and returning travelers all converging at once, and Zarina stood in the middle of it with her mother's arms around her, feeling the whole trip compress itself, unfairly, into the length of one last embrace.
"You did the work," her mother said, quiet, just for her, pulling back enough to study her face. "I can see it in you. You are not leaving the way you arrived three weeks ago."
"No," Zarina agreed. "I don't think I am."
"Good." Her mother reached up, straightened something in Zarina's collar that didn't need straightening, the small, unnecessary gesture of a woman finding one more excuse to touch her daughter before the touching had to stop for months. "I still wish you were c
