The Lowland

of Udayan. She no longer remembered the face in detail. After being told it was not her father, she’d stopped paying attention to it.
    She understood now why her mother had not returned with them that summer to Calcutta. Why she’d never gone back at any other time, and why she’d never talked about her life there, when Bela had asked.
    When her mother had left Rhode Island, she’d taken her unhappiness with her, no longer sharing it, leaving Bela with a lack of access to that signal instead. What had seemed impossible had taken place. The mountain was gone.
    In its place was a heavy stone, like certain stones embedded deep when she dug on the beach, in the sand. Too large to unearth, its surface partly visible, but its contours unknown.
    She taught herself to ignore it, to walk away. And yet the hole remained her hollow point of origin, the cold crosshairs of her existence.
    She returned to it now. At last the sand gave way, and she was able to pry out what was buried, to raise it from its enclosure. For a moment she felt its dimensions, its heft in her hands. She felt the strain it sent through her body, before hurling it once and for all into the sea.
    For a few days Subhash heard nothing. He tried her cell phone, not surprised when she didn’t answer. He had no idea where she’d gone. There was no one whom he might have asked. He wondered if she had gone to California, to track Gauri down, to hear her side of it. He began to convince himself that this must have been what she’d done.
    The next time he spoke to Elise he said that Bela’s plans for visiting had changed. Many times he’d wanted to explain to Elise that he was not really Bela’s father—that this was part of the reason Gauri had left. He’d felt that she would have understood. But out of loyalty to Bela he’d said nothing. It was Bela who deserved to know first.
    He slept and slept, waking only briefly, never refreshed. When he was no longer able to rest he remained in bed. He remembered the isolation of being at sea, the silence when the captain would cut the engine. Though he had unburdened himself, his head felt heavy, there was a discomfort that would not go away. For a few days he called in sick to the lab.
    He wondered if he should retire. If he should sell the house and move far away. He wanted to call Gauri, to lash out at her, to tell her she had defeated him utterly. That he had surrendered the truth, that from now on Bela would always see him for what he was. But really he only wanted Bela somehow to forgive him.
    At night, in spite of the sultry days, the wind gusted, the cool air chilling him through the open windows, the season threatening to slip away though it had only just arrived.
    At the end of the week, the phone rang. His stomach felt vacant, he had eaten almost nothing. Only tea now and again, and the softening fruit Bela had brought. The stubble was stiff against his face. He was in bed, thinking it might be Elise, checking in on him.
    He thought of letting it ring, but picked up at the last minute, wanting to hear her voice, needing now to tell her what had happened, to seek her advice.
    But it was Bela.
    Why aren’t you at work? she asked him.
    Quickly he sat up. It was as if she’d stepped into the room and found him that way, disheveled, desperate.
    I am— I decided to take the day off.
    I saw pilot whales. They were so close to the shore I could have swum out to touch them. Is that normal at this time of year?
    He could not think straight enough to fully grasp what she was saying, never mind respond. As relieved as he was to hear from her, he was afraid that he would say the wrong thing, and that she would hang up.
    Where are you? Where did you go?
    She’d taken a taxi to Providence, a bus to Cape Cod. She knew a friend in Truro to stay with, a friend from high school, married now, who’d spent summers there, who’d moved there permanently some years ago. The beaches were beautiful but crowded, she said. She hadn’t been up that way since she was a teenager.
    He remembered taking her to the Cape when she was little. Late spring, the first year that Gauri was gone. When they’d walked together along the bay, she’d run ahead of him, excited to look at something.
    He caught up to her and saw that it was a beached dolphin, its eye sockets hollow, still seeming to grin. He’d taken out his camera to photograph it. Lowering the camera