“Sweet Teresa! What are you doin’ here, sugar-pie? Don’t you usually go to your folks for dinner on Sundays?” Marge sets a menu down before me and then reaches into her apron for a napkin-wrapped bundle of silverware.

“Mom called a few hours ago. She’s got a migraine and couldn’t cook. So, not tonight.”

“Your poor mamma and those headaches of hers! You tell her I said hello when you see her, all right?”

“I will.”

“Did you just get out from work?”

“Yep.” I glance over the menu quickly, as if tonight I might get something other than my usual. After all, Marge did bring it over. I’m barely reading, though, because I know what I’m going to have.

“I heard the factory boys went to the inn today, before the Abdullah brothers had the chance to scoot out of town.”

“They didn’t exactly ‘scoot out of town’” I say, a little testier than I mean to. “I think they stayed longer than they planned on, anyways.” I feel like it’s up to me to defend Jabir and Hassan. Is Marge implying that they were trying to sneak out of town unnoticed?

“Well, I’m glad they caught them. I had no idea those brothers were thinkin’ about shutting down the factory. Did you hear?”

“Jabir and Hassan are doing their jobs,” I say. “They want to make sure that the factory isn’t losing money.”

“Tsk. All those business owners care about is money these days. No heart.”

“I think they have heart,” I say. I set down my menu. “I think they’re very nice people.”

Marge sees that I’m done looking over the menu. She takes out her notepad, as if my order will be a complicated one. “Well, you did seem to get on well with that boy… The one you were spending so much time with.”

“Jabir,” I say softly.

“Right. And he did seem like a real sweetheart when he was here. It’s just… Oh, you know me. I get protective of that factory sometimes. And what would Jim and I do if the plant was to close down?”

I know that Marge’s husband, Jim, has worked at the factory since it opened. I remind myself to be nice; she’s just scared, that’s all. I look around the diner. “You always have this,” I say.

Marge looks around her, too. There’s barely anyone in the place. Sundays are a day for family, and the only people at Marge’s are a few single men sitting up at the circular bar in the middle of the room. Tables and booths sit clean and empty.

“This,” she says. “Is a labor of love, honey—not one that can provide a living, as much as I don’t like to admit it. I use this money to feed the horses, and Jim brings in the rest. Now, enough of that. What’s your heart’s desire for a good, filling Sunday dinner?” She draws out the word “filling” so I’m sure not to miss it. Oh, she’s starting in already.

“I’ll have my usual,” I say.

“Really? You sure? That’s all?”

I nod.

“Want me to throw some meatballs and sauce in there? Or a slab of roast beef?”

“Nope. Thank you.”

She heaves a sigh. “All right, if you say so, sweetheart. Though I don’t know how you sustain yourself on rabbit food.”

She’s shaking her head as she departs, having written nothing on her pad. I’m in my regular booth, and as I sit back and let my eyes wander around the place, I can’t help but remember how fun it was when Jabir was in the booth across from me. I’m deep in a daydream about him when Marge brings out my food, just five minutes later.

I bite into the same sandwich that I’ve been ordering since I was a little kid: cucumber, American cheese, and little fine shreds of lettuce on white pita bread. I’m not a vegetarian, but something about the meal strikes my taste-buds’ fancy.

Maybe it’s because it reminds me of being a kid. Back then, I used to order the sandwich as it was on the menu, and it was filled to the brim with sliced turkey. Something about the turkey cuts made my little-kid food alarms go off—I think it was the skin around the edges. I’d always peel the turkey off of the sandwich and reassemble the whole thing.

Nowadays, Marge just brings it out without the meat, and charges me just three dollars for it. What a deal!

I polish it off and pay my bill. The drive home is uneventful, and soon I’m pulling into the driveway in front of the cottage. The moon is nearly full, and the pine-tree-edged indigo sky is like a bowl full of diamonds.

I make my way inside. The table’s still set from the night before. The bird tapestry has a few crumbs and brownish-red stew splashes on it, but the dahlias are perfect and fresh.

I start to tidy up, throwing the tapestry into my laundry hamper, wiping down the table, and scrubbing out the stew pot which I left to soak that morning.

Soon, it’s nearly bedtime. I wander into the bedroom, and turn on my bedside light. Something on my nightstand catches my eye. It’s Jabir’s ring! The one he showed me on the first night that we met. I pick it up and take a closer look. There’s the soaring eagle, his family crest.

I can’t help it. I close my eyes and hold the ring to my chest. I repeat the wish I’ve been thinking all day, as if the ring were a genie lamp imbued with secret powers: I wish he was here. I wish he was here. I wish he was here.

I squeeze my eyes tightly closed, trying to focus on my fond memories of him instead of the pain that I’ve been pushing out of mind all day—he’s gone.

When I open my eyes, of course, the room is empty.

I’m tempted to slip the ring on my finger, so that I can feel closer to Jabir. The fear of losing it, however, makes me set it back on the nightstand. It’ll be safer there.

I sit on the bed, which only makes more memories come flooding back to me.

When I close my eyes again, I see Jabir’s face in my mind’s eye. I can see his bright eyes, his narrow nose, and his full lips. I can see his strong jaw, and the curve of his cheek. I can imagine the way he looks, when he stares into my eyes, listening as I speak. I see his lips curl, wrapping into a smile and then bursting as he laughs.

I reach for my sketchbook off of a nearby shelf, and then curl up on the bed, a stub of charcoal in hand. When I begin to sketch, I imagine that he’s right next to me, and I feel almost like I can hear what he would be saying.

The week passes. Each night, I add a little bit to my sketch. It helps me remember him without submitting to the sadness of his absence, which is always threatening to consume me.

As I move the charcoal across the page, I’m able to focus my attention on him. I let myself remember all that was good between us. I polish his cheek, fill in his dimple. I add in a bit of hair here, or there, remembering the way it was always a bit wild and mussed up, as if he just stepped off of a windy beach.

I work tirelessly on his eyes, trying to recreate all of the depth and sparkle that I saw there.

It’s impossible, but that doesn’t stop me from trying.

Each night, when I finish sketching, I prop the picture up on my nightstand. It’s comforting to look at his smile before I fall asleep. Along with the ring, the picture turns my nightstand into a kind of altar.

On Sunday, my parents once again cancel dinner. This time it’s because of a leak in the upstairs bathroom sink, which caused my father to have to turn our kitchen into a construction zone. They promise that the mess will be cleaned up by the next day, so on Monday after work at the inn, I arrive at my parents’ house.

Walking into the kitchen, I tilt my chin up and examine the evidence of the hole that was in the ceiling. It’s a foot-wide circle, roughly patched up and plastered over.

“We’ll need to sand it down, apply more plaster, and then paint the whole ceiling,” my father says, ticking off the to-do list one finger at a time.

“You should have seen it, honey,” my mom says, from her position in front of the stove. “The sheetrock was so waterlogged, all your father had to do was tap it with a broomstick and the whole thing just fell apart!” She pulls a casserole dish from the oven. Steam slithers from under the tinfoil, and it smells delicious—distinctively like macaroni and cheese.

“Is that Nana’s mac?” I ask eagerly.

My mom nods. I lick my lips.

“So what I did,” my dad says, gesturing back to the hole, “was I fixed the leak— it wasn’t anything major, not a big deal. The tough part was patching up this hole. I had to get your uncle over here, and—”

“Oh, Frank. Teresa doesn’t want to hear about that. Tell her your good news!”

My father turns away from the ceiling. There’s a smile on his face. “Got a call from Dalai today, over at the factory. Well, I didn’t personally,” he laughs. “The plant manager did. You know Marty Jacobs? He was promoted after—”

“What did they say?” I cut him off, feeling adrenaline spike through me. I can tell, from my father’s face, that the news is good. I feel like jumping into the air with happiness, but my feet stay planted on the ground. I need to hear it from him first.

“The factory’s going to stay open. They’re going to—”

He stops speaking as I stepping into the air and then fling my arms around him and give him a hug. He picks me up and swings me around, just like he used to do when I was a kid. When he sets me down, I swear I see a tear in one corner of his eye. He wipes it away before I can be sure. “I can’t tell you how relieved I was—no, everybody was, really.”

My mom has stopped her usual bustling activity long enough to beam over at my father. “Tell her what else!” she prompts.

My dad sniffles, so subtly that I barely catch it, but I do. He’s trying not to cry tears of joy. “They’re going to buy up the old Johnson logging building. The one that used to be part of your grandfather’s timber operation. This fellow from the Abdullah family—I know you met him when they were here, Jabir, his name is—says that Canarra wants to turn it into employee housing. Studio, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom apartments.”

“That’s fantastic!” I say, my heart beating faster at the mention of Jabir’s name.

I feel my mother’s eyes on me. “Dawn mentioned that you and this man, Jabir, spent some time together at the inn. I heard it from Marge, too, and then Pete said he bought you…flowers?”

My dad’s looking at me too.

I feel strangely uncomfortable. It’s not that I think my parents would disapprove of Jabir, it’s just that it seems pointless to try to explain what was happening between us because, well, he’s now who-knows-how-many thousands of miles away.

I try to keep my voice light. “I showed him around town a bit. I think he really appreciated it. Him and his brother were really nice people.”

My mom purses her lips, as if she knows there’s more to the story, but my father is satisfied with my answer.

“Yes! That’s what Marty said. He said that they were very stand-up guys. Had a lot of integrity and humility, not stuck up or anything.”

“Not at all,” I agree. I slip into my seat at the kitchen table, and reach for a pistachio from a bowl my mom’s set out. “So, apartments, hmm? Who will live in them?” I crack the nut, thinking over the implications of the business move.

My dad reaches for his beer and takes a swig before answering. “Marty said that they’re going to use the housing as incentive to get employees from other areas of the state to move into town and work at the factory. There’s going to be a whole recruitment strategy. It’ll start up in a year, they say. That’ll give ’em time to do construction on the building.”

“That’s fast!”

Dad takes a seat in his chair to my right. He reaches for a nut too.

My mom brings over three plates and sets them in a stack next to me. As she’s walking back to the cabinets to get silverware, she picks up where my father left off. “Not only that, but they’re pouring money into the roads, too. Your dad says they’re going to put up a retaining wall by the creek there where the road’s crumbling in, and repave the whole thing.”

I can hardly believe what I’m hearing. It’s amazing! I can only wonder how much Jabir had to do with these decisions.

I pick up the stack of plates and slide one in front of my dad, one in front of me, and then one at my mom’s seat. Then I bounce up and nearly jog to the cabinets by the stove to get glasses. I feel so energized, and so light.

“This is just what this town needs!” I say. “This is going to be so good for us! I wonder what the apartments are going to be like?”

My dad and I begin speculating about the housing project as I pour three glasses of milk and my mom sets out the mac and cheese and a bowl of steaming broccoli.

Throughout the meal, we each add in our thoughts and hopes about the bright future of the town. When I leave, my parents each kiss me on the cheek.

My mother presses an oversized Tupperware into my hands, brimming with cheesy breadcrumb-crusted noodles and broccoli spears.

“I’m sure that you taking the time to show Jabir around helped, Teresa,” she says knowingly. “Are you doing okay…now that he’s gone?”

She gives me a look, and it’s clear that she senses that something had sprung up between Jabir and I. After all, men don’t usually buy flowers for women they don’t care about, and I wouldn’t take anyone to Marge’s diner unless I liked them. My mother knows this.

“I’m okay,” I say, my voice wobbling a bit more than I intend. Her look of concern has cut me to the core.

I feel how much I miss him, intensely, in that moment. I’ve been in denial, haven’t I? Pretending that I’m fine.

Somehow, I make it out to the truck, and all the way home before the tears come. Parked in my driveway, I cry for the first time since Jabir left. My sobs steam up the cab, and my tears soak my cheeks and the jersey scarf I have wrapped around my neck. It’s only when my wet eyelashes begin to freeze, and I start to see little crystals of silver all around the edges of my vision, that I decide to go inside. I put the leftovers in the refrigerator, brush my teeth, and change into a sleeping tee.

I crawl into bed and look over at my sketch of Jabir. I’m too drained to work on it tonight. My entire body feels wasted from the shift in my emotions: from the happiness and relief of finding out that the factory will stay open, to the pain of allowing myself to realize that Jabir is really gone.

Before turning out the light, I reach for the ring, and hold it in my hands. It’s made of solid gold. It is valuable, and it’s not mine. I can’t keep it here, on my strange little altar, without at least telling Jabir that I have it. What if he’s worrying about it?

I need to reach him, but suddenly I realize that I have no way to do so.

I don’t have his number, and besides, my little Tracfone won’t allow me to make long distance calls, even if I did. Dalia seems like an impossibly faraway place, completely out of my means to ever visit. How would I afford it? Some people may feel that the entire globe is accessible, but not this girl. For how impossibly far away it feels, the Middle East may as well be the moon.

I put the ring back on the nightstand without any clear answers, and finally, exhausted, I turn off the light.