I once saw a nature movie on PBS in which a group of wolves tore a coyote limb from limb. The camera may have cut away before the actual tearing, or I may have looked away, but what stuck with me was the look on the coyote’s face at the moment when the pack closed in around him; This, he seemed to say, is finally it. No more running. No more fear. He looked almost awestruck by his own helplessness.
That was my feeling, that might very well have been my look, as I watched Manish come to the door.
I only learned afterward that even if I’d found Thomas earlier, it would have been too late. He’d been calling the Batras for weeks, leaving messages, telling them there was something they needed to know about the second car and the accident that killed their daughter. He’d walked from Delhi to Noida, sleeping on doorsteps, meditating under trees on median strips, spending the only money he had on pay phones. He must have mentioned the anniversary, although they might not have had as precise an idea of the accident’s timing as we did. Anyway, I didn’t know any of that; I just knew that I needed to do something and that I couldn’t think of anything to do.
Manish was wearing a blue Georgetown sweatshirt and slippers; he was bald with square glasses and full lips. There were lights on in the house behind him. His expression was like the one people give telemarketers or Jehovah’s Witnesses, a readiness to be bothered, but underneath you could see that he was agitated; he looked like someone who’d been waiting up.
“Excuse me,” Thomas said, “are you Manish Batra?”
“I am,” he said. He had the faintest dusting of a British-Indian accent.
“May we come in?” Thomas spoke as carefully as if he were laying dominoes in a row, his eyes almost closed with concentration. “I’m the one who’s been calling. I would like to talk about Mira.”
“Come in,” Manish said, his voice shaking. We followed him into the living room, which seemed to be the kind of room that people don’t actually use—perfectly fluffed cushions, arranged pillows, a lamp on a glass side table. The house was a single floor. Another man, who looked like Manish but younger and darker, hovered in the kitchen. I couldn’t tell if the house was freezing or if this was something that was happening just in my body.
To the extent that a plan was shaping up in me, pressed there against the arm of the sofa, trying to stop my leg from shaking, it was: leave as soon as possible. Wait for Manish to look away or turn around, then grab Thomas and run. At the moment, though, I was finding it impossible to look up from my lap, which meant that I was staring at Thomas’s tortoise-shell toenails. I kept smelling something, either Thomas or his clothes, that contained so many layers of BO and dirt and grease that it was almost beyond the smell of a person; it was the smell of an ecosystem. Grab him and run.
Manish said something in Hindi to the man in the kitchen that must have been “Bring them glasses of water,” and then, sitting down in the chair opposite us, he said, “You are from Washington?”
“Yes,” Thomas said.
“I did not know whether the calls were serious. My wife wanted me to stop answering.”
The younger man, who must have been a son, stood in the doorway between the living room and the hallway, his arms crossed in front of him. On the wall behind Manish there was a long wooden mask, an animal with its tongue hanging out. The light in the room was flickering with the spinning of the fan blades.
“I didn’t know Mira,” Thomas said, his eyes fully closed, his back perfectly straight. “But I was there for the accident.” He took a few long breaths through his nose, and I didn’t know if he was going to say anything else.
“My friend’s very sick,” I said. “You can see, he’s been homeless, he’s been in the hospital, and I actually came here to—”
“I lived”—long breath—“on Macomb Street. I was only fifteen. I want to tell … I want to tell you that I was the one who did it.”
“My friend really doesn’t know what he’s saying. He read about your daughter in the newspaper and he got obsessed and he started making things up. I’m so sorry that we’ve bothered you like this.”
“There was”—long breath—“another car.” He spoke exactly as if I weren’t there. “There was no one driving it. That”—long breath—“was why Charles Lowe swerved.”
“I’m so sorry, he doesn’t know—”
“She was wearing a purple shirt”—long breath—“jeans and a purple shirt. Charles Lowe”—long breath—“was driving a green SUV.”