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By Root 1203 0

returned to his quarters. Why hadn't Ghosh simply mailed the letter directly to Thomas Stone? Thomas never wrote or communicated; Ghosh had no address at first. But as the years went by, Ghosh could probably have found Stone's whereabouts. After all, Eli Harris had always known them. But perhaps by then Ghosh was hurt by Stone's silence and his willingness to forget his old friend and leave him caring for his children as he ran from his past. As more years went by, Ghosh might have pondered the effect of the letter on Stone—perhaps it would in fact be a disservice to send it to him. It might have precipitated another meltdown, or, as Hema had always feared, Stone might have returned to claim the children. And perhaps Stone wouldn't understand—or believe—anything the letter said.

Then, as death approached, it must have worked on Ghosh's conscience to be the keeper of this letter. What if the contents could save Stone, put his heart at ease? What if it made Stone do, even belatedly, the right thing by his sons? By this time all Ghosh's resentment for Stone, if he ever had any, had vanished.

So ultimately Ghosh gave the textbook and bookmark to Shiva, and the letter to me, but hidden from me. I marveled at the foresight of a dying man who would entomb a letter within a framed picture. He would leave it to fate—how like Ghosh this was! When would I find Thomas Stone? When would I find the letter? If and when I found it, would I give the letter to its intended recipient? Ghosh trusted me to do whatever it is I would choose to do. That, too, is love. Hed been dead more than a quarter century and he was still teaching me about the trust that comes only from true love.

“Shiva,” I said, looking up at the sky where the stars were warming up for their nightly show while I recalled the night I fled Missing in haste, and how Shiva had thrust at me my father's book—A Short Practice, that bookmark inside. The few words on the bookmark penned by my mother were the only way any of us knew a letter even existed. Years ago, over the telephone, I had asked him, “Shiva, what made you give me the book?” He didn't know. “I wanted you to have it” was all he could say. The world turns on our every action, and our every omission, whether we know it or not.

WHEN I REACHED MY QUARTERS, I sat down and spread the letter on my lap, and with shaky hands I dialed Thomas Stone's number. My father was well past eighty now, an emeritus professor. Deepak said the old man's eyes were fading, but his touch was so good he could have operated in the dark. Still, he rarely operated anymore, though he would often assist. Thomas Stone was once known for The Expedient Operator: A Short Practice of Tropical Surgery. Now he was famous for pioneering a breakthrough transplant procedure. I was proof that the operation worked, but Shiva's death was proof of the attendant risks. Surgeons around the world had learned to do the operation, and many infants born without a working bile-drainage system had been saved by a parent's gift of a part of his or her liver.

IN MY EARPIECE I heard the hush of the void that hangs over the earth, and then out of that ether, the sound of the phone ringing far away, its high-pitched summons so brisk and efficient, so different from the lackadaisical analog clicks and the coarse ring when I dialed an Addis Ababa number. I pictured the phone trill and echo in the apartment that I had visited once, and which I had left open like a sardine can so that Thomas Stone would know that his son had arrived in his world.

I thought of my mother writing this letter, her whole life compressed on one side of this parchment. She had probably delivered it (and the book with bookmark) in the late afternoon when the pains hit her. She had worsened in the night, slowly slipping into shock, and then the next day she died. But not before Thomas Stone came to her. It was the sign she had waited for. He did the right thing, and yet for the last half century, he was unaware that he had done so.

Thomas Stone answered after the first ring. It made me wonder