For the next thirty minutes her father taped Akash continuously: having the flotation device strapped on his back, jumping into the pool, blowing bubbles and practicing kicks. Her father stood up from the bench where Ruma sat, the lens of the video camera nearly touching the window. He had not paid this sort of attention when Ruma and Romi were growing up. Back then it was their mother who sat watching their swimming lessons, who held her breath, terrified, as they climbed the ladder and waved at her, then plunged off the high diving board. Her father had not taught Romi to throw a baseball, and he had not taken them to learn to skate on the pond, a short walk through the woods behind their neighborhood, that froze every winter.

In the car on the way home, her father brought up the topic of her career again. "Work is important, Ruma. Not only for financial stability. For mental stability. All my life, since I was sixteen, I have been working."

"You're retired."

"But I cannot stay unoccupied. That is why I am traveling so much. It is an extravagance, but I don't need all the money I've saved up.

"Self-reliance is important, Ruma," he continued. "Life is full of surprises. Today, you can depend on Adam, on Adam's job. Tomorrow, who knows."

For a split second she took her eyes off the road, turning to him. "What are you suggesting? What are you saying?"

"Nothing. Only, perhaps, that it makes me nervous that you are not employed. It is not for my sake, you understand. My concern is for you. I have more than enough money to last until I am dead."

"Who else is dead?" Akash called out from the backseat.

"No one. We are only talking silly things. Oh dear, what a nice train you have, has it left the station?" her father inquired, turning back to Akash.

That night after dinner he showed his videos. First, to Akash's delight, they watched the footage of the swimming class, and then he showed videos of Europe: frescoes in churches, pigeons flying, the backs of people's heads. Most of the images were captured through the window of the tour bus, as a guide explained things about the monuments they were passing. He had always been careful to keep Mrs. Bagchi out of the frame, but as he watched the video enlarged on his daughter's television, he realized there were traces throughout-there was Mrs. Bagchi's arm resting on the open window of the bus, there was her blue leather handbag on a bench.

"That's Luigi," he said, as the camera focused briefly on their Italian guide.

"Who goes on these tours with you?" Ruma asked.

"They are mostly people like me, retired or otherwise idle," he said. "A lot of Japanese. It is a different group in each country."

"Have you made any friends?"

"We are all friendly with one another."

"How many of you are there?"

"Perhaps eighteen or twenty."

"And are you stuck with them all day, or do you have time on your own?"

"An hour here and there." "Who's that?" she asked suddenly.

He stared, horrified, at the television screen, where for a few seconds Mrs. Bagchi choppily appeared, sitting at a small table at a cafe, stirring sugar with a tiny spoon into a tiny cup. And then he remembered offering to let Mr. Yamata, one of his

Japanese companions, look through the lens. Without his realizing, Mr. Yamata must have pressed the record button. Mrs. Bagchi vanished, did not appear again. He was grateful the room was dark, that his daughter could not see his face. "Who do you mean?"

"She's gone now. A woman who looked Indian."

It was an opportunity to tell Ruma. It was more difficult than he'd thought, being in his daughter's home, being around her all day. He felt pathetic deceiving her. But what would he say? That he had made a new friend? A girlfriend? The word was unknown to him, impossible to express; he had never had a girlfriend in his life. It would have been easier telling Romi. He would have absorbed the information casually, might even have found it a relief. Ruma was different. All his life he'd felt condemned by her, on his wife's behalf. She and Ruma were allies. And he had endured his daughter's resentment, never telling Ruma his side of things, never saying that his wife had been overly demanding, unwilling to appreciate the life he'd worked hard to provide.

Like his wife, Ruma was now alone in this new place, overwhelmed, without friends, caring for a young child, all of it reminding him, too much, of the early years of his marriage, the years for which his wife had never forgiven him. He had always assumed Ruma's life would be different. She'd worked for as long as he could remember. Even in high school, in spite of his and his wife's protests, she'd insisted, in the summers, on working as a busgirl at a local restaurant, the sort of work their relatives in India would have found disgraceful for a girl of her class and education. But his daughter was no longer his responsibility. Finally, he had reached that age.

"That is one thing I have observed on my travels," he said as Siena's sloping pink piazza flashed across the screen, Mrs. Bagchi concealed somewhere in the throng. "Indians are everywhere these days."

Akash woke her the following morning, running into her room and tugging her arm. "Dadu went away." "What are you talking about?"

"He's not here."

She got up. It was quarter to eight. "He's probably gone for a walk, Akash." But when she looked out the window, she saw that the rental car wasn't in the driveway.

"Is he coming back?"

"Hold on, Akash, let me think." Her heart was pounding and she felt as she would sometimes on a playground, unable, for a few seconds, to spot Akash. In the kitchen she saw that her father had not had his breakfast; there was no bowl and spoon in the dish drainer, no dried-out tea bag on a plate beside the stove. She wondered if he'd been feeling ill, if he'd driven off in search of a pharmacy for aspirin or Alka-Seltzer. It would be like him, to do that and not wake her up. Once he'd had root canal surgery without telling anyone, coming home in the evening with his mouth swollen and full of gauze. Then she wondered if he'd discovered the boats moored to the dock they shared at the edge of the lake and taken one onto the water. There was no way to reach him; her father did not carry a cell phone. As for calling the police, she didn't know the number of the rental car's license plate. She picked up the phone anyway, deciding to call Adam, to ask him what to do. But just then she heard the sound of gravel crackling under tires.

"Where on earth did you go?" she demanded. There was nothing to indicate that her father was in any type of distress; he was carrying a flat box tied with string that looked like it had come from a bakery.

"I remembered, yesterday on the way to swimming, passing by a nursery. I thought I would drive by and see their hours."

"But we've already decided on a nursery school for Akash."

"Not a school. A place that sells plants. You get a fair amount of sun in the back, and the soil looks rich," he said, looking out the window. "A rainy climate is good for the garden. I can plant a few shrubs, some ground covering if you like." "Oh," she said.

"It is just six miles from your home. Next to it is a place that sells pastries. Here," he said, opening the box and showing it to

Akash. "Which would you like?"

"You don't have to work on our garden, Baba. You said you wanted to rest."

"It is relaxing for me."

Flowers in the backyard had not occurred to her until now. And yet his offer appealed to her. She felt flattered by his interest in the place in which she lived, by his desire to make it more beautiful.

"You could have let me know you were going out," Ruma said.

"I did," he replied. "I left a note on the bureau downstairs, saying I was going for a drive."