My hands were shaking as I held the single piece of paper with which my beloved grandfather had effectively ended my life. The girls looked at me questioningly, and then one by one seemed to grasp what had happened and what the contents of that letter were. Karla opened up the last box, atop which rested my parents’ wedding photograph, the one I used to sneak into our room to look at. Affixed to the back with a piece of Scotch tape was a small note from my mother.

Your grandfather asked if there was anything I wanted to send you, as my way to say good-bye. I could think only of this photo, which always seems to have meant something to you. I am crying as I write this, because I am seeing that of all the tragedies and disappointments in my life, you, my Tanaya, are the greatest.

Chapter Twelve

There should have been something more to her voice, a sympathetic tone, a shared sense of loss and regret.

But instead, Shazia just sounded like herself: defiant and devil-may-care.

I had been crying for most of the thirty minutes that I had been on the phone with her, grateful at least that she had called me and not the other way around.

“Up until yesterday, I really thought that when I went back home, they would forgive me and take me back in,” I sobbed. “But this, what they have done, it is so final.” I envisioned my grandfather, his white kurta clinging to his lean frame, out in the street in front of our building, disposing of all the things they had chosen not to send me: my old schoolbooks, my hair barrettes, some bottles of nail polish I had bought right before leaving for Paris and had inadvertently left behind-all the things I had hoped, someday, to go back to.

But Shazia seemed to understand none of this, instead telling me that I was “better off without them,” that if they chose not to accept my choices, then they didn’t deserve to have me in the family. To me, she was talking nonsense. She kept wanting to change the subject, to ask me about what else I had been up to in Paris, and would no doubt have shrieked in delight had I told her about my foray on a fashion catwalk just a couple of weeks earlier. Family had been everything to me, and I was blaming Shazia.

“It’s easy for you to say it doesn’t matter,” I said, bitterness filling my voice. “You might only understand how I’m feeling if your mother had turned her back on you, telling you that you may as well be dead.”

There was a pause before Shazia quietly said: “She did.”

“What?”

“I never told you this, but once I left Paris to come to live in L.A., my mother eventually sent me everything I’d left behind, and a note telling me never to return home. It seems melodrama runs in the family,” she said, laughing weakly.

“So what happened?” I asked. “What made her change her mind?”

“Fear. She found out she was sick, and I was the first person she called. There’s nothing like death to make you long for someone you suddenly think you can’t live without. So you see, Tanaya, I do know what it’s like. Being disowned is not always an absolute. It may feel like the end of the world now. But believe me, when the time is right, you’ll be one big happy family again.”

It wasn’t until I was emptying out my handbag the next morning that I found his name card. Until I saw it again, lodged in the bottom of my bag and entangled in an empty cellophane sandwich wrapper, I had forgotten about the well-dressed gentleman who had approached me on the street that Sunday, who seemed to think that I had more to offer the world of modeling than a minute on a catwalk in a darkened nightclub, done under duress. I also pulled out from my bag the copy of the newspaper that had my photograph in it, the one that had Mathias all excited until he realized that nobody would ever see it. I glanced at Dimitri’s name card and realized that, for the first time in my life, I truly had nothing to lose.

Just to be sure I was in the right place, I looked up at the numbers atop the building in front of me and matched them to the address on the card. It didn’t seem to fit. The card was heavy and formal, the letters on it thick and embossed, like some of the wedding invitations that would arrive at Nana’s house when I was still living there, signaling occasions that were grand and regal.

I had expected the same from Dimitri’s offices based on the quality of his name card, so was surprised to find a very modest building in front of me-a narrow, dirty glass door the only thing separating it from the street, a rack of dark stairs leading to the upper floors. There was no indication outside that these were offices, or that a talent agency was one of them. I hadn’t called Dimitri before coming, which may have been my mistake. My shift had ended early, and I had simply decided on the spur of the moment to come and talk to him, assuming that he would be around and available. A sequence of events had convinced me to do so: The girls had told me that the landlord was raising the rent and we would all equally have to share the increased financial burden, and Mathias had informed me that a recently graduated cousin of his would be joining me in my cashier duties, taking some of my hours and, consequently, some of my pay.

“That’s OK,” I had said to Mathias when he told me. “I believe that there is enough for everyone.” He had looked relieved. Karla was taking on every freelance project thrown her way, convinced that she couldn’t afford to turn down assignments. Teresa had offered to find me extra work, most likely at night in one of the restaurants she worked in as a waitress.

It was at that point, when Teresa wanted me to wear an apron with her and serve aperitifs all night, that Juliette chimed in with her own solution.

“Modeling,” she had said. “You did it once, and it didn’t kill you. I think you should try it again. If you make enough money doing that, we can all quit our jobs,” she said, laughing. “Believe me, most girls become models because they have a burning desire to do so, or are terribly vain by nature. For you, it is just for the money. And it is much more fun than picking up somebody’s dirty dishes, yes?”

Encouraged by the other girls, I was standing in front of Dimitri’s building, wondering if I had made some awful mistake.

I pulled open the door and walked up the stairs, careful to hike up my scarf so it wouldn’t trail on the dirty floor. I climbed two flights before I saw a small sign outside a door on my right: MAROUNIS GLOBAL ENTERTAINMENT. Underneath was written NEW YORK. PARIS. BEIJING. A man’s voice came through the door, a stream of shouted words broken with a laugh. I knocked quietly, uncertainly. I heard a pause, and then a grim “Entrez!” I jiggled the door-knob until it finally turned, opened the door, and found myself in Marounis Global Entertainment, a room no larger than my apartment, with one balding man (Dimitri) on the phone at a solitary desk. He was dressed in a faded blue T-shirt, a cigarette dangling from two fingers. Behind him, suspended from a hanger, was the suit he had worn the week before when I had first met him. It was, I realized, his “scouting suit,” the one that made him look like a real businessman with a real business.

As soon as he saw me, a look of astonished recognition came over his face. He whispered something hurriedly to the person on the other end of the phone and hung up.

“I think I have made a mistake,” I stammered. “I didn’t mean to come here. Sorry if I’ve disturbed you.”

I turned around and reached for the door, but Dimitri yelled out to me.

“Wait!” he shouted. “I remember you-the girl from the hotel. I’m so glad you have come. You should have phoned. I could have met you somewhere else.”