Palisha has been living out of her clothes since she’s been home in her father’s house. It was a long three-hour drive to her parents’ the night of the earthquake, and she’s still exhausted from it. But Mick is alive and that’s all that matters. She’s going to see him today at Patan Hospital. He was transferred there yesterday. She wonders about his injury. He told her it was nothing, but Mick always plays things down. As she collects her things in her old room, which has been stripped of any traces of her ever having been there, her mother comes to the door.
“I was thinking,” she says in Nepali, “we’ll get you a proper sari today. What do you think?”
Palisha knows what her mother means by a “proper sari” and she’s reluctant. But if she’s going to be here for any amount of time, she know
