“That letter that you got a while back, can we look at it?” he asks. “Maybe there’s a clue in there”

The days blur past.

Sometimes it feels like I’ve been in this twilight zone forever, a never-ending black tunnel of not knowing, nerves-stretched-taut waiting, waiting for news.

Other times it feels like it’s been no time at all, like I’m frozen in a time warp, still sitting at Bubby’s dining room table that first night when the news broke: that my family is missing, while civil war rages in India.

But according to my calendar, it’s been exactly three days. No more and no less.

There’s a knock on my bedroom door, then another, more insistent. It can only be Yaakov; Bubby and Zeidy are trying to give me space. I’ve been up here all afternoon, just sitting, just being, in agonized aloneness. There’s nothing anyone can say or do to make it better.

Well, unless they have news to share. Real news. Good news. Like, they’ve found Ima and Abba, safe in some remote village, they’re being airlifted from the country now. Or maybe they’ve already escaped, maybe they’re en route to England or America or Israel even as we speak. Are the airports even functioning like regular in India now?

The knocks become more insistent. “Ashira? You in here?”

I sigh, heave myself off the bed like I weigh 1,000 pounds, and open the door.

“Finally. Come downstairs, Bubby’s getting super worried about you.”

I give him a baleful look. “Seriously? Tell her I’m fine.”

Yaakov gives me that I-know-better big brother look.