The cashier takes in the cast on Diya’s right wrist. “D’you need help?”

“I guess.” Diya expels an audible breath. She hates to ask for help. Or to accept. 

“Aisle 10, customer needs carry-out assistance, aisle 10.” The cashier turns the intercom off. “Someone will be here shortly, ma’am.”

“Thanks, Stacey,” Diya says, rereading the name tag. She goes over her work-related mental checklist while she waits for that someone. A man older than she, but not taller, approaches the aisle. He walks alongside her and pushes the cart out into the humid air. He asks if she’s from India. Yes, she says, and asks him the same question. People where she comes from have a curiosity-turned habit of asking this when they see someone in America who looks like them.

“I’m your neighbor. From Pakistan.”

His tone is so friendly she doesn’t need to force a smile. She directs him to a row in the parking lot.

“Accident?” His chin points toward her hand.

“No, carpal tunnel syndrome. Too much computer work.”

They walk over to her car. Of late, she has developed this habit of talking to strangers, telling them bits and pieces about her life. To a friendly cashier, who, while handing her the receipt would say, You take care, hon. Or to a co-passenger on a flight. It’s easier to share your story with people you don’t know than with those you do. And deep wounds are best kept hidden. Today, exhausted after a stressful workday, she barely speaks to this man, let alone share anything personal.

“You should forget the past, sister,” he says, switching from English to Urdu. He loads the bags into her car. “What’s gone is gone. No point in keeping your pain alive.”

Scars from a marriage that should’ve ended much earlier than it did, some dear-to-her family relationships gone awry, her mother’s passing, becoming an empty nester—a cocktail bottled inside her threatens to spill over. The last thing she wants is to weep in front of this stranger.

“Every day, look up at the sky.” His index finger points up. “There’s a certain power in that. In looking up. You’ll see how your life changes.”

With a soft thud, he shuts the car trunk. Shukriya, thank you, she says in Urdu and offers him a five-dollar bill. Refusing to accept it, he folds his hands in a namaste gesture. Her way of greeting or salutation, not his.

“Stay happy,” he says, as if blessing her, and walks away.

She’s been shopping at the same grocery store week after week but has never seen him before. She turns around to take another look at him. Cars, individuals, couples, mothers with prancing-and-squealing kids fill the parking lot. The man is nowhere to be seen.

Who was he? How does he know about her pain? She has this inkling she’d never see him again.

Every day, she looks up at the stars or the clouds or the moon or the blue of the sky and releases a slow, calming breath.