When he was gone my father put both his hands flat on the table, the way he does at night when he's reading the bills.
"Ask me," he said. "Anything. Ask me and I will answer you."
I had a hundred questions. I asked the stupidest one.
"Why didn't you just get the passport?"
He almost smiled. It wasn't a happy thing to see.
"There is nothing to get. There is no office. There is no form. Your Ecuadorian passport expired when you were seven. We could get you a new one from the consulate in New York, yes. Your mother and I talked about it. You could fly to Guayaquil tonight on an Ecuadorian passport, Maya, and walk out of that airport, and Ecuador would be very happy to have you back, and you could go to the islands and count all the birds you want. And then in three weeks you would go to the airport in Guayaquil to come home, and they would not let you on the plane. Because you don't have a visa. Because you overstayed the one in that book by fifteen years. Maybe one day you could ask for a new visa at the embassy in Quito, and some man behind the glass would look at that page"—he touched the white card stapled in the book—"and say no. And you would be seventeen years old in a country you don't remember, with your grandmother, who is eighty-one and lives in two rooms above a pharmacy in Cuenca, and we would be here."
"So you just let me," I said. "You let me apply. You let me get in. You let me tell everybody. You let Mr. Thackeray bring over his—" I pointed at the orange pack by the door, which was suddenly so bright and stupid and hopeful I couldn't stand to look at it. "You let me do all of it. For three months."
"Your mother—" he started.
"Don't," my mother said. She turned around. Her face was wet and blotched and she didn't wipe it. "Don't, Hernán, don't you make it sound like it was only me. You were there. You signed the permission form."
"I signed it because you told me you would tell her. In March, you said, after the email, you said, give her one week to be happy, one week. Then it was April. Then it was May."
"I was going to tell her."
"You were going to let the passport not come." My father's voice cracked down the middle. He turned back to me. "That was the plan, Maya. That's what I found out. Last night. That was her plan. The passport would not come, and not come, and not