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Umbreen runs.  She runs and she runs and she runs, and if she cries, she blames the wind whipping at her face. 

She runs and tells herself it’s the wind she hears, and not a shot gun breaking her heart.

She runs and tells herself it’s just the forest, and not the widow’s wail that erupts from her chest.

She runs for three days straight, and by the end, she can barely even claim to still have the clothes on her back.

She doesn’t stop running for a long time.

She doesn’t stop running in Lahore, where she arrives truly alone, with no tears left to spare.

She doesn’t stop running when she runs into her Uncle Malik’s family, completely unsurprised that they have no idea who Yaz is.

She doesn’t stop, but she does slow down a step when she gets married.  A second time, a second marriage, but that’s not something she ever tells, not even to her new husband.

In Sheffield, years and lifetimes away, she finally begins to slow down, to set down roots, to think that maybe, maybe this she gets to keep.  She works a job, she raises a daughter, she goes dancing every Wednesday night. 

She wonders sometimes, if her choice to never talk about her past is just another way of running.  She wonders also, who were the other witnesses at her wedding, and the Doctor who married her.  What happened to the only other people who still remember Prem.  What exactly had brought them to her wedding that day.

Her eldest granddaughter is ten years old the first time it happens.  She’d found it amusing when they named the girl Yasmin and a slight shiver had run down her back when Yaz stuck as the girl’s preferred nickname, but it was a common enough name.  But then she hears another name – Ryan – and sees a boy who could possibly grow up into the man she remembers and she’s too old to run, really, and it’s also such a common name and it’s just a coincidence.  But it takes her breath away, and she cannot look away from the children playing in the street.

It’s not running, she tells herself through out the years, it’s choosing not look at. 

Yaz really is her favorite granddaughter – she reminds Umbreen of herself so much.  And sometimes she looks at the girl and she sees a shadow, a possibility, someone she may or may not become.  She wonders too. 

There were demons in Punjabi that day, aliens from the sky, watching over the events that unfolded under an unforgiving summer sun. 

Why couldn’t her granddaughter be there too?

She wonders.

She watches.

She waits.

Her son-in-law has overindulged himself as always and bought what looks like an entire bakery for her birthday.  She hems and haws and keeps looking at Yaz.  Has she rewritten her memory with her granddaughter’s face?  Is she only seeing what she wants to see?  Those two days are burned into her memory and the girl sitting in front of her, making fun of her sister and stealing biscuits, she’s met her before.  She’s seen that shirt and thought that coat was of an unusual cut.  And her daughter is talking about Ryan and a mysterious doctor.

Umbreen gives her granddaughter the watch.  She cannot tell her the story.

She wonders if she will see her again.

She wonders if she has seen her already.