The taxi came down our street at ten past one in the morning, and I had eleven answers ready.
I knew the questions. Everybody knows them. Where were you? Who was with you? Why didn't you call? Do you know what time it is? I had worked out the order of them somewhere around Beruniy, and I had an answer for each one that was true, mostly.
The veranda light was on. My father was sitting on the step in his coat with a cold glass of tea beside him, and he did not stand up when I came through the gate.
He asked where I had been. I told him. Dilnoza's brother's wedding, the second bus had not come, four of us had waited and then split a taxi.
He asked if I had eaten anything. I said I had.
He asked whether the driver had taken the main road, because of the roadworks at the bridge, and I said he had.
Then he asked me to sit down, which was not on my list at all.
I sat on the step. He admitted that he had been sitting there since eleven, and that my mother did not know he was outside. He told me not to wake her when we went in.
Then he explained that my mother's test results had come back from the clinic on Thursday, two days before, and that she had asked him not to tell anybody until after the wedding, because Dilnoza's family had waited nine years for that wedding.
He said the word. He said that the doctors had used the phrase "early", twice, and that there would be an operation in Tashkent in eleven days.
I asked him three or four things. I do not remember them in order. He answered all of them, and then he warned me not to look at my mother in the morning "like a nurse", because she would understand in one second.
We sat on that step until about two. He asked me twice whether I was cold, and the second time he told me to take his coat, and I did, and he sat there in a shirt because he is like that.
The operation was in April 2023. My mother is fine. She grows tomatoes and she argues with the butcher, and none of the family photographs from that spring show anything at all.
I still come home late sometimes. He still asks where I have been. I answer properly now, every time, in full sentences, and I have never told him why.