Chapter 6
*****
After a while in the heavy traffic, Aman drove along the long driveway to his parking space at his parent’s house. The moment they stepped out of the car, they heard kids screams and they looked at each other.
Aman rolled his eyes. “I guess everyone is here.”
Isha let out a laugh. “Looks like the kids are here to participate in the conversation too.”
“On second thought, it’s probably good they are here. We could use all of them to distract our parents if they ask too many questions.” He winked.
She smiled walking next to him towards the back of the house where the family seemed to be gathered. She could see the toddlers playing on the deck while their parents and grandparents hung out close by.
“There they are, the power couple,” Aman’s brother cheered.
Isha and Aman greeted everyone hoping the topic would stay on the planning of the Ravi’s twins’ birthday celebrations and not drift into the topic of her and Aman getting engaged.
“I wasn’t expecting that many people,” Isha whispered, squeezing Aman’s arm. His parents had also invited his cousins’ families.
“This will be fun!” Aman winked as they walked to the back of the house to greet their parents who were hanging out by the firepit on the deck.
After a little bit of mingling with Aman’s family, she found herself in a corner with her cousin, Chandini who she grew up with.
Chandini poked her with her elbow. “What took you and Aman so long to get here? Did you take a detour and you know, had your time before coming here?”
Isha rolled her eyes. “Right. If sitting in traffic was having our time, then that’s what we did.”
“So boring.” Chandini scoffed. “You guys are so formal with each other. Do you guys even do anything, like in bed?”
Isha lowered her voice, her eyes on the rest of the group. “Chandini, what’s gotten into you?”
“I’m worried about you turning into a bore,” Chandini whispered and added, “You guys barely spend time with each other. You both are workaholics.”
Even her cousin, with whom she grew up, could not understand the convenience factor of her and Aman’s dynamic. She had attempted to explain to her how open they were about even seeing other people when they weren’t in the dating mode but Chandini would not comprehend it.
Isha glared at her cousin. “We spend enough time and we both have busy jobs so if we don’t meet—”
Her words were interrupted when she heard her phone ring in her purse. She reached for it and saw it was a number she didn’t recognize. The country code indicated the caller was from India. She hit the ignore button, suspecting it to be a spam call, which she received a handful every day.
She took a sip of her drink; somewhat glad Chandini had to attend to her daughter and the topic they were discussing didn’t get prolonged.
A moment later, she heard her aunt’s phone ring and something about the timing of how her aunt received a call right after she got one made her hackles go up. She kept her eyes on her aunt as she answered the call.
“Hi Ashok, it’s been a long time. How are you?” her aunt sounded cheerful.
Isha held her breath, wondering why Ashok, her sister-in-law’s brother, was calling her aunt.
The look on her aunt’s face made Isha’s heart nosedive into her stomach, and felt the blood drain from her face when she saw her aunt drop her phone and collapse on a nearby chair, weeping.
Flashes of moments when she was told her parents passed away played in front of her eyes and instincts told her it was something bad—very bad.