Chapter Seven
I cannot believe you posted that video on social media! What the hell is wrong with you, Miru?” Rumi says, his livid tone even more over the top than usual. His oversize lemur eyes—nearly identical to mine—are practically popping out of his skull.
“What else was I supposed to do? I know this ring is special, and I want to return it to the person it belongs to.” I squeeze the ring, and the cool, heavy metal digs into the palm of my hand in the most satisfying way.
Rumi’s eyes roll all the way up into his head. “There is absolutely no way on earth you could possibly know that there’s anything special about that stupid ring.”
But I do know it. I can feel something. I feel different since I found it. I can’t even get myself to put it down. “Can you think of anything more romantic than a ring on a chain, Rumi? Remember Amamma used to wear one?”
Rumi groans and starts pacing across his beautiful kitchen as though he really needs to get away from me but doesn’t know how. “Our grand-aunt? She was a mean old witch who told me I was going to burn in hell because I tried on Aie’s lipstick. When I was eight!”
“True, but she was only mean and bitter because she had her heart broken when her husband died in the war.” I press the ring to my chest, and Saket pats my arm. He seems to be on my side, even though his gaze bounces between Rumi and me like someone’s tearing him in half.
“The man probably went to war only to get away from the nasty old crone.”
“Rumi! She never married again, and she wore his wedding ring on a chain for the rest of her life. Her children spread her ashes in the Krishna River, where her husband’s ashes were. It was her dying wish.” When our mother told us the story, it made me cry so hard I remember having a headache for days. Rumi had been so kind to me then. He’d always been kind to me whenever I had what our parents called my oversensitivity episodes .
He isn’t kind now. “How are you such an idiot?” He turns to Saket. “How can my twin be so dumb? How do we share the same DNA?” When Saket glares at him, albeit gently, as though he empathizes with the pain of having a dumb twin, Rumi turns his glare on me again. “You’re getting threatening messages from psychopaths, and you’re here spinning all these fantasies. Best of times you’re too afraid to do anything, and this is where you decide to be reckless? How can you not understand what a brutal jungle social media is?”
How could he not understand that this isn’t about social media? It’s about the ring. “It’s a ring on a chain! They’re not fantasies. No one wears a ring on a chain unless it’s special. A love of a lifetime.” No one can convince me that wearing a ring on a chain around your neck isn’t the most romantic thing. There’s no greater symbol of longing and loss, of love cherished beyond its earthly existence. I can still remember the ring of hearts that hung around our great-aunt’s neck. So what if on the outside she was the most unromantic human in all the world? True love and cynicism can coexist in this world. It’s one of the universe’s great ironies, and my brother here is another great example of it.
“More likely someone was running away from an abusive partner and wanted to get rid of it. More Sleeping with the Enemy than An Affair to Remember . They probably spat on it as they tossed it away.”
Saket makes a pained sound. “You are one damaged little boy, aren’t you, baby?”
Rumi lets out a long-suffering sigh. I know he’s angry with me for reasons that have nothing to do with the ring or my posted video. Which, by the way, only went viral because it was so heartfelt and real. I wish he’d be reasonable and help me find the owner.
“Can you just hand the damn ring over to the cops and be done with it?” he says a little too meanly. At least he doesn’t say Keep it like you want to , the way so many other eye-rolling cynics on the internet have.
“No one who’s forced into an unpleasant relationship wears a ring on a chain. There’s a broken chain attached to it. See! It reeks of love.” I hold the ring with its ripped-apart chain in his face. That means it meant something to the wearer! I know the person is going to see the ring and reach out. I just know it. “Also, it couldn’t have been that long since they lost it. It was dusty, but it hadn’t been lying on that pavement for that long. Saket, who’s an expert, said it was recently polished. Right, Saket?”
Saket gives my arm another pat and takes the ring from me. “It is a beautiful piece.” He sits down at the mosaic dining table, unable to hide his reverence. “Definitely created by one of the old masters. Possibly dating back to the last century, possibly with some sort of royal lineage.”
Rumi harrumphs.
Saket throws him a warning glance. “I know my work, Rooh. Don’t be scoffing at my two master’s degrees, in art history and design. I’ve handled antique jewelry from the day I was born.”
Before Rumi can say something rude, I cut him off. “Is there any way to find out where it came from? Like the name of a jeweler or a marking or logo? If we can find the jeweler, maybe they keep records of customers.”
Saket twists it between his fingers and holds it up against the light, studying it again, and ignores Rumi, who resumes his pacing. “It’s definitely crafted in India, and it dates back to the early 1900s, based on the hue of the gold and the wear on the metal, even though it’s been recently polished. As for the design, I’ve only seen one other piece that resembles this one, and based on the difference in the cut on the inner and outer rim, and the puzzle-like flame bezel, I’m pretty sure it’s part of an interlocking set.”
I gasp. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
“Because I had to look up the details some more.” He throws my brother a quick glance to make sure he isn’t melting down over the betrayal. “Also, you’re kinda right.” He clears his throat and lowers his voice. “I agree that wearing a ring on a chain is the most romantic thing ever. And if it’s an interlocking ring, there’s another piece just like it somewhere else in the world.” His eyes sparkle in the exact way I’m feeling, and we both let out identical sighs and leave the last part unsaid. Somewhere out there, someone else is wearing the other half.
Rumi grabs his head with both hands and lets out the longest, most pained grunt. He loves the theater so much that he left his job as an architect to work on designing sets. He can be very dramatic.
He whips out his phone (very dramatically) and turns the phone toward Saket and me. “Have you two forgotten these messages?”
He starts flipping through the horrid messages I’ve gotten in response to my post since I sent it out last afternoon. Of course he took screenshots and sent them to himself precisely so he can rub them in my face.
“Psycho One: ‘What you’ve done is stolen someone’s ring. Women like you deserve to be’—I can’t even get myself to read the rest. What the hell is wrong with this person?” Rumi’s eyes fill with despair.
I get it. People can be horrid, and Rumi has suffered the worst of it when he was cyberbullied in high school. But this is not the same thing.
He isn’t done, of course. He’s just settling into stage-reading the messages. He’s even doing voices.
“Psychopath Two: ‘That’s mice. I dropd it.’” He’s pronouncing the shortened and misspelled words exactly the way they’re spelled. “Mira: ‘Hello there. Could you tell me what the inscription says?’
“Psycho Two: ‘Bitch. Frst U stills ring. ThN U’—the letter U —‘wants 4’—the number four—‘me to tell. Gv’—that’s a G and V —‘Back.’” Rumi’s on a roll now. He moves on to the next one, then the next.
“Psychopath Twenty-One: ‘I can do things to you with that ring that will make you scream.’” Rumi raises his hands. “I don’t even know what he means by that.”
I shrug. “I don’t want to know. How does it matter?” It is not fun to read people’s rage fantasies directed at you for absolutely no reason. It’s been shocking, actually. But not hurtful, per se, because I can’t take it personally. And because there are also hundreds of lovely emotional messages that prove that people still care. I’m choosing to focus on those.
“You’ve received four hundred responses. In less than twenty-four hours. What is wrong with this world?” Rumi asks as though I’m in any way qualified to answer that question. He reads off another particularly ugly message.
“Stop it, Rooh,” Saket says. “Quit being a jerk.”
“ I’m being a jerk? Did I write these heinous things? Did I open myself up to an attack like this?”
“All I want is to find the person the ring belongs to. Social media just happens to be the way to reach the most people.”
“Of course! So simple!” He smacks his forehead and bats his eyelashes and pouts in what I know is his entirely offensive, not to mention inaccurate, imitation of me. “It’s my first trip to the Big Apple, and guess what happens?” He raises the pitch of his voice in what he thinks is an impression of me on the video I posted. “Here I am walking along, and I fall, like actually butt plant. I’m lucky I didn’t break my ankle falling on those heels. My stuff scatters all over, and as I’m gathering it up, what do I find?” He pauses breathlessly. “This am-AY-zing ring. Isn’t it gorgeous!” He sniffs and pretends to tear up. “And it’s on a chain! Isn’t that the most romantic thing ever? I’d love to reunite you with it if it’s yours. Oh, and it has an inscription on it. Message me with what that is, and let’s meet.” He signs off with blowing kisses. He really should move from the back of the theater to the stage.
“I did not blow kisses. You’re being totally offensive right now.” Despite myself, my eyes fill with tears. Only Rumi can do this to me. Make me cry at the drop of a hat. Will I always feel four years old around him?
“I’m being offensive? What if one of these psychos finds you?” His eyes sparkle with moisture too. When he was the victim of cyberbullying in high school, it ended with a mob attacking him outside our parents’ store. He had three broken ribs and a ruptured lung, and our parents refused to believe him when he said it was premeditated and planned on the internet, or even to press charges. Actually, they refused to talk about it. Period. They didn’t want bad publicity for the store.
Rumi has always believed that they thought he deserved it and that they hoped the incident would teach him a lesson. Make him see that there are “consequences” to what they’ve always seen as his choices.
My heart hurts. I can see his beaten-up face, the purple skin around his swollen-shut eye, like it was yesterday. I understand why he hates social media, why he detests our hometown. I’d hate it, too, if I let myself. But unlike him, I haven’t been able to leave. Our parents have no one else, and despite everything, I can’t abandon them in their most vulnerable years. Baba is a heart patient, and Aie can’t get around without assistance. None of that has anything to do with what I’m doing. My quest to use the internet to find the ring’s owner is completely unrelated to what happened to Rumi.
“How could you knowingly open yourself up to attack like this?” There’s so much anguish in his voice, I almost apologize and offer to take the post down. But before I can respond, the doorbell rings, startling us.
Saket jumps and lets out a squeak and presses a hand to his mouth.
Rumi turns to him with unabashed suspicion. “Are we expecting a package?”
Color spreads across Saket’s face under his perfectly applied bronzer. “Um ...,” he mumbles, wringing his hands in the most uncharacteristic way. “I ... okay, this isn’t how it looks. Maybe I didn’t think this through. But you have to trust me that my intentions were good.”
Rumi looks like he wants to do several things, none of which involve trusting anyone. “What did you do?”
“Excuse me!” Saket says. “Do not take that tone with me.”
The last thing I want is for the two of them to fight because of me.
“Please,” I say to Rumi, and he all but snarls at me to butt out.
“Someone contacted me about the ring.” Saket raises his chin but doesn’t quite achieve the indignation he’s going for.
“The ring?” both Rumi and I say at once.
Just like that, Saket’s moment of nervousness passes, and he presses a hand into his waist as if to tell us to stop our nonsense. “Yes, the one Mira found. The one she wants to return to the owner. Which, by the way, I think is very sweet.” He smiles at me, overtly ignoring Rumi. “I want that for you too, sweetheart.”
I take a step closer to him and squeeze his arm. “Thanks.”
“What did you do?” Rumi asks again, tone ice cold. He’s nothing if not a dog with a bone when it comes to being pissed off.
Saket somehow manages to look both placating and scolding at once. “Well, it’s someone I know. I met him at a wedding. He’s my mom’s friend’s sister’s son’s friend. And he ... he can help us find the owner of the ring.”
Rumi makes a sound that manages to be both a groan and a growl. “How did he know to reach out to you?”
The doorbell rings again.
Rumi storms toward the door, and Saket grabs his arm. “This is someone I know, and you will not be rude to him in our home.”
“I’ll get it,” I say. “Please, Rumi, calm down.” I rush past them down the long corridor and pull open the door. The smell of skunk washes over me. And I’m fully aware what smells of skunk, despite the protests of those who don’t agree that it does. It’s a smell I know well from having grown up with Rumi, and combined with the memories and feelings his anger is digging up, it triggers a bout of my worst teenage anxiety. I feel unsteady on my feet.
The man standing there gives a pursed-lipped smile. I wonder if he’s heard the entire fight inside, but he looks too bored to care. He’s wearing a faded gray Henley and jeans frayed at the knees. But it’s not in a fashion statement sort of way. His jaw is covered in stubble. But it’s not the sexy groomed kind. More someone who hasn’t bothered to shave. His hair, grown out all the way down to his shoulders, is thick and curly, but it doesn’t seem to have met a hairbrush recently. Dark aviators cover his eyes, so I don’t know how I know that he’s studying me and picking up all my thoughts, but I do.
“Hello, Mira,” he says in a voice so bass and polished it takes me a moment to reconcile it with the rest of him.
I startle out of my study. “How do you know my name?”
His hands stay where they are, dug into his pockets. “Four hundred thousand people know your name. That’s how viral posts work.” His flat tone is like a splash of ice water.
I have an entirely uncharacteristic urge to kick him in the shins and slam the door in his face.
Behind me Saket clears his throat, and I turn around. Rumi and Saket have come up behind me.
“Sak,” the man says over my shoulder. “Thanks for setting this up.” He finally pulls a hand out of his pocket and reaches over me to shake Saket’s hand.
“Of course,” Saket says. “Come on in.”
He does come on in, squeezing past me when I don’t move out of the way.
“This is Krish,” Saket throws out before leading the way into the living room.
The man slips off his white sneakers at the door without untying his laces and follows without bothering to remove his sunglasses or waiting for me and Rumi to acknowledge the introduction.
Saket invites him to sit, and he drops into the linen couch. Rumi and I fold our arms across our chests striking identical poses, and it makes Saket smile. He turns to Krish. “It’s good to see you. But this is where I step out of the picture, okay? Mira gets to decide if she wants to do this or not.”
“Wants to do what?” Rumi and I say together. Our twin thing has a way of popping up at the most inopportune times, so naturally it’s in overdrive right now.
Saket and the man named Krish look at each other. I’ve never watched Survivor , but I’ve heard of alliances, and that word pops into my head.
“I think I can help you find the ring’s owner,” Krish says. The heavy texture and refined clip of his voice that was so jarring a moment ago clicks in place and settles into him as he makes the claim. His tone is so casually confident it’s almost insouciant, like he has every right to be here, be anywhere he wishes to be.
Without meaning to I find myself leaning in to listen, because obviously there’s more.
When he says the next part, it’s with the kind of sense of entitlement I’ve rarely ever encountered before. He looks straight at me and says, “But I have conditions.”