CHAPTER 49
C HAPTER 49
A final course was served, followed by coffee and petit fours. Their table was rimmed by happy chatter and punctuated by bursts of laughter. Curtis remained focused on the hand holding his. Soft and subtle and strong. A lifetime grip.
He shivered at the prospect, then realized, “I don’t have an engagement ring.”
“Daddy is wondering if he can give you one. It was his amma’s .”
“Amiya, he wants you to have your mother’s ring?”
“No, silly. My grandmother’s. His mother.”
Kurien leaned forward to smile around his daughter. “Engagement rings are not strictly traditional in India. But my parents spent their honeymoon in Paris. My father bought her a beautiful ring from a jeweler on the Place Vend?me.”
“Daddy was conceived there,” Amiya added. “In Paris. Not the jeweler’s.”
He told father and daughter, “I don’t know what to say.”
“It would please Daddy very much,” Amiya said.
“Of course. Yes. I’m honored.”
“My mother and I were very close,” Kurien said. “Amiya has so many of her finest qualities, I’m happy to say. My amma lives in her.”
Curtis was still searching for something more to say, when Chris Compton and his band stepped onto the stage. As his team settled, Compton approached the microphone, smiled to the applause, and said, “We’ve had a request for a first song that isn’t normally part of our repertoire. When I asked my band members if they’d be willing to give it a try, I discovered, to my surprise, every one of them count it among their favorite numbers of all time. So we’re treating tonight as a trial run for what will most likely be included in our next album.”
He counted them down, and the band launched into a sparkling rendition of “Some Enchanted Evening.”
Curtis took a long breath, doing his best to fit himself into this newly expanding universe.
He rose to his feet and held out his hand to the woman determined to reknit his life, his heart, his world.
He asked, “May I have this dance?”