Chapter 7
For the first time in sixteen years, Simran is looking at the portraits of her parents.
There are garlands of dried flowers draped around each photo of family members they’ve lost over the years.
Only her parents, in the center of the wall with pictures double the size of the others, are wreathed with fresh white jasmine buds. The reverent fragrance wafts over her.
Her aunt and Rishi leave the room after Leo, but Simran stays rooted to the spot right in front of the portraits.
Their faces are so familiar, but what she’s forgotten, what has faded against her will with the passing of time, is the motion of them, the expressions that brought them to life.
This is what going back to her house in Chennai can do that being here can’t—she can be in the presence of their memories, not flat facsimiles of who they were.
She once heard a metaphor about grief: that it was like a ball inside a ring.
When the terrible thing first happens, the ring and the ball are the same size and everywhere they touch is deeply painful.
As you go on, with time and healing, the ring expands.
Whenever the ball touches the ring, it still hurts as much as it ever did—but it happens less frequently.
For Simran, that never happened. Instead, the ball has grown spikes.
And because being in this house makes that ring feel tighter than ever, she’s hurt Leo.
She can’t stop picturing the look on his face when she said she didn’t know him, his hazel eyes pinched, that vertical line between his eyebrows deeper than she’d ever seen it.
It’s unforgivable that she made him feel like that.
But she had to lie. She couldn’t tell her aunt that she was dating the “strange white boy.” Veena perima would have never let it go and it would have smothered everything between them.
Though—there may not be anything between them anymore.
Not after what she’s done. Something unravels inside her.
What made Leo come here? Couldn’t he have just replied “miss you too” to her message and waited a couple of weeks?
Of course not. He doesn’t do things halfway.
It’s one of the reasons she likes him so much.
She is barely aware of it but her feet have taken her to the front porch.
Her aunt is standing in the front yard, arms crossed, like a watchdog.
Across the street, Leo is walking towards a black car that will take him to the airport and away from her.
His shoulders are hunched and a million jagged feelings spiral within her.
Look at me. Just once, Simran thinks. Turn around.
She can’t quite articulate what she’ll know if he turns, only that he must, only that if he doesn’t—and it seems like he won’t, as he opens the back seat door and tosses his duffel bag inside—she will know that they are over before they even had a chance to begin.
Turn.
She stares at the proud spire of his neck, the neat, square hedge of his hairline.
Turn.
And then, just before he slides into the car, Leo does.
When their eyes meet, he gives her the ghost of a smile. He’s always been easy to read and she suspects it’s by his own choosing.
This is a goodbye.
But still: He turned.
The door slams with a finality that jolts her.
As the car drives away and she tells her aunt she’ll be right in, panic clangs inside of her.
She can’t let it end like this. The only thing that matters now is that she makes sure Leo knows how sorry she is, how much she cares about him, how much she wants him if he’ll still have her.
And he needs to know now.
She rushes back into the house, taking the stairs two at a time.
Grabbing her phone, she sees all the earlier missed calls and messages from Leo and dials his number over and over again, increasingly frantic each time he doesn’t answer.
Simran runs back downstairs and out to the backyard, slowing down to not rouse her aunt’s attention, arms stiff at her sides as she speed walks with intent.
She has to find Leo before he gets on his flight, and given that she doesn’t drive, she is going to need help.
And there’s only one person she can turn to.
“Kavitha,” she says, her voice a rushed whisper. Her cousin is standing by herself at one of the small high tables sprinkled across the vast backyard, quite literally twiddling her thumbs. “I need you to drive me to the airport.”
Kavitha narrows her eyes, a smidge too far apart in a way that will always make her look young. “I figured you’d leave again, but on the same day you arrived?”
Simran sighs. “Kavitha, can we do this some other time? Right now, I—”
Her cousin crosses her arms and cocks her head. “Forgive me if I don’t hold my breath.”
“I had no other choice!” Simran flings her arms up. “And it’s not like you ever came to see me once I left.”
Kavitha’s shoulders drop. “You’re right; I didn’t come to see you once you left. How could I visit the person who literally ran away from our home? Who broke my mother’s heart?”
If Simran had any effect on her aunt’s heart, she never saw it. It was more likely that her ego rankled against Simran’s leaving. She glances down at her phone. No call back from Leo but the clock edges up a minute, a reminder that she doesn’t have time for this. “I can’t argue about this now.”
“I don’t want to argue about it at all,” Kavitha says. That is true—Kavitha was never as prone to arguing as Simran was.
“I’ll listen to whatever you have to say, I promise,” Simran says, frenzy zooming through her bloodstream. “But first, I have to get to Newark. He’s not answering his phone and if he gets on his flight, I’ll miss him and it will be too late.”
“He? Who’s he?” Her cousin’s face lights up with curiosity. “Does this have anything to do with Amma claiming she caught one of Rishi’s white friends trying to rob us?”
“I can—I will—explain everything,” Simran says, breathless with urgency. “But we have to go right now.”
Kavitha’s expression is so much like her mother’s as she scans Simran’s face.
When they used to spend their summers together, they shared everything, even their seat, each balanced precariously on half a chair, their parents calling them silly as they insisted they were comfortable.
That’s how Simran thinks sisters should take care of each other: give each other things whenever they can.
It’s just that, under Veena Iyer’s roof, Simran hadn’t had much to give.
“Please, senorita,” Simran says. She hopes invoking the code still works both ways.
Kavitha takes a beat and then her shoulders straighten, all business. “Okay, we have to split up so Amma doesn’t get suspicious. You go through the house and meet me outside the Brindavans’ house, that’s where my car is parked.”
Simran takes off as Veena perima calls to her from fifteen feet away. “Just going to change my shoes!” she lies again and ducks into the house. As she’s leaving, she sees someone grab Kavitha’s arm and ask for something.
“Oh no!” Kavitha says in a too-loud, stilted tone. “I think we’re completely out of coconut chutney! I will go to the store and get some! Right now!” Simran groans as she dashes through the kitchen. Her cousin is a notoriously terrible liar.
But somehow, it goes off without a hitch and a few minutes later, she and Kavitha are driving to the airport, only about twenty minutes away with a blessedly clear highway.
“So, what’s going on?” Kavitha asks, taking in Simran’s hands as she picks at her cuticles anxiously.
“I—” But Simran can’t say it. Not yet. Not when she doesn’t know if she will catch Leo, if he will forgive her, or if this will end with her heart broken.
“I will tell you. I promise.” Kavitha snorts in response.
They pull up to a traffic light and Simran braces herself for a perfectly placed retort, the kind only someone who has known you from your childhood can give.
But maybe she sees the desperation on Simran’s face because after a long moment, all Kavitha says is “Okay.”
And then Kavi is winding her way through the cars outside the departures area, sliding into an open spot so smoothly that she could easily consider a career as an F1 driver. Simran is out of the car and sprinting into the terminal before it’s even come to a full stop.