Oh, who was she trying to fool. She had let Ashi go because she hadn’t known how to be a mother, she hadn’t known how to compromise with something she was forced into. Because losing herself entirely to motherhood was the price Bram—and the world—had demanded of her.
How she hated that man. Thinking about him still stung like oil burns across her skin. To think he had been her friend once. Then he’d betrayed her. So large had her anger at him been that she’d let go of something precious. Something she wanted back.
Why should Mina be the one who got to help Ashi? To be her mother? When Shobi wanted it so badly.
It’s because you’re here and not there with her, the waves whispered.
Shobi dusted the sand off her hands. Their last conversation had made it obvious that Ashi didn’t want her. There had been sheer panic in her voice at the thought of having to see Shobi. “You don’t know anything, so just shut up,” she said to the waves.
They went back to their rhythmic churning.
Sitting down on the beach, Shobi removed her sneakers and socks and neatly folded and tucked them together. Her toes were their usual coppery red. Having her toenails painted was a habit she had picked up from her own mother, who’d insisted that it was a sign of gentility. Even in her cricket-playing days Shobi had kept her feet pedicured, the deeply embedded need to please her mother lingering on past all the work she had done to become the person she was under the conditioning.
“You must be so proud of what you’ve achieved,” a journalist had said to her last week.
She was.
Wasn’t she?
Shobi had no experience with questioning herself. If she had stopped for doubts, life would have stomped her into the earth.
She rested her chin on her knees and watched the waves.
“Tell me what I’m missing?” she asked them as they rolled and rolled without pause. They never got a break to question their actions. They had to keep going to sustain the life they contained.
That wasn’t true. Even the ocean receded into low tide so the beaches might breathe.
Ashi had a way of breathing that told Shobi she was upset. It was her withdrawing-into-herself breathing, which she had used to lock Shobi out her whole life. The first time Shobi had noticed it was when she’d returned from the World Cup tournament when Ashi was eight.
“Mamma missed you,” Shobi had said, and Ashi’s eyes had gone flat. She’d breathed in slowly and deliberately but had not responded.
Your daughter told you she’s never learned to be happy.
Her child, who hadn’t told her anything important in a very long time, had told her a truth that people spoke only when they were desperate to be heard. Or when they had given up.
Don’t you see she’s asking you for help? the ocean said.
“I offered to help her, and she panicked.”
Maybe she just doesn’t know how to ask.
The last time Ashi had asked for something, Shobi hadn’t been able to give it to her. Another situation her daughter’s father had put them in. A last devastating act.
“I want my daughter back.”
Then go and get her.
I don’t know where to start, Shobi wanted to say. There were just so many lies, so much Ashi didn’t know. Shobi had always kept things from her, afraid of not knowing which straw of truth would break her. Or maybe she’d kept things to herself because she hadn’t known how to share them with someone who had always borne the greatest brunt of her decisions.
It was time to fix this mess once and for all. It was time to stop tiptoeing around all the lies. Ashi deserved to be happy. Maybe it wasn’t too late for her to learn how. Maybe there was still time for Shobi to show her that it was possible. No matter how hard the world tried to take happiness away from you, it was possible to fight back.
Who knew this better than Shobi? Because, good Lord, how hard they had tried.
Chapter Twelve
Shoban had spent the entire day sitting on the cliffs of the Sripore palace, staring at the ocean and daydreaming about Omar. Usually it was her favorite pastime. But since he had left for Oxford, even daydreaming about him hurt. It didn’t help that it was her eighteenth birthday and not a soul here was aware of the fact, or cared.
For the hundredth time that day, Shoban opened Omar’s birthday letter.
On your eighteenth birthday, eighteen reasons why you own my heart . . .
Pressing the letter to her own heart, she stood. If she didn’t find some way to distract herself, she was going to explode.
She ran all the way to the stables looking for Bram, but he seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth.
“Where’s Prince Bram?” she asked the liveried chauffeur standing by Bram’s family’s Bentley.
The man straightened, saluted her, and informed her that he had no idea.
Bram never told anyone where he was going. It was the most infuriating thing about him, these princely airs of his. He also only ate foods cooked a certain way, with annoyingly fancy colonial names like “braised this” and “sautéed that.” Needlessly complicating something as natural as food with snobbery was an abomination, if you asked Shoban.
His older brothers were nothing like that. But Bram was always trying to play at being this person who was too important to be answerable to anyone.
“I like it when you worry about me,” he had said to her yesterday.
“But what about Ma-saheb?” His mother worried about him. Everyone worried about him. “Why does having people worry about you prove that you’re special?” she had demanded.
Bram, being Bram, just yanked her braid anytime she questioned him.
It annoyed her, but she let it go for the sake of their friendship. They’d been friends for a year, ever since their families had spent the summer together in his family’s chalet in Switzerland.
So when her father had asked her to join him on his visit to Sripore she had agreed. Omar had gone back to England last week. She tried not to be one of those filmy melodramatic girls who acted all heartbroken when they were separated from their love. But truthfully, it’s how she felt on the inside. Like someone had smacked a ball into her chest with a bat, and it had become lodged there.
In a stroke of bad timing, her cricket coach was on vacation, so their team got two weeks off. Being plagued with boredom was Shoban’s worst nightmare. Her exams were finished and her applications were complete. This waiting to know if she’d get into Oxford or Cambridge so she could be near Omar was killing her.
She made her way to the cricket pitch. Taking a run down the wicket, she swung the ball into the net, flicking her wrist just as she let go. The ball shot a straight line for half the length of the pitch and then spun out and into a curve. If a batsman could have made contact with it, she would have been thoroughly impressed.
Her spin was getting better, but if her team was to have any hope of remaining undefeated until the state finals, she had to practice until it was flawless. She’d shattered the record for the most wickets at the state level, and if she weren’t off to university she had a real chance at making the national team. Bram had promised to help her practice and now he was nowhere to be found.
“Tai-saheb?” Flora, one of the maids, cleared her throat. She had waited until Shoban had released the ball before speaking.