Rico’s face when she had called him self-centered and spoiled ran through her mind again. He’d hated that. His pride in being humble and fair had been one of the things she’d loved most about him. It was a lesson his soccer-legend father had taught him well. Then again, not well enough, because she couldn’t believe how badly he had behaved with DJ. That entire painfully awkward exchange had dredged up a deep sense of loss inside her.
Who was she kidding, that sense of loss had been her constant companion for twelve years now.
This would be so much easier if she full-out hated him.
That cause was not helped at all by the fact that the first thing he’d done after the shoot was apologize to DJ, with humility and fairness.
But only to DJ, making sure Ashna understood that it had nothing to do with her. You deserve my rudeness, only you, not DJ, that apology had said to her. That’s what she needed to remember, not his gentle touch in the depths of her panic.
The two men had practically fist-bumped, chest-bumped, and gone on their merry way as though being a prized ass were totally acceptable.
The car pulled into her driveway. Thankfully, her driver had picked up on her mood and left her alone. She still gave him a five-star rating on “fun conversation.” Whoever had put that on the driver survey deserved a special spot in hell.
Across the jacarandas behind the house, Curried Dreams stood silent and stately. As a girl, Ashna had imagined the thicket of trees that separated the house from the restaurant as an enchanted wood from the fantasy books she loved. One weekend she had come home from the Anchorage and found that Baba had gotten someone to hang a hammock between two trees for her to read in.
Baba had always been weird about the fact that their house wasn’t as grand as the Anchorage or Sagar Mahal. But Ashna loved the bungalow. She felt a kinship with it. Just like Ashna herself, it had been something Baba had tried to love, but it had fallen short of his expectations.
As Ashna stepped onto the porch, she noticed that the light was off. Ashna always left it on when she went out. Had the bulb blown out again? She’d just replaced it last month. Someone moved inside the door. Heart racing, Ashna dug in her handbag for her phone. She was about to dial 911 when the front door flew open.
Chapter Fifteen
Ashna screamed and dropped her phone.
“Good evening, beta!” Shobi said with all the calm of someone who hadn’t just had the living daylights scared out of her. “Or should I say good morning?”
“Shob— Mom?” Ashna said, frozen in place, as Shobi squatted and fished the phone out from beneath the white wicker chair without dislodging a strand of hair or disturbing her neatly draped starched cotton sari.
“The very one.” Shobi handed Ashna her phone and walked into Ashna’s house as though it were her own. Which technically it was, if you defined ownership strictly in legal terms.
“What are you doing here?” Ashna looked around her usually fastidiously tidy living room, a sense of dread growing inside her.
Cups—at least four of them—were scattered across the coffee table along with file folders and papers, and a plate of cookies (or biscuits, as Shobi called them). An unfolded kantha quilt draped the antique Queen Anne couch. The pillows that usually lined the straight back in a perfect diamond pattern were strewn everywhere.
A sour feeling bubbled in Ashna’s stomach. The house had always been in this kind of disarray when Shobi visited. It used to feel warm and cozy, until Ashna started to associate the mess with the constant fear of Shobi leaving. Ashna lined the cushions up, one mustard and one olive in order.
“Sorry. I’ll clean up. I got caught up in some work. I . . . I wasn’t expecting you not to be here. I . . . I have the garage code. I . . . um . . . I wanted to surprise you.” Shobi smiled as though they were just any mother-daughter pair who routinely did things like surprise each other with visits. “I didn’t realize you wouldn’t be home.” Shobi never rambled. Was she nervous? Shobi was never nervous.
“I told you I’m doing the show. We shoot in San Francisco. Traffic coming home was bad.” Ashna picked up the empty and half-empty cups. Anger at the fact that Shobi hadn’t believed her about the show rose fast, which led to the realization that it was Shobi’s fault that she was stuck with Rico, and that did nothing to help the anger.
“It’s not like I didn’t believe you.” Shobi picked up the plate of biscuits and followed Ashna into the kitchen. “It’s just that I really wanted to see you and you refused to come to India. So I thought . . .”
Ashna started rinsing the cups out.
“We have to talk, Ashna. It’s about time.”
A horrid laugh spurted from Ashna. She pressed a fist into her mouth and swallowed it back.
She checked the Swiss cuckoo clock next to the fridge. In five hours she had to be up and at the farmer’s market.
The need to turn Baba’s restaurant around flared inside her afresh. Her mother’s presence always made her grief, her protectiveness, her guilt over Baba a hundred times worse.
Suddenly, all she wanted was to get back to the studio and shoot the next episode, Rico’s presence there be damned. Even if they received more votes than all the other teams put together she wouldn’t feel guilty about it. Suddenly, any advantage that helped them win felt too small, even if that advantage came from the darned viral video.
“I really don’t have the time for this right now.” She turned to Shobi. Her waist-length silver-streaked black hair hung over one shoulder. Ashna patted her own tight bun. The huge red bindi in the center of her mother’s forehead was perfectly placed just above the spot where her eyebrows would intersect if they met.
Unlike Mina Kaki’s, Shobi’s face was faintly lined. Light creases broke the flatness of her high forehead. Parenthetical lines bracketed her mouth, her passion for her work etched into her face.
“We have to make time, beta.” She sounded so sad that Ashna wondered if something was wrong with her. Oh no, that’s what this was about.
“Are you sick?”
“I deserved that,” Shobi said, and reached out a hand, possibly to pat Ashna’s, but Ashna couldn’t be sure because she withdrew it. “I’m fine. Healthy as a horse. Getting a little thick around the middle, but that’s about it.” She was being charming, the way she was in her TV interviews.
“Then what do you want?” Now, after all these years.
“I want to help you.” Shobi watched Ashna’s face. “And myself. We deserve to at least try to have a relationship.”
“Okay, I see what this is.” Ashna rewashed one of the cups; tea stains weren’t easy to get off. “I can imagine how overwhelming this is for you. Meeting your life’s goal. I get it.”
Shobi looked confused. The one thing Ashna knew her mother to be was a straight shooter, so why, now, was Shobi choosing to play games?
“The Padma Shri,” Ashna said, scrubbing the cup. “Congratulations. That’s huge. But now you need a new goal.” She pressed a wet hand into her forehead. “That’s what this is. A new goal. Wanting to fix things with your daughter.” Shobi had finally decided to involve her in her Shobi-drama. Thank God, Ashna was too old to care.