That truce had to mean something.
Ashna seemed to have come out from under that cloud she had been dragging around like the blanket she’d loved as a baby. It had to be the show, because Shobi had seen Ashna smile to herself the other day over her tea. Asking her about it had hovered on Shobi’s lips, but she had been afraid of sucking the joy from her child again.
“She’s under a tremendous amount of strain. Giving her a little space would be a kind thing to do,” Mina said, sipping delicately from Bram’s bone china.
Maybe being afraid to topple the peace wasn’t the best approach. But how to leverage it?
“Leaving her alone all these years was what caused the problem in the first place. I should never have let her go, Mina. I should never have let Bram take her away.”
Mina watched Shobi pace the kitchen and didn’t say the words Shobi knew she wanted to say. “You regret leaving,” Mina said instead, something she had predicted Shobi would do years ago.
“Leaving her, always. Leaving Bram, never.” Did it matter what she should have done, what any of them should have done? “For the first time in my life I feel like I have a chance to make amends. When I got here, I didn’t. Her hatred of me was daunting. But something has changed and I can’t let it slip away from me again.”
That morning Omar had asked when she was coming home. Do you think I should give up? she’d asked in response, because when it came to Ashna, she had never made a good decision.
Has she ever asked you to leave? Omar had asked.
No, she hadn’t.
Then I know you will stay until she does.
He was right. She couldn’t leave this time. Not even if she tried. The Padma Shri ceremony was a month away. Whatever would be, would be.
Shobi met the probing in Mina’s gaze. “Don’t you think something about her is different? More responsive, more open than she’s ever been?”
“Ashna has always had too vulnerable a heart, Shobi. That’s been the problem. She feels everyone’s pain and internalizes it, and wants to take it away. I think the reason she’s had such a hard time with you is that she didn’t know what to do with yours. She finds your rage at the world too daunting. She blames herself for it.”
Shobi dropped onto the barstool next to Mina and rested her elbows on Bram’s granite. “Do you really think I should have let it go? Forgiven Bram. For Ashna. Do you really think that would have made her a happier person? How long do we do it, Mina? Put our heads down and do what’s expected. I couldn’t. I couldn’t make the compromises it would have taken to become what my father and Bram expected me to become. When do we stop this?”
Mina reached out and plucked a napkin from Bram’s napkin holder. Her eyes were determinedly dry, but she had to blow her teary nose. A small part of Shobi wished she hadn’t brought this up. Mina would always regret that night. Shobi had worked her way through it, but Mina had never truly forgiven herself for sending Shobi into that room where Bram had once and for all destroyed any chance their marriage had.
Shobi leaned over and tucked Mina’s hair behind her ear. “How the hell is your hair still this thick and soft with all that coloring and styling?”
Mina laughed a watery laugh. “Save your reverse snobbery. Some of us choose to take care of ourselves. Not everyone is Shoban Gaikwad Raje, rocking the silver mane.”
“And who could ever be Mina Raje?” Smiling, Shobi moved her hair from one shoulder to the other. “Through everything, you’ve been my anchor, Mina.” She took Mina’s hands. “You have to know that.”
Despite whatever nonsense people liked to spew about women pulling each other down, Shobi would never have been able to come out of her marriage standing without Mina and their mother-in-law. Mina was right, though, Ashna had suffered most in all this and been the least responsible for it.
For a while both women sipped the tea blend Ashna had to have put magic in. “She’s so beautiful,” Shobi said, needing to use every ounce of her strength to keep her voice from cracking. “Being around her used to hurt. Now I don’t know how I ever left her.”
“Tell her that.”
“I’ve tried.” That was a lie. “Actually, I have no idea how to. Talking to me makes her so angry, so sad. I don’t know what to do with that.”
“She’s never been the same after Bram’s death. If anyone tries too hard to dig into that or to get her to talk about it, she withdraws so deep into herself, I used to fear she’d never come out. But I think the time for truth might have come.” Mina had to pull out another napkin and blow her nose some more. “She was covered in his blood, Shobi. She sat there with him in her lap until the ambulance got there. She wasn’t even eighteen.”
“It’s terrible to hate a dead person as much as I hate him, isn’t it?” she said through a constricted throat. She started pacing again.
The kitchen was exactly as it had been twelve years ago. Bram’s kitchen. Every detail made to his unbending standards. Many years ago, before he had conspired with her father to break her, Shobi had appreciated his love of beautiful things. He’d had such an eye, known how to make spaces, clothes, food beautiful. Just the way Omar had always known how to make words and thoughts beautiful.
They were both men who saw beauty. But where one believed in nurturing it, the other had known only how to grab. He had crushed every beautiful thing he touched because he only valued his wanting of it, his grip on it, not the thing itself.
“I have to tell her.” There was so much she hadn’t told Ashna, but she didn’t need to tell Mina which particular secret she was talking about. Mina knew them all.
Mina nodded. “Telling her might be the only way to get her to start to understand any of this.”
Shobi had finally told Bram that she wanted a divorce. Ashna was finishing high school. She was almost an adult ready to leave home and go to college, away from Bram’s influence. There was no longer the need to lie to her. Bram’s threat to keep them apart no longer worked. Shobi and Omar had been together for years by then, and other than Bram’s threats there was no reason to hide their relationship.
Never in Shobi’s wildest dreams had she expected him to put a bullet through his head because of it.
“She’ll hate me even more than she already does. She already blames me for his death; telling her it was me who pushed him over the edge will just confirm her belief. I’ll lose her.” Just the way Bram had wanted her to.
Mina was kind enough not to mention that Shobi had lost her a long time ago. “Or you’ll get her back. You’re right that something about Ashna is different now. Maybe it’s the show. Maybe it’s the fact that Curried Dreams has actually turned around. It’s been years since I’ve seen her happy.”
Shobi loved Mina for having been such a good mother to her daughter, but she hated it when Mina explained Ashna to her, especially because she was always right.
What if Mina was wrong this time?
Shobi bore no guilt about the fact that her leaving had caused Bram to end his life. That was on him. But Ashna would never understand.
Shobi was tired of the secrets. There were only two things to do. One, tell the truth, or two, stick with lies. The lies had kept them here for years, stuck in this quagmire but safely confined to the pain they were already used to. The truth was going to make things worse, inflict pain that might break them, but then there was a chance that it might start them down a path to healing.