A Change of Heart (13 page)

“And the All the Teachers Have a Direct Line to Your Mother curse,” she said.

“Did she teach in your school?”

“Yes, yours?”

“No. She taught college, so technically she's a professor, but some of my teachers had taken her classes in college, and let's just say it's not every child's dream.”

“You sound very close to your mother.”

“Really? I was going for terrorized by her.”

She giggled again. “She sounds like a wonderful mother. Are you an only child?”

“Technically.”

“Technically? So, you're an only child but with siblings?”

“I am an only child, but my parents practically raised my cousin—my mother's brother's daughter. She went to school in India and spent summers with us. So, she's more a sibling than a cousin, and my dad's sister's son also spent his summers with us. I know it's confusing.”

“It's not confusing at all. Your childhood sounds beautiful.”

The Joshi household had been a zoo sometimes, always overrun with friends and relatives. But she was right. “It was pretty amazing. If you're not big on privacy. Our house was always filled with guests.”

Suddenly, he wanted to turn around. He couldn't go home. Then he wanted to go home so badly, his foot pressed into the accelerator.

“What about your mother?” he asked, mostly to step off the seesaw he found himself on.

“Aama—that's what I call my mother—taught English at the school in the city.” Ah, an English teacher's daughter; that explained the impeccable English. “But we moved to the village after my father died when I was seven. At the village school she taught everything. Even after she got sick and couldn't leave home, she tutored any child who needed help at our home. And she did it until her very last day.”

“What happened?”

“Cancer. Lung.”

“I'm sorry.”

“It's okay, it's been a very long time,” she said, although she looked too young for anything to have been a very long time. He wanted to ask her how old she was, but what came out of his mouth was completely unexpected. “So how did your husband, Raja, you said, agree to let you leave your son and go chasing after a complete stranger by yourself?”

Evidently it was the wrong thing to say, because the veil that was never too far away slipped over her face like liquid rock and solidified. It was as though the past few minutes had never happened. “Raja's not Joy's dad.” And then, just to make sure he understood that he had stepped on one of her land mines, she asked, “When was the last time you went home?”

The silence stretched out for a few moments, and she tucked her hands under her legs, sitting on them.

“I haven't gone home since my cousins' wedding,” he said. “A little more than two years.”

He must have sounded the way he felt, because her tone softened again. “I'm sorry I didn't give you more time.”

Another sad silence followed.

“Did Jen say anything about where the evidence might be hidden?” he asked her, because really, it was the point of this entire excursion, wasn't it? “Do you have any idea what it is?”

Her eyes were back in fully guarded mode when he threw her a quick glance. “All she said was that you would destroy everything from your life together but you would never destroy the thing in which it was hidden.”

That did nothing to narrow it down. He couldn't imagine going through Jen's stuff, ever. As for throwing away any of her stuff, it was unthinkable.

“So where are her things?” she asked when he didn't respond.

“Most of it is in my parents' home.”

“So are we going to your parents' house?”

“Yes. Why does that surprise you?”

“I thought Americans didn't live in their parents' house once they were adults.”

“Well, I never bought my own place because I never lived in the country for too long after med school.” And once he'd met Jen, her apartment had become their home.

They talked like that. Jumping over each other's land mines, skirting topics and details that were too painful and skimming over the ones that were more bearable until they found their safe places.

Nikhil told her about med school and being a doctor's son. She told him about Joy. Of all the things they could talk about, her son, Joy, seemed their safest haven.

17

 

—Dr. Jen Joshi

 

 

“J
ust find the bastard's daughter and kill her.” Asif had had enough. He hadn't worked his way up the ranks of the gang to have some useless politician hold a sword over his head. It wasn't just his hands that were bloodstained. His vision dripped blood. The red haze through which he saw the world had become thicker and redder with every passing year, and fuck if now, when he was king of his world, he would let someone finger his arse.

“Bhai—” Laloo was the only one of his men who would dare to interrupt his thoughts. When he didn't lift his
ghoda
and blow the
chutiya
's head off, he took it as permission to keep talking. “Bhai, she's the only leverage we have. We kill her, we have nothing to hold over the bastard's head.”

He looked smug, as if Asif Khan, whose very name loosened people's bowels until they were shitting their insides, needed some idiot to point out the most basic shit. He lifted his gun and pointed it at Laloo's head.

“Sorry, Bhai. Of course you already thought of that. Bhai thinks of everything.” He was trying not to look scared. Even his number-one commander believed that he was crazy enough to blow his brains out. This was power. His
chutiya
uncle should see him now.

Asif started to laugh. Not because he was crazy, the way he let his men believe he was, but because the memory of sticking a Diwali bomb up his uncle's arse and blowing it up before drowning him in a commode filled with his shit still made him collapse with laughter every single time.

“You're not the only one who can stick your junk up someone's arse,
chutiya
. How does it feel now?” he had asked, and his uncle had pissed right there on his bathroom floor, with his wife and children watching. It was the last thing any of them had seen him do.

“Three minutes. You have three minutes to find an alternative to killing the politician's daughter,” he said to Laloo, smiling at coming up with that number. Why did people always go with five minutes, ten minutes? Bastards, so predictable! He started to count down. “Tick, tick. Tick, tick . . .”

“K . . . K . . .” Laloo stuttered

“What are you, Shah Rukh Khan from
Darr?
K . . . K . . . Kiran . . .”

“Kidnap, Bhai, kidnap! We kidnap the girl.”

He clicked off the
ghoda
's safety and placed the muzzle on Laloo's crotch. He started sobbing like a bitch. “You think that wasn't the first idea that popped into my head?”

He looked at the man's pants. They were dry. He fucking needed to see someone wet their pants really soon. Life was getting too damn serious.

Satisfying though the idea of killing the politician's fancy daughter was, Asif needed her to find the girl with the doctor's red hair. She was the one he needed to figure out what the bastard was up to. So he could stop him once and for all. She was his key and the bastard's daughter was his only path to her.

“Follow the bastard's daughter. Every moment. I want to know how she breathes, who she fucks, what her daddy does to protect her fancy arse.”

It was a good thing people had children. It was the best leverage in the world.

18

 

—Dr. Jen Joshi

 

 

N
ikhil's shoulders had been getting progressively higher and tighter ever since they had entered what seemed to be Antarctica, but with flyovers. The streets were edged with banks of blackened snow like flesh peeled back from knife slashes across endless white skin.

By the time the fields gave way to neighborhoods and their car turned into a wooded street and rolled to a stop in front of the biggest house she had ever seen, he looked stiff enough to snap. She followed his eyes to the house. A perfectly round moon shone large and low in the sky, throwing a milky glow over the snow-blanketed roof.

A blanket seemed to have fallen over his face too, turning it almost as dark as it had been when she had first seen him. But somehow without the smell of vomit and the drunken haze it didn't have quite the same level of devastation. He turned and caught her watching him, but his eyes stayed flat, every hint of that elusive twinkle gone from the deep chocolate. The spots in his cheeks, where those transformative whirlpools reclaimed and trapped laughter in flashes, were also flat.

Thanks to Jen, Jess had felt like she knew him even before she met him, but these past days had erased Jen's words and replaced them with reality, and the reality of him was like nothing she could have imagined.

She had never had a friend, never shared anything about herself with anyone. Truth be told, no one had ever shared any part of their life with her either. She hadn't allowed it. Sweetie Raja was her best friend. She would do anything for him, but he was almost as private as she was. On the days when he happened to be home for dinner, they talked about their day and listened avidly to Joy's stories. But she knew nothing of his past, his childhood. One look at his face didn't carry the entire impact of his current mood.

“Ready?” Nikhil asked.

“Yes,” she responded, fully aware that the question wasn't targeted toward her. “Did you want me to wait in the car?”

It seemed far too intrusive, far too intimate, to be part of a reunion so painful. He waited to answer. Maybe he needed time to think, or maybe he hadn't heard her. But he was no longer looking at her. His eyes caught something in the rearview mirror and he twisted around so fast she started.

“Holy shit.”

“What?” She followed his gaze to a huge red truck parked next to a brick mailbox.

His hand went to his scalp, gripping helplessly at the stubble that was fast turning into a crew cut. “Vic and Ria are here.” There was panic in his voice.

She had no idea what he was talking about.

“My cousins. Remember I was telling you about them,” he said, without taking his eyes off the car. “They're here. Shit.”

Before she could respond, the front door of the house flew open. “Hello?” A tall man stepped out of the front door causing several lights to flash on all around them and flood the night.

The stark panic in Nikhil's eyes flared. The man walked toward the car, slowly at first, then he broke into a run. “Nic?” He reached the car and peered into the window. An incredible array of emotions crashed across his face.

He yanked the door open and bodily lifted Nikhil out of the car. “Nic? What the fuck are you doing here?” He pulled him close. Pushed him away, looked at him to make sure it was really him, and then squashed him into another bone-crushing hug as Nikhil barely kept up.

“Ria!” he hollered over his shoulder.

An older woman, who had Nikhil's exact face, only softer and prettier, appeared in the doorway. “Stop shouting. Your wife is otherwise occupied right n—” The woman's eyes landed on the two men locked in an embrace and her hand flew to her mouth.

“Nikhil?” Her voice cracked. The two men separated and turned to her. Nikhil's cousin lifted his shoulder and wiped his face against his shirt.

Nikhil took two steps toward the woman and she broke into a run, stopping only when she was inches from him. She touched his face and then she pulled him so close, so hard, that even from inside the car Jess's chest tightened with the force of it. It was a scuffle of searching and engulfing and absorbing. It took Nikhil a moment, but when he wrapped his arms around her, the force of his response lifted her off her feet.

She pulled away, the harsh lights catching the wetness on her cheeks as she held his face. “My baby, you're home.”

An older man came through the door next, stopped short when he saw Nikhil, grabbed him out of his mother's arms, and pulled him to his chest. Nikhil's cousin hollered his wife's name again. She ran out, one hand clasped under the huge stomach that preceded her. “Viky! Why are you yelling like a madman?”

Her husband ran to her. “Ria, slow down.” He grasped her shoulders and turned her around to face Nikhil.

Like the rest of them, one look at Nikhil and an explosion of emotions filled her face. Nikhil turned to her. But before she could hug him, he stepped back, his entire body going utterly still.

Every one of them went still. So still, in fact, a ghost might as well have descended in their midst.

“You're pregnant,” he said, his voice so strained, Jess's heart turned over.

The family, who had attacked him with such fierce affection, drew back as one.

Nikhil looked from one to the other. “And no one bothered to tell me?”

The male cousin spoke first. “Can we take this inside? It's freezing and Ria needs to be inside.”

“Why? Is something wrong with the pregnancy?” Nikhil's voice switched seamlessly from anger to worry.

“I'm fine, everything is okay. Can we go inside, please?” The pregnant woman spoke and the smile she forced onto her face made Jess's heartbeat speed up. Bloody hell. She knew that smile. She knew this woman. It was that actress, Ria Parkar. Oh God. She had danced behind the woman in three films. Jess tugged her hood over her head and sank deeper into the shadows.

Nikhil turned to the car and found her eyes in the darkness. His eyes were more vulnerable, more naked, than she'd ever seen them. His pain more exposed to her than it had ever been before. She held his stare, wishing she could pull him back into the car and drive back in time.

“Is there someone else in the car?” someone asked.

“Nikhil, who's with you?”

Nikhil strode back to the car, clinging to her gaze like a drowning man, and opened her door.

“I'm sorry,” he said in a soft voice. “Are you okay?”

“I'm fine,” she said, realizing for the first time that he always asked her that when he himself wasn't okay.

He stepped back to let her out. His family flanked him like troops bringing up the rear. They studied her as if she had just stepped off a spaceship with more limbs than they had expected and she was about to abduct their precious child.

“I think you've done the impossible and made my family speechless.” He smiled his halfhearted smile, leaving his cheeks heart-breakingly unchanged.

“That she has,” the older man, who had to be Nikhil's father, said, placing a hand on his son's shoulder. “But that's no reason to be rude. Aren't you going to introduce us?” He said it in a kindly enough manner, but there was no missing the reprimand.

“This is my friend Jess,” Nikhil said without taking his eyes off her.

A gasp rose behind him. “Nikhil!” one of the women said.

He closed his eyes and drew a breath. “I said Jess.” He stressed the
s
in the name she had been given. Possibly for this very reason.

Ria Parkar's husband pushed Nikhil out of the way and stuck his hand out at Jess. “Hi, Jess. Is that short for Jessica?”

She put her hand in his and let him give it a shake. “No.”

Nikhil looked sallow under all those lights.

“I'm Vikram. It's nice to meet you.” Vikram gave her an open if quick smile and turned to the rest of the family. “This is Nic's dad, Dr. Vijay Joshi. That's his mom, Uma, and that's my wife, Ria, who needs to be inside.”

He pulled Jess out of the car and pushed her and Nikhil toward the house. “We'll do the rest inside.” His eyes went to his wife. “Please. Nic, help me out here, man. She won't go in if you don't.” He walked around the car, leaned into the driver's side, and popped open the hood.

Nikhil placed one hand on the small of Jess's back. It was an unconscious move and so unexpected she should have started. Instead, it felt so essential to this moment that she let her body adjust to the weight of it and tried not to notice that she felt it, well, everywhere.

As did the other two women, if the quick widening of their eyes was any indication. Their gazes hitched on his hand and quickly met. A silent something passed between them. A something Jess had no interest in interpreting.

They headed back to the house.

“Please let me get that,” she said as Vikram lifted her duffel bag over his shoulder.

Nikhil's hand pressed against her back and nudged her along. “He's not going to run off with it. I promise.”

* * *

Nikhil couldn't believe he was hiding in the bathroom of his parents' house again. All those times he'd been in trouble—a B in Spanish (his only B ever), last place in cross-country (his only ranking in any sport ever)—this is where he had come. His Simmering Pot, Ria called it.

He straightened up, his jeans still in place, and stared up at the ceiling. He was home after two years. Two years that seemed like two decades and he felt nothing. Even as he had walked into the house, his entire being had been encased in paralytic numbness. He had felt nothing except the need to keep holding on to the complete stranger he had brought home. He hadn't been able to lift his hand off her ramrod-straight back. Something about the connection had kept him standing.

She hated being touched. He knew that. But somewhere along the way she had stopped drawing away from his touch, and she hadn't drawn away from it while surrounded by his family. His family, on the other hand, had drawn away from him. Shut him out.

They had kept Ria's pregnancy from him. How could they have done that?

Not so long ago he would have been the first to know.

Ria would have called him first, before she called anyone else. She always called him first about everything, and he would have assured her that she'd make a great mother despite all her neurotic worrying. Vic would have come to him too, madly excited but also worried as hell. Then Aie would have called him with her twenty pointed questions and done her reading-between-the-lines thing. Then his dad and he would have discussed every medical contingency, their private language of putting each other at ease.

That had been his role in the family. He had been the fulcrum. Until Jen. After Jen had come into his life she had taken on that role. She never took a problem too seriously, never thought anything was the end of the world. To her, every problem came with a solution and every happiness was deserved. Jen would have talked all of them down off their collective ledge, then she would have handed him the phone and let him cheer everyone up. Afterward, they would have celebrated the good news the way they celebrated everything. With a good Malbec and sex.

Except their own baby, who had gone uncelebrated to the very end.

He forced his mind back to the deep-green wall in front of him. To the people one floor below. The foundation on which his life had always stood.

They had shut him out.

Yes, they had all visited the ship and called regularly. But the thing that changed everything was the thing they had withheld from him. Apparently, he wasn't the only one who had been going through the motions. He wasn't the only one who had spoken but not said a thing.

Even now, standing in his childhood home, he wasn't really here. It was as if none of this was happening. As if that door didn't open into his room. As if that attic bed with the ladder leading up to it was not the place where Jen and he had made incredibly tender love the afternoon before their wedding while a houseful of wedding guests decorated the house with Christmas lights.

“Nic, you need help in there?” Of course Vic was the one who had finally come up to check on him.

“I think I can wipe my own ass, thanks,” he said, but he got up and opened the door and stared into his cousin's face.

“That's a huge relief.” His cousin's cocky grin barely concealed all that brotherly concern.

“You're looking good,” Nikhil said. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks. Listen, man, I'm sorry we didn't tell you. You know how complicated Ria's—”

“Where's Jess?”

Vic answered him with a raised eyebrow—a look Nikhil ignored and headed down the stairs without waiting for an answer.

Jess was sitting on a sofa chair, a cup clutched in her hands, her tiny body tucked into itself, trying even harder than usual to disappear into her surroundings.

His parents and Ria sat all the way on the other side of the room, gaping up at him.

He walked straight to Jess. “I thought you were upstairs getting settled in. Aie, which room can she have?”

He was such an ass to have gone off without making sure she was taken care of. But running away when things got overwhelming had become too easy.

“Both my room and Ria's room are empty,” Vic said. “Ria's not supposed to go up and down stairs so we're in the den.”

Nikhil turned to his mother. “She can have Ria's room, right?” His mother nodded, but he didn't miss the slight widening of her eyes.