A Change of Heart (15 page)

Nikhil sat back down. “By the way, you know how you were asking me how I know Jess? Well, she—”

“I knew Jen. In Mumbai.” Jess cut him off, her heartbeat suddenly haywire.

His eyes narrowed again, but he didn't contradict her. There was no question of letting him tell his family about the heart. With The Great Wall of Family staring down at her, she had no doubt they'd strip down every word of her story, maybe even knife her in the night if they thought they could take Jen's heart back.

“You're her friend?” his mother asked just as Ria said, “She never mentioned you.”

Nikhil stood again. “Seriously, I'm not hungry. I just drove twenty hours. All I need is a little sleep. We can catch up with the inquisition tomorrow.” With that he was gone.

And she was still here.

She felt her cheeks heat, but she was too embarrassed to touch them. Her hands turned cold over her still-full plate. Suspended animation. That's what this was. With her heartbeat as the background score.

“Jess.”

She spun around at the sound of Nikhil's voice.

“You're done too, aren't you?” Once again he held out his hand.

No one suspected how badly he did not want her to take it.

She didn't.

But she did follow him out. Right after she had thanked his mother for the meal and seen a mother's pain in her eyes.

20

 

—Dr. Jen Joshi

 

 

N
ikhil had been sitting on the floor of his childhood bedroom for over an hour now, but he could not bring himself to climb the ladder to his bed. If he didn't leave the room right now, he was going to go down to his father's bar and empty a bottle of Jack down his throat.

He slid open the door to the Jack and Jill bath he had shared with Ria and stepped inside. Now it was Jess on the other side of the door in Ria's room. Probably fast asleep.

The door to her side slid open.

She froze in place, her eyes wide with horror. Her arms went around herself, struggling to hide not her usual humongous sweatshirt but a fitted tank top that came down to her underwear and skimmed the most spectacular pair of legs he had ever laid eyes on.

She cleared her throat. His head snapped up and he caught the flaming blush on her cheeks before he spun around and looked away.

“I'm sorry,” he said, the image of her knees pushing self-consciously together burning a hole in his head.

He heard the door slide shut behind him and then some quick muffled movements he was far too aware of.

When the door slid back open he didn't turn around. “I had no idea you were still up.”

“I couldn't sleep,” she said from behind him, then added more softly, “You can turn around now.”

When he did she was exactly the way he had always seen her. Huge black sweatshirt, loose sweatpants. All that ridiculously beautiful skin over ridiculously beautiful muscle he should never have witnessed, put away. He really should never have set eyes on it, because now he couldn't un-see it.

The Goddess of Darkness without her darkness.

Her hair was tucked into her sweatshirt, a sign of how quickly she'd pulled her clothes back on. He wanted to flip it out, set her straight. Now that her hair was brown he couldn't seem to remember how it had looked red.

“I couldn't sleep either,” he said, sounding every bit like the pathetic bastard he was.

Her eyes remained undisturbed, no accusation, no judgment, no sympathy. Just a whole lot of knowing. Someday this girl would tell him how she knew pain so well. How she handled it with so much grace when it turned every other person he knew into cringing strangers.

He walked up to her. She looked startled, her flush going crazy and painting itself into two streaks across her cheeks the way it had a habit of doing. He reached around her. “Both our rooms open into this bathroom.” He slid the door in place and flipped and then undid the lock. “Remember to lock both the doors when you're in here, okay?”

He stepped back and she exhaled. “I've never seen a bathroom like this.” She turned her flaming face away and looked around the marble-and-travertine room with the Jacuzzi in one corner that probably had never, ever been used and the huge Ficus tree that reached for the skylight. He still remembered it as a tiny sapling his dad had let him pick up at Home Depot when they'd gone out to buy a lightbulb.

The space was so familiar he had stopped noticing the details. Now he saw them through her eyes. The huge skylight, the heavy wood-framed mirror. He had no idea if she meant the two doors or the decadence of the bathroom itself.

“Why would a bathroom have two doors like this?” she asked.

“It's called Jack and Jill.”

“Jack and Jill? Like the nursery rhyme?” She smiled a confused smile that turned her young and full of wonder. His heart did the tiniest little stutter.

Before he could stop it, that image of her in her underwear flashed in his mind. He backed up all the way to the other end of the room. “I have no idea where that name came from. But it allows two bedrooms in the house to have attached bathrooms.”

She slid the door open a crack and left it like that. The smile on her face widened the slightest bit. “What is it with us and bathroom doors?”

He had to smile in response.

“So you and Ria Parkar shared this bathroom growing up?” She seemed to have connected his family's reaction to him announcing that she would be staying in Ria's room to the adjoining doors.

He nodded and looked back at Ria's door. “I smashed Ria's fingers in there once.”

“Ouch.” She pressed her own fingers together.

“Yup. Slammed the door shut without realizing her hand was in there. She always puts the ‘without realizing' in air quotes when she tells the story. We spent a lot of time in here talking and torturing each other.”

“I can't imagine you torturing anyone,” she said, and then looked away, embarrassed, her fingers twisting together.

He walked over to the Jacuzzi and sat down on the marble steps and patted the stone next to him, inviting her to sit down. Neither one of them seemed sleepy. She didn't move.

“It was easy to torture Ria. She's very proper, and she had to have everything in its place. So I used to move all her stuff around. I thought I was just teasing. But of course I was acting out. I just didn't realize it until much later. Ria kind of took over my parents' attention when she came down for the summers. Then when she was gone, I missed her terribly. You know, your typical sibling shit.”

He liked that she got that Ria wasn't just his cousin. It wasn't usually this simple to explain it.

“You didn't tell me your cousin was Ria Parkar.” She said Ria's name with a mix of bitterness and awe.

“You know her?”

“You know someone who doesn't know her?”

He found himself smiling again. She was in quite a mood today.

“So the two of them, Ria Parkar and her husband, they're both your cousins? So they've known each other a long time.”

“Pretty much their whole life. They were separated for a good ten years. They got back together at our wedding.” He slid her a glance, but the mention of his wedding didn't throw her into a panic, like it did everyone else.

“That sounds very film-y.” She gave him a small smile. One that had everything to do with what they were talking about and nothing to do with the fact that he had dared to mention his past.

He got up and reached out. Grabbing her wrist, he pulled her down next to him.

She sat, but she tugged her arm back and folded her hands in her lap before giving him a curious look. “What?”

“Thanks.”

She blinked up at him. “For?”

“For being so cool with me talking about Jen. Everyone else freaks out every time I mention her name. It's not like just because she's gone, she's disappeared, you know?” Because she hadn't. She was still with him. Inside him. He would never, could never, let her go.

“I think.” She stopped and studied him in that way she had, as if she were dipping a toe in unpredictable waters.

“What?”

“Maybe everyone's just being sensitive to your feelings.”

“But I need to talk about her.”

“I know.”

How? How did she know exactly what he needed? How was he here? Sitting in his childhood bathroom, off the ship, sober, having a conversation. Things that had seemed impossible just a week ago.

“Have you? Has Jen, you know, spoken to you since—”

The softness in her eyes hardened just a tiny bit. “No. It hasn't happened since I met you.” Her intertwined fingers clasped and released. “I'm sorry,” she said, meeting his eyes.

He looked away and took in the details of the bathroom he'd stopped noticing decades ago. Fresh towels, a glass with a full tube of toothpaste, candles. How his mother managed to keep the bathroom from looking as if it had not been used for years he didn't know. But there was still life in it. It felt warm and lived in.

“Why do you think that is?” He must've been silent for a long time, because she looked a little lost when he spoke. “Why do you think she stopped speaking to you after we met?”

She tucked a short spike of hair that fell over her cheek behind her ear and he wondered for the umpteenth time why he had chosen to believe her. Her face had looked so young a few moments ago. Now lines of worry strained it as if his question had aged her in the span of minutes.

“I don't know. Maybe she's said all she needs to say. Maybe this is what she needed, for us to take care of things.” Her eyes were fully hard now. They could have belonged to anyone, even a stranger off the street, and he knew what she was going to say next. “We need to find the evidence.”

“You said it's in something I wouldn't throw away.”

Hell if that didn't leave things wide open. With Jen everything had been special. That was the problem with being two people who took themselves too seriously. All they owned was meaningful. They hadn't had time to be frivolous. To collect the mundane things other couples spent lifetimes gathering. With them, every little cup in their kitchen, every piece of clothing they wore, it had a story behind it. Every conversation, every moment, it had meant something.

He rubbed his thumb on his ring. The cool roll of metal skidded across his skin, in time with his heartbeat.

“Are all her things here? In this house?”

“I'm not sure. Ria and Vic packed and shipped everything.” Just the thought of their life together in boxes made him implode back into himself.

“They must've been really close to Jen for you to let them touch her things.”

Let them? He hadn't even thought about it. Vic had saved his ass and done it for him. If anyone had the right to her stuff it was Vic and Ria. “They were like this.” He crossed his fingers the way you did when you were praying for luck. “Ria and she were like sisters. Vic walked her down the aisle at our wedding. Aie and Baba—Didn't she ever talk about them?”

With nothing more than a quick widening of her carefully distant eyes, she shook her head. “Barely. She mostly talked only about you.”

The ring spun beneath his thumb. “She loved our family.” And his family had loved her.

They had been through hell these past two years too. He hadn't spent a moment thinking about them. He thought about his mother's face when he had left the dinner table last night without touching the food. His parents had lost two children, not one.

“At dinner . . .” He squeezed his temples and met her placid, knowing eyes. “Food . . . I can't taste it.”

Her eyes didn't flinch. “I know.”

How? How do you know?
But the words stuck in his throat.

“It goes away.” She cleared her throat as though her words too were stuck, but unlike him she was strong enough to push past it. The delicate tendons in her neck stood out in deference to her strength. “You just have to take one bite. Then another. And it comes back. Your body . . . it will ease up on the reactions. But you have to help it. You have to force yourself to put it in your mouth, force yourself to taste it.”

Whatever it was she was remembering, it darkened her eyes, turning those huge irises almost opaque. If pain had a color, that flat caramel was it. “And the way your mother cooks, it won't take much. Really.”

He had been such a selfish bastard. “I pulled you away before you finished dinner last night. You must be hungry.”

He stood and didn't bother to put his hand out. He knew she wouldn't take it. He took her arm and pulled her up. “Let's get something to eat.”

“Really? Now? But won't we disturb everyone?”

He had a vision of Aie in her kitchen. “You know what? I'm willing to bet money on something. I'll bet my mother has left food out for us.”

They tiptoed down the stairs and stopped short as they entered the kitchen.

Nikhil had never felt so small in his life.

Two plates filled with food sat on the dining table covered in plastic wrap. Two small serving bowls, also covered with wrap, sat in the middle of the table.

Nikhil could see his mother filling the plates for them, moving through the spotless, lived-in kitchen that embodied everything his childhood had been, her movements purposeful and so very familiar, warmth rose in his heart.

He unwrapped the plates. Rice, rotis, vegetables, and lentils were arranged in neat mounds. He unwrapped the bowls, chicken curry in one and sweet
kheer
in the other. She hadn't served the chicken because she didn't know if Jess ate meat.

Nikhil stole a glance at Jess. She looked as if someone had pulled her into a hug too tight and she couldn't breathe.

He picked up a plate, heated it in the microwave, and set it in front of her. She sat down. No words.

He heated the second plate for himself, then sat down across the table from her.

She was eating, her entire focus on the food, an almost desperate hunger in her chewing. He broke off a piece of roti, scooped up some vegetables, and put it in his mouth. He closed his eyes, forcing himself to taste the flavors Aie had worked so hard and so long to perfect. Recognition tapped at his taste buds. The slightest little nudges. His usual gag reflex threatened, but he pushed it back.

For the first time in two years, he ate. Really ate.

It wasn't until all the food was gone that he realized his face was wet with tears.