The Story Hour (37 page)

I opens my mouth. I am not sure what will come out—words or crying, rats or flowers, light or darkness. I just knows that the next few minutes will decide whether Maggie's story will continue next to Sudhir babu's or not, whether this will be the last time I see my best friend or the first of many more.

“How much more minutes in the dryer?” I say.

“What?”

“For my pant to dry. How much time?”

Maggie give the shrug. “I don't know. Maybe another ten minutes?”

“Please, Maggie. Please to sit. I have one more story to tell. Just one more. And after that, if you say, I will leaf.”

She look at me again, as if she trying to decide who this new, crazy Lakshmi is, and then she drop back in her chair. Her face is tired, her eyes blank. “Shoot,” she say.

Maggie waiting for me to speak. I thinks of all the stories I have told her—about Ma and Dada and Shilpa and Munna and Mithai and Dilip. Now I must tell her the story of Sudhir babu and me. How we both knows that Maggie is worth more than her one sin. As we hope we are also.

I close my eyes. In the dark, I hears the ocean banging its head against the sand. I have come as far as I can. What happen now is the job of the same God who made the small Lakshmi and the big ocean.

I begins.

Thank you, Dad

For being that rare, beautiful thing—a genuinely good human being.

You were incandescent—a sight to behold

A gift to cherish

Always

Always

Photo by Eustathea Kavouras

THRITY UMRIGAR
is the author of five novels—
The World We Found
,
The Weight of Heaven
,
The Space Between Us
,
If Today Be Sweet
, and
Bombay Time
—and the memoir
First Darling of the Morning
. An award-winning journalist, she has been a contributor to the
Washington Post
, the
Boston Globe
, and the Huffington Post, among other publications. She is the winner of the Nieman Fellowship to Harvard, the 2009 Cleveland Arts Prize, and the Seth Rosenberg prize. A professor of English at Case Western Reserve University, she lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

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www.AuthorTracker.com
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FICTION

The World We Found

The Weight of Heaven

If Today Be Sweet

The Space Between Us

Bombay Time

NONFICTION

First Darling of the Morning

Cover design by Chin-Yee Lai

Cover photograph © kentarcajuan / iStockphoto

THE STORY HOUR
. Copyright © 2014 by Thrity Umrigar. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 978-0-06-225930-1 (Hardcover)

EPub Edition AUGUST 2014 ISBN 9780062259325

14 15 16 17 18
OV
/
RRD
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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