by Sonali Dev
The smile on Trisha’s face spread down to her heart.
“Why so sad, baby girl?” Esha asked, eyes still closed.
“What’s going on?” Yash asked, also not opening his eyes.
“How was your trip?” Trisha let Aji kiss her forehead before falling into her slot between her brother and her cousin and closing her eyes.
“The trip was successful. Nothing new. Now tell us,” Yash said, sounding like he might have turned toward her. “What’s bothering you?”
“I have a patient who might choose not to have surgery that can save her life because she’s afraid of going blind.”
The silence before Yash spoke was heavy and long. “It’s terrifying to suddenly be faced with a disability.”
Trisha had no doubt that every single person in the room relived the moment when they’d been told he would never walk again. “Does she have time?” Aji asked.
“Not too much. I’m hoping she’ll see the light soon. This new robotic technology, it’s amazing.” She had to clear her throat. “It can change how we remove tumors forever.” God, the robot was spectacular and she wanted to snuff out that tumor so badly she could feel her adrenaline rising. “But if she waits too long, it may not have a chance to help her.”
“Well, you have been putting all your time and attention into that technology for years, so it was bound to happen.” This from their grandmother whose hand stroked Trisha’s forehead. “When was the last time you ate?”
“J-Auntie wouldn’t let her up here without food,” Yash said, right as always. “I’m sure you’ll find a way to change her mind. But there’s something else going on, isn’t there?”
All Trisha could get out was a “hmm” laced with all the sadness she was feeling.
“Secrets can get heavy.” This from Esha. “Undressing a secret makes it naked and takes away its power.”
But how do you undress a secret that isn’t yours?
“Julia Wickham has been filming the patient. The one who’s refusing surgery.”
She felt Yash sit up. “Okay.”
Something in his voice made her open her eyes. She sat up, too, taking in his studiedly calm expression.
“She’s been doing these films and raising money for a while now.” Of course Yash would know this. “It would actually be a noble thing to do, if she weren’t taking half the donations.”
“I have a really bad feeling about this. I’m sorry, I should have pushed for more information when I found out that she knew DJ . . . that’s . . . um . . . my patient’s brother. Actually . . .” She turned to Esha.
“Your feeling is valid,” Esha said without opening her eyes. “But you can’t stop this.”
She said “this” and not “her,” and Trisha wasn’t sure if she meant they couldn’t stop Julia, or if she meant she couldn’t stop something else. Because yes, there were several things Trisha was currently trying to stop, like Emma making the wrong decision, the threat to Yash, the end of her sister’s marriage, the possession of her heart by an alien spirit who had fixated on a man who wanted nothing to do with her.
“Of course we can’t stop her,” Yash said. “We can’t stop anyone from making films on medical science, or anyone trying to make money to pay for the ridiculous medical bills in our country.” He cleared his throat. “And I’m pretty certain that the film that we’re really worried about was destroyed. And the NDA Julia signed was pretty watertight. She can’t talk about any of it.” He sounded calm and lawyerly, but there was a thread of strain in his voice.
Julia Wickham could destroy him and he knew it. No one would care that he’d been the victim, not in today’s climate. The worst part was that if he did get justice, if people did believe him, it could set the progress women were making back a hundred years. He would never want that.
No, there was no justice to be had. Julia would never be punished for what she’d done to him, and he’d always have to live in fear of the story coming out. Even after he won the election, it would always be there, hanging in his past.
He had every right to be angry at Trisha, to shut her out.
“I just wanted you to know. Thanks for coming out to see me.” Warmth prickled at her eyelids. “I’m so sorry, Yash.”
Yash got off the bed. “Get up. Come with me.”
“Where?”
Without answering, he grabbed her hand, pulled her up. And started striding across the room. “We’ll be back soon,” he threw at Aji and Esha. Neither one of them would question him. He was Yash.
They went through the sitting room and up the stairs, and down the passage that led to the attic playroom. Trisha didn’t have to run to catch up with him, but it felt like that was exactly what she was doing. A memory of trying to keep up with HRH as he strode across the halls of the Sagar Mahal flashed in her mind. HRH had never slowed down for anyone until Yash had landed in a wheelchair. The only thing their father had ever trailed was Yash’s wheelchair.
They walked through the playroom. It had gone from housing an indoor children’s play set, complete with slide and climber, to a pool table and a Ping-Pong table when she got to middle school, and back to the play set for Mishka over the decades. For some reason, no one had removed the slide and climber when Mishka had outgrown it. God, please, please let them need it again.
Yash yanked the dormer window open and dislodged the screen, then climbed through it. The man was as limber as he’d been when they’d last done this. “How on earth do you find the time to run?” she asked, wondering if she could climb through a window in her current unexercised state. Fortunately, her body hadn’t started to disintegrate yet and she stepped out into the sunshine on the eastern roof for the first time in over fifteen years.
It was like stepping back in time.
Yash sank down onto the ledge. They had been like the family from 3rd Rock from the Sun. Only they weren’t searching for their home planet in the sky, they were rooted in their home and surveying their life and dreams from its solid foundation.
“I really am sorry. I’ll do whatever it takes to stop her. I promise.”
He turned to her, and she blinked in shock.
Emotions darkened his face, anger and impatience, the calm facade of the public servant nowhere in sight. “I should have kept track.” He was livid. He ran his hand through his hair, a restless childhood tic that his handlers—as in, Ma and Nisha—had almost trained out of him.
She stuck out her chin, bracing herself. She hadn’t realized how badly she’d wanted to have this out. Her guilt was crushing. Her shoulders, her lungs, everything was collapsing under it. They’d danced around it too long. He hadn’t been able to so much as reprimand her when she so richly deserved a good solid blast of anger. It was about damn time, and if it would end this simmering coldness she felt around him, she’d take it.
“I swear you’ve apologized at least a thousand times since it happened. In fact, I don’t think we’ve had any other conversation since then. Not one. Nothing but apologies. You haven’t said one damn thing to me in fifteen years, except ‘sorry,’ Trisha!”
“I’m pretty sure I’ve said other things,” she mumbled, worrying one big toe with the other.
His expression did not alter, but now she wasn’t sure it was anger at her she was seeing. “So you made a mistake. So what?” He drew in a breath and she had a sense he wanted to shake her. “I want you to mean what you said about doing something to stop her.”
She looked up from her toes. She did mean it. She would do anything.
“Here’s what you need to do: let it go. Forgive yourself. Don’t you see what she’s taken away from us? You’ve let her ruin us.” He waved his arms around their view. Their mountain, with its redwoods, that he’d taught her to hike up. He’d been the first one to show her Anchor Point, the rocky ledge from where you could look straight across the clearing in the trees at their home.
“I miss you, Trisha. So you made a mistake . . . Actually, no. No, you didn’t. I made a mist
ake. This was my fault; I was the one who trusted her and allowed myself to be put in that position. I was an adult. You didn’t put Rohypnol in that drink. Yes, I blamed you right then, in that moment. But it was me. I needed to blame someone. I knew even then it was on me, not you. I should have stood up for you more with Dad. I should have tried harder to convince you that it was not your fault. I should have shaken you out of your goddamned guilt. God knows I know what living with guilt feels like.”
“Yash, it wasn’t all you. I could have stopped her. I knew. I knew that she’d hacked into my computer. I—”
“No. You were seventeen. She was your friend. This isn’t on you.” He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Let’s stop this, okay? I’m sorry. You’re sorry. So, please, please, let’s let it go.”
Her contacts moved in her eyes and she squeezed them shut. “You know I’m blind as a bat without my glasses.”
“Then don’t cry, giraffe. There’s nothing to cry about.”
“But the people of California—”
“Voters aren’t stupid. We’ve taken care of the video, but if by some misfortune she resurrects it, they’ll understand. I was twenty-three. I was drugged.”
“You know that won’t matter. The visual is what will matter. The fact that she was seventeen is what will matter. We can do something.” She turned to him. “We can talk to DJ . . . that’s . . . that’s my patient’s brother. He doesn’t know any of this, but . . . but . . . he said he wouldn’t let her hurt us . . . he’s not exactly friends with her . . . but she might . . . I mean, he’s just . . . it’s not his fault that . . .” Shut up, Trisha!
But it was too late to shut up. Yash was looking at her too carefully, one brow arched. Kill me now, please!
“DJ is the chef catering your event.” Stop talking about him. Talk about something else. Quick.
“Ah.”
She did not like the way he said that. She didn’t like it one bit.
Her brother leaned back on his arms, prosecution settling in to cross-examine the witness. “This DJ,” he said, sounding too much like HRH—possibly on purpose. “He’s the chef who did Ma’s last party? That was some seriously good food, ha?”
Idiot that she was she groaned. Please, please let it have been a groan and not a moan. Then she did that stupid thing she hadn’t done with Yash in a very long time—she turned the groan/moan into a cough.
It only ramped up his level of intrigue. Why did she have to have a brother who was a lawyer? Why? “He looks like a bit of a male model, if I remember right.” He waggled his brows in that probing way she knew well but hadn’t seen in a while.
She rolled her eyes, but thinking about DJ hurt. Yash’s searching look acquired a sharp edge. “You want to tell me about this DJ?”
She all but squirmed, which just made him study her more intently.
“You have to promise not to fire him.”
“Fire him for what? What did he do to you, Shasha?” Was Yash growling? The role of chest-thumping elder brother did not suit him in the least bit.
“He didn’t do anything to me.” She was the one, in fact, who had gone batshit drooler on him. “But you know HRH will not let him work the fund-raiser if he finds out Emma’s done the film with Julia. You don’t understand. He has to cater it.”
More of that studying ensued. “Did you tell him that we can’t work with him if he works with Julia?”
God, they sounded like they were in some sort of seedy mobster flick. “Yes, but he’s not the kind of person who’d dump anyone without reason.” Especially not on her word. “And I’m afraid . . . well . . .” Julia was going to hurt him. Trisha just knew it. “You can’t fire him. Please. He has to do this dinner. He’s here for his sister. He quit his job. The money. Have you eaten his food? But HRH. You have to talk to HRH.” She looked at her toes desperately.
Her brother reached for the hand she was pressing into her belly and patted it as though it were a lost puppy. “Shasha, sweetheart, have you told him how you feel?”
The choking was instant and violent. Yash started thumping her back to save her from dying. She’d rather choke to death than answer that question.
She tucked her chin into her chest, but when Yash pulled her into his shoulder, she snuggled into him like a little girl who wasn’t a badass surgeon. Then again, she didn’t feel like a badass anything.
How had this happened? How had she fallen for someone who despised her? Just thinking about him hurt, those eyes, that dimple in his chin, that voice that touched you like textured velvet rubbing against your skin.
“I’m going to kill this guy,” Yash muttered and she hiccuped a sob-laugh.
It would appear she had her brother back, so there was that. “Stop it. The desi protective big brother thing doesn’t suit you.”
“I’m going to tear him limb from limb.”
“Yuck. Is that a mobster impression?”
He laughed and his gray eyes twinkled. He rubbed her shoulder. “If you trust him, tell him. Tell him what Julia did if you need to.”
Another pathetic sob escaped her. Leaning her head back, she used the sleeve of her scrubs to squeeze back the tears. “You sure?”
“Esha’s right, the secret is what gives her power. She’s not supposed to be talking about any of this, but she is because she knows we can’t refute anything she says without acknowledging that it happened. At least in this one case we can take that power away from her.”
“HRH will kill me. And fire DJ.” She would never forgive herself if that happened. “You have to promise to not let HRH fire him. No matter what happens.”
He didn’t respond.
“Please, Yash.”
“You think I can budge HRH on this?”
Was that even a question? “Come on, how long has Dad wanted this? You’re giving him his dream. You can pretty much get him to do anything.”
Yash laughed. “This is HRH we’re talking about. None of us can ever do enough. I’ll be president and he’ll say, ‘You know you can be more, beta!’” Yash had always done a spot-on HRH imitation.
He had a point. “Whatever happened to unconditional love?”
“His definition of love is pushing us to meet our potential. Unconditional love is an oxymoron to Ma and HRH.”
It was her turn to laugh. “That explains our life, doesn’t it?”
He wrapped his arm tighter around her. “It’s a good life, giraffe. Because we have the Animal Farm.”
“So you’ll take care of it?”
He dropped a kiss on top of her head. “Oh, I’m definitely going to have to take care of it.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Carmel-by-the-Sea was beautiful in a way that made DJ crave coming back to it again and again. He couldn’t remember the last place he’d felt that pull from. Leaving London was tied up in too many painful mistakes and memories, and he had never had an interest in revisiting those. Paris had enchanted him, the way she did everyone. There was something about Paris that made you feel like you could forget who you were and become hers. But he was starting to realize that escaping who you were wasn’t the same as becoming who you wanted to be.
Here, in Carmel, in California, in America, asking who he wanted to be finally seemed like a worthwhile pursuit. Everything and everyone here seemed free to ask that question. Even the places here felt like they still hadn’t fully made up their mind about who they were. Even Carmel for all its old-world charm felt like it was aspiring to become something else from somewhere else.
“Why are you scowling at the ice cream?” His sister turned away from the sapphire-blue Pacific and mirrored his scowl.
It was stupid to let bad ice cream make you ponder the meaning of home. What was home anyway? Was it somewhere you could be just like everyone else, or was it where you could be whoever the hell you wanted to be?
When he didn’t answer, she elbowed him. “It’s supposed to be some of the best ice cream in the world.”
He handed it to
her, begging to differ. “Let’s agree to disagree.”
Jane smiled from her perch on the beach chair where the sun shone off her mirrored rhinestone sunglasses. “Did you know that it was illegal to eat ice cream in public in Carmel until recently?”
“Until the late eighties when Clint Eastwood became mayor and freed the people from ice-cream jailing,” DJ said.
“My brother is a food-trivia enthusiast,” Emma said, when Jane looked impressed that he knew.
Naturally he’d done some research about what people ate when they came here. Didn’t everyone look that kind of thing up before they visited a place? “Although Mr. Eastwood might have saved us the torture.” He frowned at the cone that was fast disappearing in Emma’s hands. “Let’s go home and I’ll make you some real ice cream that doesn’t use sugar as a stand-in for flavor.”
“How does one go through life only ever wanting to eat food they’ve cooked themselves?” his sister asked, laughing at him. The salty sea air lifted the strands of hair that had escaped her ponytail and framed her face in a cloud of curls, reminding him of a doll she had carried everywhere as a child.
“But going home sounds good. We might have to stop at the hospital first, though.” Words he’d been dying to hear. He tried to hold it in, but a relieved breath still escaped him.
They had spent the morning at Jane’s institute and Emma’s resolve, which had already taken a severe blow after Trisha had gone full-scale philosopher on her yesterday, had crumbled within minutes of meeting Jane and seeing her work.
On their drive to Monterey that morning he’d also finally laid out what was in his heart. “You’re all I have, Em, I can’t lose you.”
Emma being Emma had snorted. “Ship’s sailed, innit, bruh’?”
“No it hasn’t, you stubborn cow!” he’d said, finally losing it and yelling at his sick sister. “The ship is waiting for you back at the hospital. Don’t you see? Don’t you see the hole in our lives where Mum and Dad used to be? We’ve barely survived around that, and you want to do that to me again, because you’re too bloody selfish to care? How will I get past it, you think? Yes, I could have stopped Mum from dying. Yes, I could have used my brain and stayed away from Gulshan and the boys. I’m sorry, all right? Don’t punish me like this.”