A Distant Heart

by Sonali Dev

  Nikki put her chai down and threw a glance at Joy and Nikhil playing with the puppy. “I did some pretty horrible things when Joy was under threat. I thought I would have done anything to keep him safe. But in the end I couldn’t go through with it. I had to find a way to not destroy Nikhil’s life again.”

  Kimi watched Joy. Nikhil was trying to teach him how to get Lucky to fetch a ball. The puppy would not let the ball go, no matter how much Nikhil begged. But the moment Joy put out his hand, Lucky dropped the ball into it. It made Joy roll over with laughter and that made Nikhil double over too, and try over and over again.

  There was so much love there, so much life. Maybe love wasn’t what had turned her father into a monster. Maybe it was his choices. Maybe it was his inability to accept loss as her grandfather had known all those years ago. That wasn’t love, that was just who Papa was, who he had allowed himself to become.

  Nikki looked away from Nikhil and Joy and met Kimi’s gaze. “To answer your question, no, I don’t think I would cause the death of another human being so Joy could live.”

  “Thank you,” she said and hugged Nikki. For the first time in a month, she felt like she could breathe, think, feel.

  “And thank you,” Nikki said.

  Kimi had donated ungodly sums of her father’s money to help Nikki set up a network of safe houses for victims of sexual abuse and human trafficking that Nikki had dreamed of opening. Kimi had introduced her to a hotshot Bollywood director’s wife who had also been working on a similar project.

  Kimi was doing a story on the project. Her first real story. Until this moment, she hadn’t cared if it ever got published. But now she knew she would find a way to get someone to publish it. It was a hopeful thought, and it felt surprisingly good inside her. Even more surprising was the need to share the hope the moment it returned. And there was only one person she wanted to share it with.

  37

  Rahul

  Present day

  Rahul was going to miss the ocean. He was going to miss Mumbai, Bandra, the chawl, The Mansion, this rock. All of it was home. Well, all of it used to be home.

  Without Kimi none of it was.

  It had been a week since he’d seen her.

  He had tried to help her with the paperwork for Kirit Patil’s arrest. She’d been composed, but there was no peace in her calmness. She had been numb and distraught and distant. Inside herself.

  She had shut him out. This time for real.

  “Why don’t you tell her how you feel?” Mohit had asked him that morning. They had taken to going for a run every morning. Physical exertion was something they both enjoyed. He had learned that his brother had stopped playing cricket in elementary school. Around the time he had bought him the bat and then forgotten that he needed a big brother. He couldn’t turn back time, but he could give Mohit an explanation, and he had tried.

  Amazingly enough, Mohit still remembered so much about Mona although not too much about Baba. Aie had made her boys take a box of old things down from the loft and the three of them had gone through the dust-covered memories. Mona’s school workbooks with doodles in the margins, birthday cards she had colored in, her doctor set, her science medal, the doll Rahul had pressed into her hand when the fever had developed. They had started in silence and then found their way into old unforgotten stories, one word at a time, holding Aie as she finally spilled the tears she had held in for too long.

  Someone from Mohit’s gang of friends had led Asif to him, and Mohit had rethought his loyalties and decided to go back and finish his engineering degree. Unlike Rahul, he enjoyed designing machines and tinkering with them all day.

  “Kimi knows how I feel,” Rahul had told Mohit, and Mohit had rolled his eyes. Kimi, naturally, was suddenly best friends with his brother. It was probably why he was back in college. Rahul had felt like a teenager asking, but he had asked anyway. “Has she said anything to you? About me, I mean.”

  Having his baby brother laugh at him had been a bit humiliating but also nice, in a strange way. “She’ll kill me if I get in the middle of this. She’s been through some solid shit, so I would be patient, give her time.” He had patted Rahul’s shoulder. “You know how she is. She’ll find a way to put it behind her.”

  “And you know this from knowing her a month?”

  “Am I wrong?”

  Truthfully, Rahul didn’t know. Everything about her felt different now. And it didn’t matter, because he was leaving. He had accepted a posting in New Delhi. He left next week. He had a ton to do, but he couldn’t get off this damn rock. The tide was rising, and if he didn’t leave soon the path of rocks leading back to the beach would get submerged and he’d be a soaking-wet mess. Well, even more of a soaking-wet mess than he already was.

  “You’re leaving Mumbai?” she said from behind him.

  He twisted around and caught her swaying precariously on the rock. He grabbed her arm before she toppled into the ocean and she maneuvered herself down next to him, squeezing in tight because there was no space for distance here on their rock.

  “You weren’t even going to say good-bye?” she said before he could answer the previous question.

  “You asked me to leave you alone.”

  But she had come for him.

  In all the times that she had asked him to go away and leave her alone, he’d been the one who had gone to her, unable to stay away. Now here she was.

  She had come for him. And for the first time since he had told her about Kirit’s crime, she looked like herself. A slightly dimmed version, but the brightness was there, shimmering under that beautiful skin, shining behind those beautiful eyes, waiting to find its way back again.

  “I came because there are a few things I have to get off my chest,” she said in a tone that attempted to dump ice on the warmth rising fast inside him. “I need you to hear me out. And then you can decide what you want to do.”

  He already knew what he wanted to do. But he raised a hand, asking her to go on.

  She didn’t, not for a long while.

  So he waited, watching her watch the waves.

  Finally, she spoke, not to him but to the waves, her chin resting on the knees she was hugging close. “What Papa did. It’s heinous. Every time I think about it, it makes everything I’ve lived through worthless. I hate it. I hate everything about it. I hate myself for it.”

  “I know.” His words made her squeeze herself tighter.

  “Do you know what the worst part of it is? It was love that made him do it. It was love that made my mother disappear into temples for all those years.” She went silent again for several long moments and then finally faced him, her cheek pressed against her knees. “You know I’ve always loved you. Always. For as long as I can remember. Even over the past year when I tried so badly not to, I did.” She straightened and rubbed her hand across her chest, where that puckered scar sliced her in half and gave her life.

  He had dragged his lips up and down that scar. He wanted to do it again now, forever.

  “You make me feel this, this thing inside that makes me me. And I think I might be addicted to that feeling. I crave it. All the time. You know how I crawled into your lap that day? You remember that?”

  All he could manage was the barest nod.

  “I want to be able to do that whenever I want. It makes me whole, Rahul. It makes everything all right. Maybe just for a few moments, but when you hold me, everything falls into place, here.” She flattened her hand and pressed it into her scar.

  Thus far he hadn’t heard anything he couldn’t live with. But he knew she was working up to a “but.” A big one.

  “Kimi,” he said, loving how her eyes glowed at her name on his lips. “You know how I’m always telling you I never lied to you? Well, I did. But only one time.”

  “I know,” she said.

  He had to say it anyway. “When I told you I don’t feel the same way. When I told you I didn’t want you. I was telling the biggest lie of my life.”

&nbs
p; He reached to wipe the tears that rolled down her cheeks.

  She shook her head, and he withdrew his hand. “Let me finish. I know how you feel. I always have. But don’t you see? That’s the problem. It doesn’t matter that we love each other. Because look at what love does. It makes us cowards. What’s the difference between my father and you? You’re both terrified of the pain of losing those you love, specifically me. You deal with it by keeping me at a distance. He deals with it by doing whatever it takes to keep from losing me.”

  Distance? She thought he kept her at a distance? Was she insane? She was so deep inside him, he could barely breathe from it.

  “See, look at your face. I know how you feel, and I know how it makes you act. It sends you off behind your walls, terrifies you, makes you lie and push me away. But you know what, Rahul, I’m sick of it. I just found out my father loved me enough to let innocents die. This isn’t love. Not his, not yours. It’s fear. And I can’t live with it. I don’t want to.” With that she stood.

  But she had to be out of her mind if she thought he was letting her go after that.

  He held her hand. “That’s it? You come here, you have your say, and then you walk away?”

  She didn’t move.

  “How can it not be love, Kimi? How can it be the same thing?”

  She looked down at him. “Tell me how it’s different.”

  Where did he start? When there was no beginning, no end to this thing in his heart. “I don’t think I can, Kimi. I don’t think there are words to explain how I feel. It’s like you’re inside me, all the time. And still when you aren’t near me, it feels like I’m missing myself. How can I not be afraid?”

  For a moment she went all soft—eyes, lips, body. But then she steeled herself and sank down next to him again. “You think I don’t understand? That monster shot at you.” Her voice hitched. “You’re a cop, Rahul. Every day you leave the house with a gun holstered to your chest. I’ve seen you wearing a bulletproof vest. Do you know what I thought the first time I saw you in a vest?” She swallowed, but she didn’t break eye contact. “I thought, your head is exposed. They cover your chest, but your brain can still be blown away. Every day for the rest of my life you will go out that way and chase down psychopaths. I’m not the only one who comes with a high probability of loss.”

  He had never considered that. Never considered that she had pushed him to do something he loved, even though it meant she lived in fear of losing him.

  He let her hand go and cupped her cheek, cradling her softness in his roughness.

  She leaned into his touch. The way she always did. “I’m scared too, Rahul. But my fear of losing you I can handle. What I can’t handle is being afraid of how far you’ll go to not lose me. I won’t live forever. You won’t either. But the truth is, I was born with a shit ton of problems with my body. If you can’t deal with that, we have no chance.”

  He smiled. Only she could call them a shit ton of problems as though she were talking about pesky bird droppings on a window.

  She stroked his smile, her touch soft. But her eyes were fierce. “I can’t constantly be afraid of you not being able to deal with the pain of losing me. I can’t be afraid that you will push me away because you can’t handle that I can get sick again. Or worse, that you might do something horrible to keep me alive. I want you to love me for me, for now, for as much time as we have. I swear I’ll do all I can to take care of myself. I already do. But that’s it. If that’s enough, I’m yours. If you can only love me if you have a guarantee that I’ll be around forever, then find someone else to be terrified of losing and let me go.”

  He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her tight against him. The way his arm fit around her, her waist in his hand, her side flush into his. The rightness of it. The inevitability of it. How had he ever considered letting that go because he was too much of a coward? How had he ever believed it even possible?

  She looked up at him, about to say more, but he dropped a kiss on her lips. The current that buzzed from her lips to his lit up his entire body. Above them, thunder rumbled through the monsoon sky. For weeks now, it had been swollen with possibility, stubbornly refusing to give the earth what it craved. They looked up, a joint expectation gathering in their eyes, and caught the first drops of the first rain on their faces.

  She grinned like a bloody two-year-old and he had the crazy urge to do the same. Then she got somber as a yogi again as she faced him. “I can’t see my death in your eyes every day, Rahul.”

  He pulled her close until their lips were touching again. “Will you talk so much the entire time we have together?” he said against her lips. “Because we’re going to be together.” Because they already were and always had been. “Forever. And with so much talk that could be a very”—he stretched out that word, rubbed it against her lips—“very long time.”

  Her smile against his mouth was the sweetest sensation he knew. “Why, yes, officer,” she said, doing her best American accent from the movies, “unless you find a way to shut me up.”

  Oh, he knew exactly how to shut her up. In fact, he knew nothing he enjoyed more. And so he did. For a nice, long time. With the ocean churning around them and the long-awaited rain drizzling down on them.

  When the ocean rose to their ankles, he pulled away. “You want to go home?” he asked. Not that he had any idea where their home would be.

  She nodded. Didn’t even ask where.

  “It’s where we’re together, you goose,” she said. “But New Delhi sounds nice for a bit.”

  He took her hand, and they hopped the rocks back to the beach, tracing a path as ancient and familiar as the thing that tied them together. The rain made a racket as it pitter-pattered against the already noisy ocean. The heady scent of parched earth as it drank up the raindrops rose around them.

  “I feel like I should make some sort of grand declaration,” he said, stradling Tina and starting her up. “This moment calls for it.”

  Kimi hopped on and wrapped herself against his back. “I don’t need promises, Rahul. I don’t want to be loved to the point of madness.”

  He twisted around and fitted his helmet on her head. “Kimaya Patil,” he said, “I, Rahul Savant, promise to love you just short of the point of madness.” And with that they were off.

  A READING GROUP GUIDE

  A Distant Heart

  Sonali Dev

  ABOUT THIS GUIDE

  The following questions are included to enhance your group’s reading of Sonali Dev’s A Distant Heart.

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. Kimi often pushes Rahul to do things she wants him to do because she thinks they are good for him, like becoming a police officer. On the other hand, Kimi’s parents push her to do things they think are good for her. Do you think this is love or crossing boundaries? Why?

  2. Rahul is thrust too early into adulthood, and Kimi is trapped in an extended childhood. How do you think this influences their choices and their story?

  3. If you were in Kimi’s place, would you be able to forgive Kirit? How about Rahul’s brother, Mohit? Would you be able to forgive Rahul if you were in Mohit’s place?

  4. Rahul doesn’t visit Kimi in the hospital because he’s sure it would lead to bad things. Have you ever felt ruled by superstition? How does this story explore superstition?

  5. Kirit starts off thinking he was paying to move Kimi to the top of the heart transplant list. He believes this is somehow less evil than purchasing a heart outright on the black market. Do you think one is different from the other? How and why?

  6. How did the twin timelines work for you in terms of storytelling?

  7. Kimi and Rahul come from vastly different financial backgrounds. Kimi feels like that is only an issue because she’s the one with the money. Do you think society’s perception of significant financial inequities between couples is biased based on gender?

  8. Kimi tests Rahul’s friendship repeatedly by pushing him away. How did you feel about the way
they both navigate this aspect of their relationship?

  9. As a parent, can you identify with Kimi’s parents’ obsession with keeping Kimi alive at any cost? How far would you go for a loved one? How far is too far?

  10. What are the lessons Kimi and Rahul are taught about love by their parents, their community, each other? What are the similarities and differences?

  11. Grief is a natural response to loss. It is the emotional suffering when a beloved thing is taken away. The grief associated with death is familiar to most people, but individuals grieve in connection with a variety of losses throughout their lives. All of the characters have multiple things to grieve over. What other losses aside from death have any of the characters been affected by and how does that affect their grieving process.

  12. The stages of grief are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance (in any order). Were these evident in any of the characters during specific times of their lives? Did you see them transition from one stage to another or reach acceptance?

  Photo by Vernice Dollar of Studio 16

  Award-winning author Sonali Dev writes Bollywood-style love stories that let her explore issues faced by women around the world while still indulging her faith in a happily ever after. Sonali’s novels have been on Library Journal, NPR, Washington Post, and Kirkus Best Books lists. She won the American Library Association’s award for best romance in 2014, is a RITA Finalist, RT Reviewer Choice Award Nominee, and winner of the RT Seal of Excellence. Sonali lives in the Chicago suburbs with her very patient and often amused husband, two teens who demand both patience and humor, and the world’s most perfect dog. Find out more at sonalidev.com.

  A BOLLYWOOD AFFAIR

  Mili Rathod hasn’t seen her husband in twenty years—not since she was promised to him at the age of four. Yet marriage has allowed Mili a freedom rarely given to girls in her village. Her grandmother has even allowed her to leave India and study in America for eight months, all to make her the perfect modern wife. Which is exactly what Mili longs to be—if her husband would just come and claim her.