by Sonali Dev
“You were never supposed to cook for her. You aren’t her servant, DJ!”
“I know that, Mum.” It tore a tiny hole inside him every time Mum said that. Ammaji said cooking was the most noble of all service. He believed her with all his heart. But he also knew that all Mum wanted was for him to make it out of these attic rooms.
“Your father wanted you to be an engineer. What will I say to him when I meet him in heaven?”
What DJ had wanted to say was, “Maybe start with asking him why he left us penniless if he cared so much about my future?”
He never said it though. Because Ammaji had once told him that anger tears up your insides. And that only he could choose who he let tear him up.
Years later he had forgotten her words and it had ended up tearing not just him but everything he cared for apart. Emma had been the one to bring him back from the brink then. And now she was lying in a hospital bed. He needed to get back to work so he could get back to her, and not let some insufferable snob level him by bringing up nasty memories.
The two women were still talking. Instead of going through the door, he stepped away from it. He’d heard enough.
Sod all if he cared what they thought of him anyway.
Rajesh appeared next to him and pushed the door open a crack to peer at the women. “Told you the maal here was fit,” he whispered. “They’re something else, innit?”
Yup, definitely something else.
DJ took a deep breath. “We’re working, Rajesh. Let’s try to keep it clean.” Walking back into the kitchen, he put the platter down. Then he scooped some ice out of the freezer and pressed his burning hands into it.
“In that case you take the short one and keep it clean. I’ll take the tall one. She looks like she could use something dirty.”
Somewhere in the distance “the tall one” let out a laugh, an unencumbered laugh, as though life in her ivory tower was just too splendid for her little heart to bear. Where the hired help just wouldn’t stop doing things to make her titter with amusement.
“Don’t waste your time, mate,” he said, signaling his assistant to start taking the ramekins to the serving area. “Your tall one has no interest in cavorting with the hired help.”
Chapter Five
Some people felt things in their heads, others felt them in their hearts; DJ felt things in his stomach, which was fitting for a chef. He watched as Emma dabbed and smudged oil pastels across her sketchbook. The waxy smell of the colors made it almost easy to forget that she was perched on a hospital bed. His Big Brother senses had been tingling all day. Now they mingled with that smell and made his belly cramp in discomfort.
Last night it had been past midnight when he finally got to the hospital after the Raje dinner, which had gone off flawlessly despite the caramel almost-disaster. He looked at his hands. The blisters weren’t as awful as they could have been because he’d had the good sense to keep on icing them through the night. Emma had been fast asleep when he slipped into the chair next to her bed. He’d been too wired to fall asleep, so he’d watched over her and nursed his stinging palms.
She looked so peaceful when she slept, always had. Like a cherub with those ebony curls framing her face and those soft cheeks sprinkled with freckles. Unlike him she had inherited their Anglo-Indian father’s coloring. His own skin was all Rwandan-Tutsi like their mother, dark and luminous. He’d taken Dad’s hazel eyes. They’d cherry-picked completely different features from their parents—her dark-eyed and light-skinned, him light-eyed and dark-skinned, as though they’d known that their parents would be gone too soon and they’d wanted to keep as much of them as possible in the memory boxes that were their bodies.
Right now, Emma was trying hard to look peaceful. But there was a difference between when she actually was serene, and when she had to make the effort to appear so. As her only living relative—or at least as her only living relative who knew her—DJ had no problem identifying which it was.
“Quit studying me like I’m a recipe you’re trying to reverse-engineer, Darcy!” she said, slamming the sketchbook shut. Again, it was an attempt at little-sisterly petulance, not the real deal.
She knew he hated his given name rather vehemently, and using it meant that she was pissed off and trying to needle him.
“What’s wrong?” he wanted to say. But asking your sister what was wrong when she’d been told she was going to have to lose her sight if she wanted to live was just . . . stupid. So, instead, he said, “It’s going to be fine, love.”
She shoved the sketchbook off her lap. Then picked it up again and hugged it to her chest. “No, it’s not going to be bloody fine!” Finally, she raised her voice.
Good, he wished she could scream. He wished he could take her to a mountain, into a forest, to the rooftop of the hospital and let her scream until she had no breath left. They could both use that. Some good full-chested lung-wringing yelling. Everything let out, nothing held in.
She had barely been able to whisper the words out this morning after she’d woken up. “The tumor is operable, but they’ll have to slice up both my optic nerves. I’m going to go completely blind.” Her voice had broken on that last word, but she hadn’t cried.
He hadn’t either. He’d wanted to. He’d also wanted to ask questions, respond in some way, but he had nothing. No questions to ask, no consolation to give. Nothing except an overwhelming wave of relief. In the end, all he’d been able to manage was to take her hand and hold it in silence for a long, long time. The Caine siblings had always been good at silence.
Then another flurry of tests had taken her away and he’d gone home to make her some chicken noodle soup, because some of the drugs made her nauseated. Then he’d made his daily trip to the farmers’ market for this evening’s job. One part of him looked forward to his work, to the soothing satisfaction of it. The other part of him was so soul sick, all he wanted was to not leave her side. Not that it mattered what he wanted. He needed every job he could get to pay for this surgery. He’d been praying for this—a cure, a solution, a way to save her life—from the moment she’d called him and used that word. Terminal.
The look she gave him left no doubt in his mind that she didn’t share his relief. Not only did she not share it, but she wanted to shake him for feeling it until his bones rattled. “In which world is it going to be fine that I won’t be able to see?”
“In a world where you’ll be alive.”
She locked gazes with him. When her eyes had started changing color, he had noticed. Six months ago when she had visited him in Paris, he’d seen it. The color difference had been much subtler then than it was now, but he’d caught it. Why hadn’t he pushed harder for her to see a doctor about it then? Why?
“I can’t do it, DJ.”
Everything in the room went quiet. The ceaseless buzzing and beeping of the machines, the murmur and grind of conversations and rolling carts from the corridor outside—it all stopped, swallowed up by her words.
What the hell was she talking about? But he couldn’t disturb the silence. He waited, staring down the answer in her eyes.
She put the sketchbook on the side table and reached for his hand. Her fingers were stained with thick oily color. Blue and yellow. Darkness and light. She squeezed his hand. “I can’t go blind. I can’t do it.” It was the calmness with which she said it that made him spring out of his chair.
Without letting her hand go, he sat down on the bed next to her, the springs jumping, his heartbeat rising fast. “Emma, love, I get that this is hard. Hell, it’s impossible. I understand. I do. But I’m here. I’ll be here. We’ll sort it out.”
“What will you be sorting out exactly? How to live your life in darkness? How to never see colors?” She yanked her hand out of his, leaving stains on his skin. “Colors are my life, DJ! I can’t live without them. When Dad died, when Mum died, when you left, they were all I had. I don’t need anything else. But I need them. I need to see. I need to paint to make sense of the world.” Ther
e were no tears in her eyes, her back stayed erect, but he felt her folding inward, dissolving in pain, and anger, and helplessness.
That’s what this was. It was shock. It was natural, her being in denial. He just needed to be patient while she worked it out. Because he couldn’t imagine how angry she was. He was furious too. He wanted to break things. Burn everything down. On his way to his flat yesterday, when he’d stopped at the railway crossing and watched the Caltrain race past, he’d imagined his car getting stuck on the tracks unable to get out of the way soon enough. That shattering slam of the train flattening the metal, crushing everything inside to pulp, that’s what this felt like.
“No, don’t try the silence thing with me,” she said too calmly. “This is not about letting me work through this. This is not a meltdown. I’ve made up my mind. I’m not going to have the surgery. Dr. Entoff said there were other treatments that would give me some time, the kind of time I want.”
His hands were shaking. Hers had gone back around herself, but they were still.
“Have you lost your fecking mind?” he finally managed. “Has the tumor addled your loaf, Emma Jane? This is not an option. I’m not going to let you do this.”
She grabbed his sleeve, tightening her fist as though she wanted to yank his arm off. “You’re not going to let me?” Oh no, she wasn’t calm anymore. “I am twenty-four fecking years old, DJ Caine! I’m not twelve. You don’t get to make decisions for me. You don’t get to dump me in a boarding school and sod off.”
He got off the bed, her words knocking the wind out of him. “I never dumped you.”
“I know that’s not what you think you did. Because you were thinking only about yourself. When you ran off with those boys, when you let those coppers drag you away. When you let Mum—”
“Emma!” He was breathing hard. She was breathing harder. She’s not herself, he chanted to himself. She is not herself.
For a long moment they said nothing more. They just glared—at each other, at their own helpless hands, at the useless gray walls. The hospital sounds became audible again, coming back into focus one by one. The beep of one machine, the hiss of another, the buzz of the lights overhead. Someone laughed as they walked by. DJ picked each one out, calming himself the hell down. Because, she wasn’t herself. This wasn’t her. This was her trying to wrap her head around everything.
“Listen, Em—”
“I want you to leave. Go.”
“Love, please, I’m sorry. Let’s talk about this.”
Her eyes shone with anger. Chocolate eyes—their father had called their mum that. Emma’s eyes were the exact color as Mum’s and the exact shape as Dad’s, so wide they usually looked like they were filled with wonder. His parents lived on in those eyes.
“There’s nothing to talk about, DJ.” The finality in her voice drove a nail through his heart. “I’m not changing my mind.”
He softened his tone, trying not to overdo it, trying to find balance as the earth beneath his feet crumbled. “Let’s talk to your doctor. Ashna says she can do anything. Let’s run this by her.”
“You’re not listening to me. Damn it, DJ, why won’t you listen to me?” She shook her head. “I want you to leave. Go home. Think about this there. Think about how I’m a bloody adult who gets to make up her own mind about how she wants to live. I don’t want you to come back, not until you’re ready to listen to me. Go!” This time she did scream, that last word, loud enough for it to reverberate inside him.
A nurse rapped on the door and strode right in. “Everything okay here?” She started examining the tubes coming out of electrodes stuck to Emma and the machines that surrounded her, but her attention was on DJ.
“My brother was just leaving.” Emma’s voice was a blade of ice. Who was this person? Where was his little sister? He needed her to be here. He needed her.
The nurse placed a hand on his arm. He met her eyes, begging her to let him stay, begging for something.
“You should leave,” she said, gentle but firm. She sounded exactly like their mother. This is what we have, Darcy. This is all I can give you.
God, he was losing his mind.
“Give her some time,” the gentle-firm nurse, who wasn’t Mum, said.
He threw another look at Emma. “Emma, please, can we at least talk?”
She didn’t even look at him and the nurse’s arm nudged him, more firm now than gentle.
“I’ll be back. We’re going to talk then.” His voice sounded stronger than his legs felt as he forced himself to leave her room.
Chapter Six
For years Trisha had patiently listened to Nisha go on and on about the meetings their mother insisted on holding after every one of Yash’s campaign events. Ma liked to call them “family tea.” But that was factually wrong on three levels. First, they were all, except Ma, coffee drinkers—a habit they had picked up from HRH, who prized his coffee addiction as yet another all-American badge.
Second, based on Nisha’s description, Trisha knew exactly what they were: postmortems. Where the family dissected every aspect of the event and analyzed every conversation in excruciating detail, then turned it all into action items, and then analyzed the ROI for those. Analyzing return on investment was a favorite Raje pastime.
Third, Trisha was part of the family and she had never been invited to one of these. For obvious reasons.
After last night’s dinner, Trisha’s resolve to change all that kept seesawing madly. She couldn’t stop thinking about how right it had felt seeing up close all the support Yash had garnered, seeing him be within touching distance of his dream. To keep herself from thinking about it too much or sliding back into the banishment zone, when a few hours had opened up at work, she had gotten into the car and started driving. As she neared the Anchorage, she called Nisha and announced that she was almost there.
“Where?” her sister asked, sounding infuriatingly baffled.
“At the Anchorage, of course. For the tea.”
“I’m not going to the tea today.” Only Nisha could drop a bombshell like that in such a gentle voice.
“What do you mean you’re not going?” Trisha snapped, rather less gently. “Aren’t you the one who’s been lecturing me about how important these things are?”
“Well, I didn’t expect you to go nuts and start coming to everything all of a sudden!” This time she didn’t sound quite so gentle.
Maybe Nisha was right. Why was she even here?
“One of my surgeries was rescheduled,” she said, contemplating a U-turn on the narrow, sloping private street. “The free afternoon seemed like a sign.”
Predictably, Nisha harrumphed, albeit daintily, and responded with, “A sign? What? Are you Esha now?”
No, she was not their clairvoyant cousin, thank you very much.
She pulled through the Anchorage gates and watched them slide shut behind her in the rearview mirror with a growing sense of dread. “I’m here now and I need you to be here too. I can’t do this without you, Nisha!”
“Stop being silly. The rest of the Animal Farm is there,” her sister said in the exact kind of tone her family used when they thought Trisha was having what they referred to as “one of her overreactions.” “Also, sweetie, you’re two hours late.”
“What? But . . . but . . . you told me it was at two!” Her wail had to have echoed around the woods she was driving through. This could not be happening.
“Nope, twelve,” her sister said absently. She was probably juggling five other things while speaking with Trisha on her Bluetooth. “Ma rescheduled.”
“Ma didn’t say anything to me. You didn’t say anything! And I texted both of you that I was planning to come.” It had been an act of courage to put herself out there like that.
Her sister remained ominously silent.
“Nisha, what?”
“Well, we didn’t really think you’d come!”
“I came to the dinner yesterday! Admit it, you say you want me to be there, but you
don’t really!”
“Are you seriously accusing me of that?” Nisha didn’t sound angry, just hurt. Which was worse.
“No,” Trisha said sulkily. “After yesterday, I thought Ma might be okay with including me.” Ma had said she was glad Trisha had come. She should have known that their mother would never go up against their father. And Trisha would not be surprised if HRH had decided that things were better off without Trisha’s involvement.
“You’re being unfair,” her sister said. “You also showed up two hours late last evening. Ma probably stood up for you to HRH, and she probably got the ‘I told you so’ treatment from him.”
“So she punishes me by telling me the wrong time for the tea? And you go along with it?”
“Stop being so dramatic.” She sounded tired. “It wasn’t like that. When Ma told you the time, she had postponed it to two, then she moved it back to noon. And, well . . .”
“And what?”
“And you aren’t on the campaign family group chat. She probably just forgot to text you separately.”
Right. “Wait, there’s a campaign family group chat?” The thought was a bit horrifying. Trisha hated that she wasn’t on it, but she couldn’t imagine the torture of being on it either.
She could almost see Nisha rolling her eyes at the other end. “Listen, I have to go. If you’ve decided to make amends, you have to be patient. You can’t barrel through this like you barrel through things at work.”
She did not barrel through things at work! Microneurosurgery was not something you could barrel through. And she was the one who had been shut out—why was she the only one responsible for making amends? And why was Nisha suddenly sounding so tired?
“I really have to go. Take a deep breath. I have to pack for Neel and Mishka’s trip. Call you later?” And just like that, she disconnected the phone.
This was totally not like her sister. But what was really scary was her sister missing a postmortem tea. Sure, it didn’t seem like a big deal on the surface. Unless you knew Nisha. The only person as batshit serious about Yash’s political career as their parents was Nisha. She had quit her job two years ago to start doing the groundwork for his gubernatorial run. Now she was the one officially running his campaign.
