A Change of Heart

by Sonali Dev

  “Ready?” Nikhil asked.

  “Yes,” she responded, fully aware that the question wasn’t targeted toward her. “Did you want me to wait in the car?”

  It seemed far too intrusive, far too intimate, to be part of a reunion so painful. He waited to answer. Maybe he needed time to think, or maybe he hadn’t heard her. But he was no longer looking at her. His eyes caught something in the rearview mirror and he twisted around so fast she started.

  “Holy shit.”

  “What?” She followed his gaze to a huge red truck parked next to a brick mailbox.

  His hand went to his scalp, gripping helplessly at the stubble that was fast turning into a crew cut. “Vic and Ria are here.” There was panic in his voice.

  She had no idea what he was talking about.

  “My cousins. Remember I was telling you about them,” he said, without taking his eyes off the car. “They’re here. Shit.”

  Before she could respond, the front door of the house flew open. “Hello?” A tall man stepped out of the front door causing several lights to flash on all around them and flood the night.

  The stark panic in Nikhil’s eyes flared. The man walked toward the car, slowly at first, then he broke into a run. “Nic?” He reached the car and peered into the window. An incredible array of emotions crashed across his face.

  He yanked the door open and bodily lifted Nikhil out of the car. “Nic? What the fuck are you doing here?” He pulled him close. Pushed him away, looked at him to make sure it was really him, and then squashed him into another bone-crushing hug as Nikhil barely kept up.

  “Ria!” he hollered over his shoulder.

  An older woman, who had Nikhil’s exact face, only softer and prettier, appeared in the doorway. “Stop shouting. Your wife is otherwise occupied right n—” The woman’s eyes landed on the two men locked in an embrace and her hand flew to her mouth.

  “Nikhil?” Her voice cracked. The two men separated and turned to her. Nikhil’s cousin lifted his shoulder and wiped his face against his shirt.

  Nikhil took two steps toward the woman and she broke into a run, stopping only when she was inches from him. She touched his face and then she pulled him so close, so hard, that even from inside the car Jess’s chest tightened with the force of it. It was a scuffle of searching and engulfing and absorbing. It took Nikhil a moment, but when he wrapped his arms around her, the force of his response lifted her off her feet.

  She pulled away, the harsh lights catching the wetness on her cheeks as she held his face. “My baby, you’re home.”

  An older man came through the door next, stopped short when he saw Nikhil, grabbed him out of his mother’s arms, and pulled him to his chest. Nikhil’s cousin hollered his wife’s name again. She ran out, one hand clasped under the huge stomach that preceded her. “Viky! Why are you yelling like a madman?”

  Her husband ran to her. “Ria, slow down.” He grasped her shoulders and turned her around to face Nikhil.

  Like the rest of them, one look at Nikhil and an explosion of emotions filled her face. Nikhil turned to her. But before she could hug him, he stepped back, his entire body going utterly still.

  Every one of them went still. So still, in fact, a ghost might as well have descended in their midst.

  “You’re pregnant,” he said, his voice so strained, Jess’s heart turned over.

  The family, who had attacked him with such fierce affection, drew back as one.

  Nikhil looked from one to the other. “And no one bothered to tell me?”

  The male cousin spoke first. “Can we take this inside? It’s freezing and Ria needs to be inside.”

  “Why? Is something wrong with the pregnancy?” Nikhil’s voice switched seamlessly from anger to worry.

  “I’m fine, everything is okay. Can we go inside, please?” The pregnant woman spoke and the smile she forced onto her face made Jess’s heartbeat speed up. Bloody hell. She knew that smile. She knew this woman. It was that actress, Ria Parkar. Oh God. She had danced behind the woman in three films. Jess tugged her hood over her head and sank deeper into the shadows.

  Nikhil turned to the car and found her eyes in the darkness. His eyes were more vulnerable, more naked, than she’d ever seen them. His pain more exposed to her than it had ever been before. She held his stare, wishing she could pull him back into the car and drive back in time.

  “Is there someone else in the car?” someone asked.

  “Nikhil, who’s with you?”

  Nikhil strode back to the car, clinging to her gaze like a drowning man, and opened her door.

  “I’m sorry,” he said in a soft voice. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, realizing for the first time that he always asked her that when he himself wasn’t okay.

  He stepped back to let her out. His family flanked him like troops bringing up the rear. They studied her as if she had just stepped off a spaceship with more limbs than they had expected and she was about to abduct their precious child.

  “I think you’ve done the impossible and made my family speechless.” He smiled his halfhearted smile, leaving his cheeks heart-breakingly unchanged.

  “That she has,” the older man, who had to be Nikhil’s father, said, placing a hand on his son’s shoulder. “But that’s no reason to be rude. Aren’t you going to introduce us?” He said it in a kindly enough manner, but there was no missing the reprimand.

  “This is my friend Jess,” Nikhil said without taking his eyes off her.

  A gasp rose behind him. “Nikhil!” one of the women said.

  He closed his eyes and drew a breath. “I said Jess.” He stressed the s in the name she had been given. Possibly for this very reason.

  Ria Parkar’s husband pushed Nikhil out of the way and stuck his hand out at Jess. “Hi, Jess. Is that short for Jessica?”

  She put her hand in his and let him give it a shake. “No.”

  Nikhil looked sallow under all those lights.

  “I’m Vikram. It’s nice to meet you.” Vikram gave her an open if quick smile and turned to the rest of the family. “This is Nic’s dad, Dr. Vijay Joshi. That’s his mom, Uma, and that’s my wife, Ria, who needs to be inside.”

  He pulled Jess out of the car and pushed her and Nikhil toward the house. “We’ll do the rest inside.” His eyes went to his wife. “Please. Nic, help me out here, man. She won’t go in if you don’t.” He walked around the car, leaned into the driver’s side, and popped open the hood.

  Nikhil placed one hand on the small of Jess’s back. It was an unconscious move and so unexpected she should have started. Instead, it felt so essential to this moment that she let her body adjust to the weight of it and tried not to notice that she felt it, well, everywhere.

  As did the other two women, if the quick widening of their eyes was any indication. Their gazes hitched on his hand and quickly met. A silent something passed between them. A something Jess had no interest in interpreting.

  They headed back to the house.

  “Please let me get that,” she said as Vikram lifted her duffel bag over his shoulder.

  Nikhil’s hand pressed against her back and nudged her along. “He’s not going to run off with it. I promise.”

  * * *

  Nikhil couldn’t believe he was hiding in the bathroom of his parents’ house again. All those times he’d been in trouble—a B in Spanish (his only B ever), last place in cross-country (his only ranking in any sport ever)—this is where he had come. His Simmering Pot, Ria called it.

  He straightened up, his jeans still in place, and stared up at the ceiling. He was home after two years. Two years that seemed like two decades and he felt nothing. Even as he had walked into the house, his entire being had been encased in paralytic numbness. He had felt nothing except the need to keep holding on to the complete stranger he had brought home. He hadn’t been able to lift his hand off her ramrod-straight back. Something about the connection had kept him standing.

  She hated being t
ouched. He knew that. But somewhere along the way she had stopped drawing away from his touch, and she hadn’t drawn away from it while surrounded by his family. His family, on the other hand, had drawn away from him. Shut him out.

  They had kept Ria’s pregnancy from him. How could they have done that?

  Not so long ago he would have been the first to know.

  Ria would have called him first, before she called anyone else. She always called him first about everything, and he would have assured her that she’d make a great mother despite all her neurotic worrying. Vic would have come to him too, madly excited but also worried as hell. Then Aie would have called him with her twenty pointed questions and done her reading-between-the-lines thing. Then his dad and he would have discussed every medical contingency, their private language of putting each other at ease.

  That had been his role in the family. He had been the fulcrum. Until Jen. After Jen had come into his life she had taken on that role. She never took a problem too seriously, never thought anything was the end of the world. To her, every problem came with a solution and every happiness was deserved. Jen would have talked all of them down off their collective ledge, then she would have handed him the phone and let him cheer everyone up. Afterward, they would have celebrated the good news the way they celebrated everything. With a good Malbec and sex.

  Except their own baby, who had gone uncelebrated to the very end.

  He forced his mind back to the deep-green wall in front of him. To the people one floor below. The foundation on which his life had always stood.

  They had shut him out.

  Yes, they had all visited the ship and called regularly. But the thing that changed everything was the thing they had withheld from him. Apparently, he wasn’t the only one who had been going through the motions. He wasn’t the only one who had spoken but not said a thing.

  Even now, standing in his childhood home, he wasn’t really here. It was as if none of this was happening. As if that door didn’t open into his room. As if that attic bed with the ladder leading up to it was not the place where Jen and he had made incredibly tender love the afternoon before their wedding while a houseful of wedding guests decorated the house with Christmas lights.

  “Nic, you need help in there?” Of course Vic was the one who had finally come up to check on him.

  “I think I can wipe my own ass, thanks,” he said, but he got up and opened the door and stared into his cousin’s face.

  “That’s a huge relief.” His cousin’s cocky grin barely concealed all that brotherly concern.

  “You’re looking good,” Nikhil said. “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks. Listen, man, I’m sorry we didn’t tell you. You know how complicated Ria’s—”

  “Where’s Jess?”

  Vic answered him with a raised eyebrow—a look Nikhil ignored and headed down the stairs without waiting for an answer.

  Jess was sitting on a sofa chair, a cup clutched in her hands, her tiny body tucked into itself, trying even harder than usual to disappear into her surroundings.

  His parents and Ria sat all the way on the other side of the room, gaping up at him.

  He walked straight to Jess. “I thought you were upstairs getting settled in. Aie, which room can she have?”

  He was such an ass to have gone off without making sure she was taken care of. But running away when things got overwhelming had become too easy.

  “Both my room and Ria’s room are empty,” Vic said. “Ria’s not supposed to go up and down stairs so we’re in the den.”

  Nikhil turned to his mother. “She can have Ria’s room, right?” His mother nodded, but he didn’t miss the slight widening of her eyes.

  Ria’s room and his were interconnected through that bathroom he’d just been hiding in. He would bet his arm every single person in this room had processed that thought just now. Except for Jess, who looked like she always did, pristine and unruffled. Except there were cracks and he hated seeing them.

  Nikhil took the cup from Jess’s hands. The familiar aroma of his ma’s ginger chai wafted up his nose. He put the still full cup of tea down on the coffee table and held out his hand. “Let me show you to your room.”

  She stood without taking his hand, her arms wrapped tightly around herself, and threw a tentative look at his mother. The look would usually have broken Aie’s heart, but Aie’s face remained a detached mask.

  “Aie, I’m going to show Jess to Ria’s room.” He knew his tone had to kill his mother.

  “Of course.” There was no detachment in Aie’s eyes when she looked at him. “When was the last time you ate?” she asked him, her aie-voice so raw, he wanted to go to her, but he couldn’t make himself.

  They hadn’t eaten anything all day. Yet again, he had forgotten all about food, and about the fact that there was another person with him who needed to eat. The only thing she’d had since breakfast was that ginger tea that she hated so much.

  “We need to shower,” he said and another wave of discomfort washed across the room.

  Jess’s cheeks colored, and he swallowed his retort about the two of them not showering together.

  “But we are starving,” he said instead.

  As expected, the mention of anyone starving in her home swung Aie into action. She pushed them out of the room. “We were about to sit down to dinner. Go get showered quickly before the food goes cold.”

  19

  One of my earliest memories is of my mom picking me up from the orphanage. I was five, but I can still taste the desperation with which I wanted to be liked. The only other time I’ve ever felt that is when I met Nikhil’s aie.

  —Dr. Jen Joshi

  Jess felt like she was stealing when she touched the soap, the shampoo. She felt like a downright thief when she turned on the water. Nikhil had handed her a towel, shown her where everything was and how it worked. As usual he seemed far too focused on her discomfort. It seemed like the only thing that made his own discomfort bearable.

  And she had it to offer up in droves.

  There were many ways of being a whore. Being paid to use your body was just one form of it. Sometimes you provided a place for someone to shove their sexual hunger into and then took money for it, and sometimes you provided your own pain for them to shove their pain into, and you took your payment for that.

  Basically, you fed one need to feed another. She should’ve been more comfortable with the barter. If she understood anything she understood the transactional nature of life.

  But Nikhil’s discomfort at coming home had unhinged something inside her. It didn’t sit right no matter how she tried to rationalize it.

  It was obvious how close this family had always been. But no one seemed to know what to do with one another right now. It was so painful to witness that she almost wished she hadn’t been the one to force Nikhil back into what he obviously was not ready for. Almost.

  There was also the other half of that truth. Someone had to bring him back here, where there were people who would heal him, and being that person alleviated some of the unforgivable evil in her actions. She chose that option. It was the only option that made it bearable and she chose it.

  Already, Nikhil wasn’t the same man she’d found trying to drink himself to death on The Oasis. The signs of him edging back toward life were obvious, and now that she had brought him back to the care of his family, she refused to feel guilty about making him help her get back to her own.

  She was here. The evidence was here. This nightmare had to have an end.

  Once she handed the evidence over to Naag, the deal was that she would get out of the picture. He had promised he would never contact her again. Not that she had any leverage to make sure he kept his promise. People with power were the ones with all the leverage. They were the ones who always won. The only chance at survival someone like her had was to give them what they wanted and disappear, just like she had before.

  There was the little problem of her having told Nikhil what
she did and Joy’s real name. Huge mistakes. But there were thousands of dancers in Bollywood. Without her real name he had no chance of finding her before she disappeared. Then there was that little detail: Why on earth would he ever want to look for her? Especially if she did her job right.

  She toweled herself dry with the ridiculously lush towel and got dressed. Despite the thick sweatshirt she pulled over her tank top she felt utterly naked. One of these days that horrible exposed feeling was going to go away. It would just lift off her shoulders the way it did when she danced and stay off.

  She checked her phone. No call from Naag, who was surprisingly giving her enough time to do her job as she’d requested. There was a missed call from Sweetie. She quickly called back.

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Of course it is.” She could tell from Sweetie’s voice that she had woken him up.

  “I’m sorry I lost track of time. I saw a missed call. They didn’t take Joy again, did they?” She had tried to get Naag to promise to leave Joy alone, but he’d laughed. He’d been amused that she thought she could make any demands.

  “No, they haven’t. I’ve been with him every time he leaves the house. I’ve even been visiting his school as much as I can.”

  “And they’ve been there?”

  “Every moment. Baby, I’m sorry. I’m doing all I can.”

  “I know you are. Thank you. Is he awake?”

  “At six-thirty in the morning, on a Saturday?” She heard the smile in his voice and reminded herself that he wouldn’t be smiling if things weren’t under control.

  “Was he the one who called me?”

  “Must’ve been, because it wasn’t me.” Sweetie’s love for her baby was clear in Sweetie’s voice, and she focused on it. It was the only way she could leave Joy with him for so very long.