by Sonali Dev
28
I think I’m in love.
With my boyfriend’s mother.
—Dr. Jen Joshi
Maybe Jess shouldn’t have agreed when Nikhil’s mother asked her to join Ria Parkar and her in making sweets for the cravings feast. But Nikhil had embraced the idea of the feast with such courage, she couldn’t shove him back into hell by forcing him to Jen’s home in the city so soon after all that joy and lightness had emanated from him. The stronger he was, the faster they would get through the nightmare. She had been right; the baby shower preparations were exactly what he needed.
She finished wiping her hands in the powder room and hung the towel back on its shiny chrome ring. Her phone buzzed in her pocket. A text from Naag. Yet another reminder of why she was here. As if she could forget.
What if she did forget? What if they didn’t find the evidence? What if they did? Was there even a way out of this?
Another text. I met an old friend of yours from Calcutta. She doesn’t remember you having a husband.
Before she knew it, she was dialing Sweetie.
“I want you to take Joy and run away to somewhere safe.”
“Hello? Babes, are you okay?”
“Just for a little while. Just until I know what to do. Your sister lives in London. It should be pretty safe there, right?”
“You know I’ll do whatever it takes to keep Joy safe,” he said in his most calming voice. She had heard him use it on his hothead Armaan a million times. He’d never had to use it on her. “Just let me know what you need and I’ll call Didi and arrange things.”
But what if Naag found out what she was planning?
One of my men loves slapping children around.
What had she done? Why had she called Sweetie? When she knew escape wasn’t possible. His men were watching Joy every day. Even if he disappeared, they still knew where to find her. Leaving Joy without a mother was only a little bit better than leaving her without Joy.
“No. Don’t do anything yet. I’m sorry. I just lost my mind for a bit.” She took a breath. “Just tell Joy not to be afraid.”
“Your baby boy is a superhero, babes. We should all learn how not to be afraid from him.”
This was true. She thanked Sweetie for reminding her and ended the call. Something told her she’d just made a huge mistake by calling Sweetie. But for those few minutes when she had imagined him disappearing with Joy to safety, the massive weight on her shoulders had eased. It had been a self-indulgent escape to act without thinking like that.
That text had shoved her off her feet. The one thing she knew for sure was that she would die, she would kill, to keep Joy from ever finding out where he came from. She deleted the text and shoved the phone into her pocket. She needed to get Nikhil to the city. But first she needed to regain control before going back into that kitchen. Because all she would find there was more self-indulgent escape standing in her way.
* * *
“She seems really nice,” Vic said, taking another sip of his beer. It was all kinds of weird, and still somehow nice, to be standing in his parents’ kitchen with Vic, drinking beer and watching Ria and Aie bicker over cooking. Except Jess was there with them, looking so uncomfortable he had a good mind to pull her away.
“And she’s definitely easy on the eyes.” Vic studied him as though they were teenagers again and he was trying to figure out if Nic had a crush on someone.
Nikhil gripped his chest and gave him a shocked look. “Since when did you think any woman was beautiful? I thought that never happened on Planet Ria.”
“Don’t be ridiculous—no one’s as beautiful as Ria.” As soon as Vic had said it he looked so guilty Nic wanted to punch him in the face.
At least Ria, Aie, and Baba were out there with their damned worry. He could almost see the reel of his life with Jen run in their heads when they talked to him.
But Vic tried to act like everything was cool, except he couldn’t touch Ria, or talk about the baby he had so badly wanted. Now he studied his beer to keep from looking at his wife, lest it make Nikhil break down.
Vic was also completely wrong about Jess. She wasn’t merely easy on the eyes, she was beautiful. Or maybe beautiful was too insipid a word for her.
There was something otherworldly about her. Especially standing under those pendant lights over the kitchen island, her hair all shiny around her luminous face, she looked like one of those watercolors his mother loved so much, translucent, ethereal, all that lightness of color and stroke essential to capture the tentative pout of her mouth, the exact crystalline caramel of her eyes. How had he missed those pinprick dimples that dipped at the corners of her mouth and made her look like she wasn’t quite ready to face the world? Except there was no innocence there. Only a fractured awareness of a world that destroyed innocence.
She turned and looked at him, possibly sensing his study. Red collected in the high curve of her cheeks as though an invisible artist brushed it across her face as he watched. Her eyes, however, remained as controlled as ever. What would it take for those eyes to flood with emotion, with joy, with anger, with anything at all that didn’t flash by in a second?
Her chin went up and he realized he was frowning at her.
“You have a child?” Aie said, giving Jess a rare look of openmouthed incomprehension.
Ria’s hands stilled on the dough she was shaping into balls. She turned to Jess as though seeing her for the first time.
He knew Jess was eager to head to Jen’s condo, but she had said yes when Aie had asked if she wanted to help her make karanjis. It was his favorite food on earth, and now he loved it even more, because, well, because there was that coward thing.
Apparently, along with teaching Ria and Jess how to make karanjis, Aie was carrying out a stealth information-gathering mission on the side.
“Yes,” Jess said, and smiled at Aie, her eagerness to please naked on her face. The pinprick dimples that dug into her cheeks at the two edges of her mouth danced in and out of sight.
Aie’s eyes warmed. “But you look like a child yourself.”
“I was eighteen when I had him.”
That information was met with silence. But it didn’t disturb her. As usual, talking about Joy seemed to make her ready to take on the world.
“And his dad?”
“Aie!” he said, glaring at his mother. “Please!”
Naturally, Jess looked calm as ever. But all the warmth was gone from her eyes.
“No, that’s okay. Really.” She gave him a small smile and turned back to the dough she was rolling into small round sheets the way Aie had just shown her. “I don’t have a husband,” she said in a voice as serene as her face. “He died before Joy was born.”
Shock and guilt cartwheeled across Aie’s face.
Ria placed a hand on Jess’s shoulder; she looked shaken, all her usual self-possession gone. “Was it hard?” she asked. “Having him by yourself?”
Jess examined the dough circle in front of her, but it was the question she was studying with care.
“Not at all,” she said, finally looking up at Ria. “Joy made it easy. Actually, he made it possible for me to go on. The last thing I ever expected to be was a mother. The last thing I ever imagined knowing how to do was raise a child. Especially when I didn’t have a single thing to give him. But he needed nothing but me. And I . . . I had everything I needed when I had him.” Suddenly, she looked embarrassed, her signature look that said she had given away too much.
Ria looked like someone had kicked her. Her hand was wrapped around her belly and she wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes. Vic went to her and rubbed her shoulders and she leaned into him, both of them forgetting that Nikhil was in the room.
Emotions bubbled up in Jess’s eyes too, but she blanketed them before he could name them.
“Am I doing it right?” she asked Aie.
“Oh beta, you’re doing it perfectly.” Aie put a spoonful of sweetened coconut filling into the pastry Jess had r
olled out and folded it over. “I’m so sorry. And you were just eighteen?”
“That filling looks delicious. I managed. He is a very easy baby.”
“It’s coconuts, jaggery, and cashew nuts, what’s not to be delicious? Here.” Aie held up a spoonful to Jess’s mouth and Jess took a bite. “Do you at least have help back in Mumbai? Your parents?”
Jess’s eyes fluttered shut as though flavors were exploding in her mouth. No surprise there: Aie’s karanjis were the most delicious things in the world. Pleasure warred against the pain Aie was unintentionally inflicting.
“This is amazing. No, my parents passed away when I was younger. I’m an orphan,” she said through a mouthful.
“Not too sweet?” Aie asked.
Jess shook her head fervently. “It’s not too anything.” The sincerity in her eyes made it hard for him to breathe.
“The trick with desserts is the sweetness. They can’t be too sweet. That kills it, and then if they aren’t sweet enough, that’s even worse. My Nic was very easy too. He’s always been an easy boy.”
“Did you just tell her I’m easy, Aie? Really?”
* * *
Jess would never get used to listening to that smile in Nikhil’s voice. The one that said he was sharing an inside joke and he had no doubt you found it just as funny as he did. The sound of that smile made both Ria Parkar’s and his aie’s faces light up.
She would also never get used to him standing this close to her. He reached over her shoulder and stuck a finger in the filling.
“Nikhil!” This from Ria Parkar, who thrust her ever-ready spoon into his hand and actually smiled at Jess. Not her usual frosty smile, but an open and kind one. The type of smile Jess had seen her smile at her family but never at her.
Nikhil’s mother picked up the pastry she’d just folded into a neat little D shape and trimmed its edge with a serrated cutter. “Ta da!” she said, holding it up, “our karanji is ready to be fried!”
Jess and Ria followed her lead, rolling out and stuffing the dough, and soon the large steel tray was lined with concentric half-moons ready to be fried. Jess had loved working in the kitchen with Aama. Loved all the little tricks Aama loved to teach her as they went along, like adding a pinch of sugar to anything spicy to pull out the flavor. Having Aama share the kitchen with her had made her feel all grown up, like a sister, an equal, an accomplice.
“You’re a natural.” Nikhil’s aie threw an appreciative glance at her handiwork, and it pleased her far too much. “Jen hated to cook. But she did love karanjis.”
“She didn’t hate to cook,” Jess said, focusing so hard on getting it right that she forgot to think about what she was saying. “She was just afraid of being bad at anything.”
The kitchen went silent, as if she had hit a mute button and all the sound they had been drowning out suddenly found voice. The ticking of the clock, the buzz of the lights, the hum of the refrigerator.
“I’ll get the fryer ready.” Nikhil shattered the silence before it turned toxic. But his movements trapped a restlessness as he poured oil into the deep fryer and turned it on.
“Uma, have you forgotten that we’re seeing Dr. Stein in a half hour?” Vikram said, looking up from the huge bowl of coconut stuffing Nikhil’s aie had set aside for him. He had cleaned it out while they stuffed the pastries. “There’s no time to do the frying.”
Nikhil’s aie smacked her forehead. “How did I forget?” She put the tray down on the island. “We’ll fry these after we come back.”
“Mrs. Joshi, I can, I mean, if you don’t mind, I can do it. It’s just frying, right?” Jess said before she had thought about it. The oil was already heating, and all she wanted was to not leave everything unfinished like this.
“I’ll help her, Aie,” Nikhil said.
She turned to Jess. “Okay, but on one condition. Stop calling me Mrs. Joshi. I feel like I’m in a classroom. Call me Uma, or then Auntie if you’re not comfortable with Uma.”
Jess nodded and Nikhil’s aie pulled her into a quick hug before leaving.
* * *
Nikhil checked the temperature on the fryer. Helping his mother fry things before dinner parties had been his favorite childhood chore. It had felt like a science experiment, just like being in a lab but without the pressure of doing well.
“I’m sorry about the inquisition,” he said. Jess had looked so overwhelmed when Aie had turned the Aie Treatment on her.
She didn’t respond, her mood suddenly mellow as she fidgeted with the tray of karanjis.
“Why didn’t you tell me Joy’s dad is dead?”
Her fingers clenched on the karangi in her hand and it split open at the edges like a hapless mouth. She opened it back up and refolded it as if she had done this all her life. Her fingers so deft, so comfortable with handling food, in the strangest way she reminded him of his aie. “Is the oil hot enough?”
He checked the temperature gauge again. “Almost.”
“He’s not dead.” She pursed her lips and gave the edges of the resurrected pastry another squeeze, making sure it was perfect again, and he knew that was all she was going to say about that.
“Why don’t you want them to know about the heart?”
She didn’t respond, and suddenly he was tired of tiptoeing around all the sinkholes and mines. “Jen’s heart?” he pushed.
Jen’s heart. There. He was thinking her name, saying it, without wanting to double over. What a hero he was.
Jess responded with cold eyes and more pursed lips. “I thought you were sorry about the inquisition.”
He didn’t look away. It felt like he was being tested. Does he deserve the truth or doesn’t he?
“I don’t want them to know.” Apparently, he did deserve to be trusted after all.
“Well, obviously,” he said.
“Remember how you reacted? They’re never going to believe me, and then they’re going to dislike me even more.”
“Oh, that was dislike. What was going on in this kitchen?”
“I’m sorry. Your mother is very kind. Actually, your family is. I just need to get this done and go home, Nikhil.”
She was starting to sound like a broken record. Of course she wanted to get back, and why that made a blast of panic pop in his gut he didn’t know.
“What happens when we find the evidence? Do we go to the cops with it?”
“I’m not sure. But I think the police are involved.”
“There’s a cop, Rahul—can’t remember his last name.” He pulled his wallet out and dug out a plain white card. “Rahul Savant, he’s been investigating this thing for two years.” He put it away again. “I think we can trust him. Jen trusted him.”
“I know. He’s the one Jen was working with.” She was measuring her words again. She had this way of stiffening up. It was the most understated thing, like something moving under a layer of sand. The tiniest reconfiguring of particles. She didn’t want to talk about the cop. But his need to talk to her about things filled him, scared him, and he couldn’t hold it in.
“I think he had some sort of thing for Jen,” he said, throwing another piece of himself wide-open in front of her. “Did she ever say anything about him?” Until he asked he didn’t even know how much the thought had bothered him. Of another man having been close to Jen in the days before her death. Of his wife putting herself and their child in danger without letting Nikhil in on their little secret.
“I . . . I don’t know.” She dipped one end of a karanji into the hot oil to test it, then pulled it out.
“But what the hell is the point if you don’t know? If you don’t know, we have nothing.” He slammed a fist into the countertop. Jess jumped, and the pastry slipped from her hand and splashed into the fryer. Hot oil splattered up like a fountain. She stumbled back, one outstretched arm pushing him out of the way, her body taking the drops of oil headed his way.
“Shit! Jess!” He grabbed her arm and dragged her to the sink and turned on the faucet, his hea
rt hammering in his chest. He yanked up her sleeve and jabbed her arm under the water. A sprinkling of red splotches dotted her hand. “Where else?” He studied her face, her body. Dark spots stained her sweatshirt.
He scooped ice out of the freezer. “Where else?” he was shouting. “Did you get any on your body? He grabbed her sweatshirt where the spots darkened it and tried to pull it off her.
She stayed his hands. “Nikhil, stop it. I’m fine.”
No you aren’t. He wanted to yell it. Instead, he took her hand and started rubbing ice on the angry red skin, his hands shaking. He’d hurt her.
He rubbed until the ice was gone. The heat of his anger at himself melting it against her reddened skin. Water dripped into streams from their joint hands and trickled onto their bare toes until it was just his thumb stroking over the translucent skin, tracing the damage he had done.
Her skin was soft, indescribably fine. All of her was so very delicate. He raised his gaze. A mistake. She was watching him. Her wide eyes dry, her lush pink lips moist from having been bitten. Her nose pink from tears she seemed incapable of ever letting out.
His hand lifted to that blush that had a way of streaking across her cheeks and bringing them to life, bringing her to life. He tried to stop himself, but he couldn’t. Her lips were impossible not to touch. He traced them. His ears ringing. His body so close to hers.
Breath fanned out of her. Her lips opened an O in the center of the plump, soft pink. Those pinprick dimples dipped into her cheeks on either side of her mouth. His mouth opened. Hunger to taste the innocence of those pinpricks rammed hard into the numbness inside him.
He pulled away. The loss of her touch leaving him cold. The guilt of how good it had felt leaving him breathless.
It had felt so good. To have her in his arms. To have someone in his arms again. Just someone, not her, just someone.
