by Sonali Dev
Their eyes were locked together, turning them into one being, indecipherable from each other. One gaping, stubborn void.
“All I know is that I would do anything to have another moment with my mãe.” As that truth left his mouth, another truth solidified through him. He would do anything to have another chance with Ashna.
She reached out and touched his hand. He watched their hands as they came together. Before she could pull away he turned his hand and wrapped his fingers around hers, his hold ravenous with need. Everything outside of the intertwining of their fingers ceased to exist. For the first time in as long as he could remember, Rico fell into himself. Breathed.
“Maybe your energy is better served in understanding the wound rather than wishing it wasn’t there,” he said.
A car honked and Ashna started. The traffic was moving. Sliding her hand out of his, she joined it. They were a block from his hotel.
“You’re very wise today,” she said, forcing a smile into her voice.
The feel of her hand lingered in his. He pressed it into his chest, leaned back into the seat, and closed his eyes. “Maybe it’s the meds. Better wise than loopy. Or are they the same thing?”
“What were you thinking, not taking pain medication after a surgery like that?” The intimate scolding in her voice was even more potent than her touch.
“I like to be present. It’s become . . .” He opened his eyes. “Essential. It’s part of the game.”
“So, the game, what happens next?” she asked.
The road before them was lined with taillights, an endless frozen constellation impatient to move.
“Nothing.” The word sounded as final as it was. “That’s retirement, I’m told.”
“What do other retired players do? Coaching? Broadcasting?”
His pai had coached after retirement. “I don’t think that’s my path. I was lucky with my career. I only ever had to worry about my game, about winning. That’s what I miss, the singular goal, the high of achieving it.” He felt winded by all they were sharing. He hadn’t discussed retirement with anyone. For all his love for his team, it just wasn’t the kind of thing they talked about. But letting her see the emptiness of it, right now that felt essential.
“Good thing you have the show, then,” she said with the kind of look Rico hadn’t thought he’d ever see her give him again. “You get to win another thing.”
Another laugh escaped him. “You don’t sound overconfident at all!”
Her answering laugh was only slightly embarrassed.
“I meant what I said earlier, Ash. You’ve been great on the show. It’s been amazing.”
“Thank you. It’s been . . . It’s . . . Rico, you have no idea. I . . . I still can’t believe I did it,” she said, as if in a trance.
All those memories of her guarding the goal that Rico had buried deep rose to the surface and wove into the sight of her on the pitch today, flying at the ball, tentative only for minutes before giving it everything.
“I can’t believe I played either,” she added quietly.
“You did it,” he said. Words he had said to her more times than he could count.
No, they couldn’t just be decent to each other. She wasn’t just a girl he’d dated in high school. She was everything. He’d been an idiot to think otherwise. He wanted that Ashna back. The one who had screamed at the ball and played like her life depended on it. The Ashna who kicked butt in the kitchen, even when it wasn’t easy for her. The Ashna who saw him exactly as who he wanted to be.
“Do you really think we can win?” she said more lightly.
“My father loved to say that winning was inevitable if the idea of losing was so painful you couldn’t bear it.”
“I know.” She turned into his hotel’s driveway. “You have to play like your life depends on it.”
He touched her hand on the gear shaft, needing the contact. “Winning really is that simple: you have to want it enough to hold nothing back. Most people spend a lifetime trying to understand what it takes. But that’s all it is. Single-minded love and tenacity.”
She pulled under the columned porte cochere and turned to him. “That doesn’t sound simple at all.” She released the gear and turned her hand in his, as though her need to touch him was as strong as his.
A lock of hair freed itself from her bun and fell across her cheek.
At long last, gazes locked, he did it, he reached out with his other hand and slipped her hair behind her ear. “That’s because there’s another piece that complicates it.” His thumb stroked the delicate shell of her ear and she trembled. The earth beneath them trembled. “Fear. The hardest part is to acknowledge how badly you want it and to stop being afraid of getting it. Because sometimes you lose because you can’t bear the idea of winning something you think you don’t deserve.”
She closed her eyes and he watched her, both hands holding her.
“We’re here,” he said needlessly. She opened her eyes—intoxicated from their touching—and found him again, mirroring exactly how he felt.
Her gaze moved past him to the valet who rushed over to get Rico’s door, then backed away when he saw them. Ashna untangled her hand from his. He dropped a kiss on her fingers before letting go.
“Thanks for the ride, Ash.” He got out, attempting grace, but only managed it because she had cared enough to help him.
She might’ve been influenced by her father, but her feelings weren’t fickle, and she wasn’t a coward. Maybe that was the reason why she let those she loved have their way. To use that love to pull her in opposite directions was to tear her in half.
He turned around and leaned into the car window. The need to go back to her, to press his lips into her hair, her eyelids, any inch of her he could have was an inferno. But she had to want that enough to come to him herself, free of anyone’s influence, even his.
Every piece of him might feel like a puppy ready to follow her to the ends of the earth, but their only hope was a love that felt balanced, that didn’t need constant validation. That was only possible if they both believed in it and believed themselves worthy of it.
“Thanks for . . . for today, Rico.” Her eyes, were limpid pools of longing, and yes, fear.
“Talk to your mother, Ash. Give her a chance. Maybe you’ve missed things. Maybe you can’t see them because you’ve let someone else’s thinking influence you.”
Some of the softness left her eyes. “Thanks. Even if I were influenced, she’s never done anything to disprove that opinion.”
He pulled away and she drove off, leaving him with the sense that there was something they both hadn’t said. Something that was essential.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Maybe you should come stay with us,” Mina said in the way Mina had of saying things to influence you without sounding managing.
“What you’re trying to say is that I should give Ashna some space.” Shobi paced Bram’s kitchen, while Mina sat primly on a barstool at the island.
It had been weeks since Ashna and she had argued. It had also been weeks since they had said a word of consequence to each other. Shobi had considered pushing her, but Ashi’s shutdown mechanism was so hard and quick, she didn’t have it in her to let it topple their fragile truce.
That truce had to mean something.
Ashna seemed to have come out from under that cloud she had been dragging around like the blanket she’d loved as a baby. It had to be the show, because Shobi had seen Ashna smile to herself the other day over her tea. Asking her about it had hovered on Shobi’s lips, but she had been afraid of sucking the joy from her child again.
“She’s under a tremendous amount of strain. Giving her a little space would be a kind thing to do,” Mina said, sipping delicately from Bram’s bone china.
Maybe being afraid to topple the peace wasn’t the best approach. But how to leverage it?
“Leaving her alone all these years was what caused the problem in the first place. I should never have let her go, Mina. I shoul
d never have let Bram take her away.”
Mina watched Shobi pace the kitchen and didn’t say the words Shobi knew she wanted to say. “You regret leaving,” Mina said instead, something she had predicted Shobi would do years ago.
“Leaving her, always. Leaving Bram, never.” Did it matter what she should have done, what any of them should have done? “For the first time in my life I feel like I have a chance to make amends. When I got here, I didn’t. Her hatred of me was daunting. But something has changed and I can’t let it slip away from me again.”
That morning Omar had asked when she was coming home. Do you think I should give up? she’d asked in response, because when it came to Ashna, she had never made a good decision.
Has she ever asked you to leave? Omar had asked.
No, she hadn’t.
Then I know you will stay until she does.
He was right. She couldn’t leave this time. Not even if she tried. The Padma Shri ceremony was a month away. Whatever would be, would be.
Shobi met the probing in Mina’s gaze. “Don’t you think something about her is different? More responsive, more open than she’s ever been?”
“Ashna has always had too vulnerable a heart, Shobi. That’s been the problem. She feels everyone’s pain and internalizes it, and wants to take it away. I think the reason she’s had such a hard time with you is that she didn’t know what to do with yours. She finds your rage at the world too daunting. She blames herself for it.”
Shobi dropped onto the barstool next to Mina and rested her elbows on Bram’s granite. “Do you really think I should have let it go? Forgiven Bram. For Ashna. Do you really think that would have made her a happier person? How long do we do it, Mina? Put our heads down and do what’s expected. I couldn’t. I couldn’t make the compromises it would have taken to become what my father and Bram expected me to become. When do we stop this?”
Mina reached out and plucked a napkin from Bram’s napkin holder. Her eyes were determinedly dry, but she had to blow her teary nose. A small part of Shobi wished she hadn’t brought this up. Mina would always regret that night. Shobi had worked her way through it, but Mina had never truly forgiven herself for sending Shobi into that room where Bram had once and for all destroyed any chance their marriage had.
Shobi leaned over and tucked Mina’s hair behind her ear. “How the hell is your hair still this thick and soft with all that coloring and styling?”
Mina laughed a watery laugh. “Save your reverse snobbery. Some of us choose to take care of ourselves. Not everyone is Shoban Gaikwad Raje, rocking the silver mane.”
“And who could ever be Mina Raje?” Smiling, Shobi moved her hair from one shoulder to the other. “Through everything, you’ve been my anchor, Mina.” She took Mina’s hands. “You have to know that.”
Despite whatever nonsense people liked to spew about women pulling each other down, Shobi would never have been able to come out of her marriage standing without Mina and their mother-in-law. Mina was right, though, Ashna had suffered most in all this and been the least responsible for it.
For a while both women sipped the tea blend Ashna had to have put magic in. “She’s so beautiful,” Shobi said, needing to use every ounce of her strength to keep her voice from cracking. “Being around her used to hurt. Now I don’t know how I ever left her.”
“Tell her that.”
“I’ve tried.” That was a lie. “Actually, I have no idea how to. Talking to me makes her so angry, so sad. I don’t know what to do with that.”
“She’s never been the same after Bram’s death. If anyone tries too hard to dig into that or to get her to talk about it, she withdraws so deep into herself, I used to fear she’d never come out. But I think the time for truth might have come.” Mina had to pull out another napkin and blow her nose some more. “She was covered in his blood, Shobi. She sat there with him in her lap until the ambulance got there. She wasn’t even eighteen.”
“It’s terrible to hate a dead person as much as I hate him, isn’t it?” she said through a constricted throat. She started pacing again.
The kitchen was exactly as it had been twelve years ago. Bram’s kitchen. Every detail made to his unbending standards. Many years ago, before he had conspired with her father to break her, Shobi had appreciated his love of beautiful things. He’d had such an eye, known how to make spaces, clothes, food beautiful. Just the way Omar had always known how to make words and thoughts beautiful.
They were both men who saw beauty. But where one believed in nurturing it, the other had known only how to grab. He had crushed every beautiful thing he touched because he only valued his wanting of it, his grip on it, not the thing itself.
“I have to tell her.” There was so much she hadn’t told Ashna, but she didn’t need to tell Mina which particular secret she was talking about. Mina knew them all.
Mina nodded. “Telling her might be the only way to get her to start to understand any of this.”
Shobi had finally told Bram that she wanted a divorce. Ashna was finishing high school. She was almost an adult ready to leave home and go to college, away from Bram’s influence. There was no longer the need to lie to her. Bram’s threat to keep them apart no longer worked. Shobi and Omar had been together for years by then, and other than Bram’s threats there was no reason to hide their relationship.
Never in Shobi’s wildest dreams had she expected him to put a bullet through his head because of it.
“She’ll hate me even more than she already does. She already blames me for his death; telling her it was me who pushed him over the edge will just confirm her belief. I’ll lose her.” Just the way Bram had wanted her to.
Mina was kind enough not to mention that Shobi had lost her a long time ago. “Or you’ll get her back. You’re right that something about Ashna is different now. Maybe it’s the show. Maybe it’s the fact that Curried Dreams has actually turned around. It’s been years since I’ve seen her happy.”
Shobi loved Mina for having been such a good mother to her daughter, but she hated it when Mina explained Ashna to her, especially because she was always right.
What if Mina was wrong this time?
Shobi bore no guilt about the fact that her leaving had caused Bram to end his life. That was on him. But Ashna would never understand.
Shobi was tired of the secrets. There were only two things to do. One, tell the truth, or two, stick with lies. The lies had kept them here for years, stuck in this quagmire but safely confined to the pain they were already used to. The truth was going to make things worse, inflict pain that might break them, but then there was a chance that it might start them down a path to healing.
“Truth is supposed to set us free, isn’t it?” Shobi said.
A small laugh escaped Mina. “Is it just us or does everyone have past lives they struggle to share with their children?”
There was another long beat of silence. How far they had both come from two young royal bahus smoking on a secret balcony. Unlike Shobi, Mina had navigated everything with such grace. She’d held her family together without damage. Then again, she had been blessed with a life partner who loved and respected her. Shobi thought about Omar and the familiar pang of longing for Ashna to have been his squeezed inside her.
“We haven’t had common lives, that’s for sure,” Shobi said, “but they haven’t been unique either. Marital rape is hardly rare.” All those years of managing it, but anger still bled into her voice when she said the words out loud. “There’s just too much Ashna doesn’t know. I have no idea where to start. It doesn’t help that she romanticizes Bram so much.
“‘Your father raped me and then I stayed with him for eighteen years because he threatened to take you away from me.’ How do you say those words to your child?” How did you say the million other things that wove around that truth? Were there even words to explain all the things she would have lost if she’d walked away from what being married to him meant or for having made that bargain.
&nb
sp; “Maybe she doesn’t romanticize Bram quite as much as you think. She saw his fall far closer than the rest of us,” Mina said sharply.
No one had realized quite how bad things had gotten with Bram. It was the most widely known fact about alcoholism, that it made you excellent at hiding things. They should have looked harder, but they’d missed the extent of it. Ashna was the only one who’d borne witness, who had shared responsibility in his secrets, because her mother had failed her.
“She might be stronger than you think,” Mina said.
“I don’t know.” Why should the onus of strength fall on Ashna? Hadn’t she seen enough? “She’s not like Trisha or Nisha, she doesn’t have their spirit.” Which was Shobi’s fault, of course. “She’s too fragile, Mina. How can I do it when she’s finally holding herself to—.”
Mina held up a hand. She was the one who noticed the sound first.
Shobi spun around.
There she was, Ashna, looking like someone had crushed her ribs with their bare hands.
Mina was the first to speak. “Ashi, hi, beta. How long have you been standing here?”
Ashna was staring at Shobi, devastation in her eyes. “Long enough.” Very slowly she turned to Mina. “Do you think I’m weak too? Does everyone just tiptoe around me?” Her voice was barely a whisper, but she might as well be screaming.
Mina stood and went to her, but Ashna scrambled back. “No!” she said more loudly, and turned back to Shobi.
She was shaking, every tendon in her neck stretched. For all her effort she couldn’t make words.
“Beta . . .” Shobi said.
“No! Please.” A long silence stretched before, finally, she spoke. “Remember that deal we made? You wanted us to talk. Let’s start with this. How was I born, Mom?” Her voice broke on the word Shobi had cherished like a dream.
“I’m not sure what you’re asking me.” Shobi kept her voice strong, because old habits were hard to break, and because she had no idea how much Ashna had heard.
“You know exactly what I’m asking. If you hated Baba from the very beginning of your marriage, then how was I born?” So Ashna had heard the worst part, then.
