Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 106422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 532(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 532(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
A stir at the foot of the bed, in the space I’d left uncurtained so the staff could monitor Diya from the nurses’ station.
I glanced up to see Ajay.
“Hey, I wondered if you were back.” Shumi’s brother walked to the other side of the bed, his expression drawn as he looked at my wife. “Hi, Diya. It’s Ajay. Just came to chill with Tavish.”
Lowering his voice afterward, as if he didn’t want Diya to hear, he said, “My sister’s the same. It’s so hard to see her that way. I’ve always been a homebody, but she was out and about all the time—she joined so many clubs in high school that I barely saw her all week. She used to come home after dark.”
Shumi hadn’t struck me as that socially active, but then, I’d only known her through the lens of her relationship with the Prasad family. Just because she’d been a stay-at-home wife didn’t mean she actually stayed at home the entire day. But what did it say if she had? If that involved and busy girl had become confined to her home?
Everywhere I turned, there was so much I didn’t know. But Ajay might be able to answer at least some of my questions. “You want to get a coffee?” I asked. “I need something to eat, too.”
He glanced down the hallway. “I should ask my father if he needs anything.”
“Sure. Your mom resting?”
A quick nod, his eyes not meeting mine. “She’s finding it hard to see Shumi in that condition.”
“Yeah.” It went a way toward explaining how little time she seemed to spend at the hospital—though truth was, I didn’t understand how avoidance was any better. Wasn’t she haunted by thoughts of her daughter while alone in an unfamiliar motel room? Better, to my mind, to be surrounded by her family in the busy environs of the hospital.
“Dad’s tougher,” Ajay added. “Or he puts on a good front, anyway.”
We arrived in the ICU overflow unit to find Shumi’s father on his laptop in one corner of her spacious curtained area, phone to his ear as he dealt with some issue at his workplace. His voice was a discreet murmur.
When Ajay mouthed the word “coffee,” he shook his head and waved us off.
I waited until we were near the elevator to say, “Must be hard for him to have to handle work even when he’s so worried.” The other man hadn’t actually looked worried to my eyes, but I knew a certain age and personality of male tended to shove all emotions down deep. Even more so in a patriarchal culture like my father’s.
Still, there seemed something…not quite right about Shumi’s family. Another case of one favored child, one ignored one?
If so, Ajay was a lot more likable than Raja.
Or I was projecting my own issues onto the Kumars. Might be Shumi just wasn’t close to her family, far preferring to nest in with the Prasads as another way to make herself the perfect wife for Bobby.
“Dad’s so senior.” Ajay pushed the button for the elevator. “They rely on him and I think he feels guilty not being available even at this time.” He rubbed his face. “The immigrant work ethic is sometimes the immigrant sense of guilt at being forever grateful for the opportunities afforded us. Your dad the same?”
“Yeah, he’s a workaholic, but I think he’s just wired that way,” I said, thinking of how happy my father had always looked tucked away in his office. “I’m third-generation. It was my grandparents that immigrated from India—so I’m now the slacker Westernized grandson.”
Ajay’s smile was startled. “Trust me, if you’re in finance, you’re no slacker.”
So, Shumi had spoken enough to her brother that she’d told him about me. “Actually,” I said, “do you mind if we walk to the café? I’d like to stretch my legs.”
“Sure.”
We were already descending the stairs by the time the elevator dinged to announce it had arrived.
“What’s it like, having such a famous mother?” Ajay asked, his tone a little hesitant. “If you want to talk about it,” he added in a rush. “I mean, people must ask you about it all the time.”
“It’s definitely…interesting,” I said with a practiced laugh. “Especially when I was eleven and she was doing the action movies where she was in a string bikini half the time?” During those peak years, she’d been one of the few actresses who could command serious award-winning roles alongside those of a sex bomb. “I could not go into the bedrooms of my friends without needing eye bleach. They all had posters of her on the walls.”
As always, the funny anecdote made my audience laugh and relax. I never mentioned the rest of it—the posed photo op where she’d hissed at me to “fucking smile” as she kissed me on the cheek, the way she spent long hours “going over lines” with her buff male costar, the argument I’d overheard between my parents where she’d suggested I’d do better in boarding school.