It broke her heart.
“So are you.”
He averted his eyes.
Then she climbed out and closed the door and he watched her until she entered her house and then he drove away.
3.
Her car came back as promised the next day, a few hours after she’d taken Sardar-ji’s taxi to work. All the denting and painting was done. Not a scratch on it. It was delivered by a rangy, cheery mechanic in blue overalls and a Brahmin’s topknot; a boy following him on a scooter took him away again. As if nothing had happened.
* * *
—
She scoured the newspaper for any reports of an accident around Jamia or Shaheen Bagh or Kalindi Kunj. Nothing. No car crash. No injuries. No deaths. Everything erased. Everything smoothed over. As if nothing had ever happened.
* * *
—
She kept waiting for the terrible surprise. She didn’t know what it would be. A visit from the cops. A visit from a goon. A phone call just like in the movies: I know what you did. I know what you did. Meet me here. Bring money there. Talk and you’re dead. She kept waiting to hear from Sunny again. To see Ajay. But there was nothing. She avoided Dean that first day back in the office. Thankfully he was too busy to speak with her.
But she was going to tell him, wasn’t she?
She just had to go to his office and knock on the door, step inside, close it behind her, sit down, and begin to explain.
That’s what was going to happen, right?
But what would she say?
Was it an accident?
Had they been trying to scare her?
She still had no idea.
* * *
—
When she tried to sleep, she could only replay it all in her head. The phone call that drew her out. The nervy drive back into Delhi. The sudden smash of metal, the spinning confusion, the headlights on her face, the looming men. She kept making excuses to take taxis to work. Autos here and there in the city to do jobs. She left her car parked outside home, under the shade of the banyan in the park. She still shared nothing with Dean.
* * *
—
“By the way,” Dean wrote in an email four days later. “This happy story might cheer your heart.” His words were laced with irony. He sent her the link to a Times article. It was a color feature: “Picking Up the Pieces: A Family Makes Sense of Loss.” The parents of the dead kids had been tracked to their native village, not far from Kanpur. There they were, Devi and Rajkumar, sad but hopeful, putting the past behind them. Devi was pregnant again. Rajkumar had used the Wadia Foundation compensation money to buy agricultural land. They had built a pukka house. Some good had emerged from the tragedy, the writer noted. Rajkumar hoped that one day his son would study in Delhi and speak English and live in a big man’s house. He said Delhi was for modern people, progress was necessary, and God was looking over them now.
“Mystery solved,” she replied.
* * *
—
Her regular beat continued. She was grateful for the uncomplicated monotony of these small stories. She avoided the southeast of the city if she could. She avoided late nights out driving alone. Even when she made peace with her car, driving home at night after dark made her nervous. She thought someone was following her. She began to imagine it was Ajay. He was following her everywhere. He would protect her. It made her feel better. The comfort never lasted. Her mind raced with the old questions.
In her dreams sometimes she saw the glare of headlights and felt Ajay’s violence. She drummed up the courage to drive out one morning to the resettlement colony and found it was surrounded by a chain-link fence with warnings saying: PRIVATE PROPERTY.
* * *
—
Winter descended on Delhi. Woolens were removed from cupboards and steel trunks. Crisp, chill mornings of mist rose with the pale disk of sun, with boundless blue skies after. Lodhi Garden was full of walkers, vigorous, marching with purpose, while on the streets, the homeless lit fires in metal cans, squatting on the side of the road. There was a trip to Old Delhi for morning nihari. Diwali approached with its strings of golden light. Delhi burst into a frenzy of shopping and eating. Dean no longer confided in her. Sunny was not there. She spent it with her parents, lighting dias in the house, making a small puja, watching the kids in the park across the road with their sparklers, going up onto the roof terrace and viewing the fireworks over the city. The next morning a pall of smoke hung over the rooftops. The temperatures plummeted, the cold stole into the houses and squatted and refused to leave. She began to think about escape. Her heart was bereft and raging, a squall under the surface. She looked into taking the TEFL course at the British Council. Teach English in Japan. A friend had done it and never returned.