The lady doth protest too much, Oscar’s long-ago voice said in her ear. The velvet note of knowing so vivid, it was as though he was standing behind her. Too close. His body straining toward her even as he held it back.
A man of rare integrity. That’s what Oscar’s obituary had said. She let the involuntary pang of grief wash through her. She knew she had no right to grieve him, but the grief found its way inside her regardless. If she forced it away, it would only fight harder to take up residence. So she let it lie and covered it up until it was ready to leave.
Letting her mind feel this old wasn’t something she usually allowed herself, but exhaustion overwhelmed her. Memories crawled inside her like spiders climbing over each other.
Shouldn’t older memories disappear as new ones were added? Why was the mind so elastic?
She needed to get dressed. Alisha and Cullie were right; it was time to get this Leslie person to shut down this nonsense with the coven. Reaching to the back of her closet, Bindu picked out a kurti. Modest enough for a day in court when you were on trial. Whatever it took to get Leslie on her side she’d do. Including shrinking herself back inside her kurtis. But she’d let them throw her out of her home over her dead body. And it would have to be her body, not Richard’s.
What the hell!
It took all her strength not to scream the words. How could this be? All these years she’d waited to have sex, and this is what happened?
Whore.
Whores spread diseases that kill people and then die of them, her mother’s angry voice whispered in her ear. No! She was not old enough for ghosts to start talking to her. Enough.
“I am not a whore, Aie.” She spoke the words. They were a whisper, but she had to speak them. They echoed off the jeweled tile of her bathroom.
Whatever you are, as long as it stays in our bedroom, there’s no shame, Rajendra whispered in her ear.
Bindu yanked off the kurti she’d pulled on and reached for one of her wrap dresses.
Leslie was going to have to be on her side exactly the way she was.
“Everything okay, Ma?” Alisha asked from outside the bathroom door, and her kind voice—a voice that had recently taken to annoying Bindu for being too compliant—calmed her today.
“Not yet.” Bindu pushed the door open and let herself out. “But it will be once we let the bullies know they can’t push us around.” With that she left her beautiful condo and took the elevator down to the glass-and-marble lobby, flanked on both sides by her girls. They made their way to the HOA office, marching in like the warrior goddesses they were.
Mary, the receptionist at the HOA office, was possibly the prettiest girl Bindu had ever seen. Definitely the sweetest. She sparkled like a sequined button on the starched lapel of the HOA. Reaching over, she took both of Bindu’s hands in hers. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Desai. You okay?”
Obviously, the coven had hired her as the sugar coating around their bitter pills.
Bindu squeezed her hands. “Thank you, Mary. It was horrible. But I’m okay.”
“He was one of my favorite residents. Always brought me the best books after he was done reading them.” Her voice trembled.
Accepting condolences for Richard’s death felt wrong. They’d been on three dates. Bindu didn’t even know if he had a family. Should she send a card? Flowers?
“I know how much he loved his books. That means you were special to him,” Bindu said, surprising herself when her voice trembled too.
Mary rushed around the desk and gave her a hug. And burst into tears.
Within seconds the shoulder of Bindu’s dress was soaked. Bindu patted her, taken aback by the turn of events. “There, there. It’s going to be okay.” She had no idea Mary had been so close to Richard. Unless the poor girl got this attached to all the residents. In which case, this job was not a good fit for her.
With another squeeze, Mary pulled away. “I’m so sorry. It’s just that I’ve worked here for five years, and every day Richard brought me coffee, and we chatted for hours. I used to write little stories, and he’d read them and tell me to spend more time on my writing.” She smiled the saddest smile. “But not everyone can feed themselves with their passion, can they? He hated when I said that.”
Bindu plucked a tissue from the pink quilted box on Mary’s desk and dabbed her cheeks.
This only made her eyes fill again. They were the same beautiful blue as Richard’s.
“He had a very hard time talking to people. I’d only ever seen him happy these past few months,” Mary said, giving Bindu a worshipful look. “After he met you. He was like a little boy when you agreed to go out with him. He made me help him buy a shirt online. A blue one. He said you loved his eyes.”
Bindu felt tears welling up and pushed them back. “I did.” Her voice cracked some more, and she felt completely ridiculous. “He had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen.” She’d told him that so many times.
This time Cullie handed Mary and Bindu tissues, and someone cleared their throat behind them.
Mary started and turned toward the sound. “I’m so sorry, Leslie. I didn’t mean to burst into tears.”
Bindu spun around to see who this Leslie was that Mary felt the need to apologize to for her grief. But the silken voice hit her before her eyes found him.
“That’s perfectly understandable. Please don’t apologize.” It was the green-eyed man from the open house. “Hello, Mrs. Desai.”
“That’s not Leslie!” The words flew out of Bindu before she could stop them, and he smiled, exposing the pearly whites that had made her think about the perfection of his life.
He offered her a hand. “Leslie Bennet. My friends call me Lee.”
She let his hand hang there. “You’ve been on the HOA board this entire time?” When those women had been hounding her about one thing or another.
Apparently she’d read the kindness in his eyes, in his voice, wrong.
“I guess someone like me wasn’t exactly who they needed,” she said, and his eyes smiled some more. Trouble, indeed. He’d just wanted to be entertained.
“It is. But even I didn’t quite estimate how much you enjoy being trouble.”
“Watch yourself,” Cullie said, getting between Bindu and him.
He offered Cullie the hand Bindu had rejected. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. You must be the genius granddaughter.”
“Excuse me?” Bindu said. How could he possibly know anything about Cullie? She’d never seen him after he’d called her trouble and incited her to move here.
“I’m sorry. Richard liked to talk about you.” That was all the explanation he gave before leading them to the gilded and wainscoted meeting room and shutting the door behind them.
“Is no one else joining us?” Alisha asked, holding his gaze.
Her daughter-in-law in her tiger-mom avatar was a terrifying thing, her beautiful curls pulled back in a bun, one brow raised, those large jet-black eyes ruthless with judgment. Bindu had watched her slay the elementary school vice principal when he’d misunderstood her soft voice as weakness and tried to tell her that Cullie had behavioral issues when what she’d been doing was standing up to being bullied.