He was immediately contrite. “I’m sorry. You have to remember, this is what I do for a living—solve problems. And somehow, I can always figure out the solution. So it’s easy for me to think that life is just another puzzle to solve.”
She kissed him on the cheek. “It’s okay,” she said. “Let’s just enjoy the time we have together.”
He smiled, then cocked his head, listening. “Abru,” he said, and Smita heard the long wail coming from the other side of the house. Together, they ran into the bedroom. Abru was lying on the tiled floor beside the bed. She was holding her head. “Oh shit!” Smita cried as she lowered herself next to the wailing child. “Sweetie, what happened? How did you fall?”
Abru was inconsolable as Smita gently pulled her hand away from the child’s head, feeling the small bump forming on the side. “Can you get me some ice?” she called to Mohan, who was already running toward the kitchen.
Smita cradled Abru in her arms as she held the wrapped ice cubes to her head. After a while, as the ice water trickled onto her face, the toddler stuck out her tongue and began to lick her lips. Mohan laughed. “She seems to be enjoying this,” he said.
“Can you take her from me?” Smita whispered. “My arm is beginning to cramp.”
He lifted Abru and placed her on the bed. The screaming began again. “Ho ho ho,” Mohan chided. “Nothing wrong with your vocal cords. It’s okay, little one. We are right here.”
Abru inserted her thumb in her mouth and looked at Mohan with her big dark eyes. Then, she tugged at his sleeve to get him to lie down with her.
“Okay, okay. I’m here with you,” he crooned to her.
Smita stood watching as Mohan lay down next to the girl. They would love Mohan, she thought wistfully. Papa would enjoy discussing technological issues with him. Rohit would appreciate his sense of humor. As for Mummy, she would have taken him on her morning walks and showed him off to all her friends.
Smita waited until Abru dosed off, then got into the left side of the bed, so that Abru was sandwiched between them. After a few minutes, she reached for Mohan over the child’s body, and the three of them slept that way, Smita and Mohan holding hands.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
It had been almost a week since they’d returned to Mumbai, and their days were mostly devoted to Abru.
But the nights belonged to Mohan and Smita.
Now that her story had been published, she was free to spend time with Mohan and Abru. Every evening, Mohan—who had spoken to his boss about his new circumstances and extended his leave—took Abru back to his landlady’s apartment and then returned to the Taj.
Smita watched him as he slept next to her, snoring softly. If only we’d met while living in the same city, she thought, and dated like a normal couple. Out of the blue, she heard Meena’s dying rasp in her ear.
She must have twitched, because Mohan’s eyes flew open. They darted around the room as he tried to get his bearings, and in the second before his eyes focused on her, Smita had a revelation: Here lies a man with his own sacred inner life, his own inviolate soul. She was filled with an intense desire to study Mohan, like learning a foreign language that would open up new vistas.
“What is it?” he said. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
She nuzzled his cheek. “Nothing. Go back to sleep.”
But they were both wide awake. After a few minutes, Smita leaned against the headboard and reached for her laptop. It had been three days since her story had run, but the reader comments were still pouring in. She propped up the computer against her body, even though she was a little conflicted about sharing the comments with Mohan. Most of them struck the right notes of indignation and compassion, but there were the usual number of hateful posts, with several people referring to India as a misogynistic, shithole country, as if stories like Meena’s never happened in the West. A month before, such comments would have made Mohan’s hackles rise. But he, too, had changed. Cliff had told her how his phone was blowing up with calls from readers wanting to know if there was a GoFundMe account for Abru, and even though Mohan had immediately refused the help, he was touched by the solicitousness of her American readers.
“Any more developments?” Mohan asked after she shut her laptop.
“Anjali called earlier. I forgot to tell you. Her group is demanding the police investigate Meena’s murder. My first-person story helped, she said.”
Mohan nodded. “I’ll probably have to go back at some time to give a statement.”