She shook her head to clear it of the violent thoughts, and found Angelika watching her with sad understanding.
“He was a good catch,” Angelika said. “My fiancé, he is sixty. And gone all the time for business.” She looked down at her dazzling engagement ring. That was what Esme had noticed earlier. Angelika had gotten engaged without saying anything. “His children hate me. They are older than I am.”
“In time, they will see,” Esme said.
Angelika looked down at her left hand, fisted it, and dropped it below the table. “I do not think so. They keep telling me to go back to Russia, and they are convincing him to get the vasectomy—you know, so he cannot have more babies? I am afraid this will end in divorce. Or not happen at all.”
“Why do they—”
“To protect the money when he dies,” Angelika said bitterly. “I agreed to sign a contract before the wedding, so if we divorce, I do not get anything. But that is not enough for them. I always wanted a family.”
“Does he … love you?” Esme asked.
A soft smile spread over Angelika’s lips. “Yeah, he does. And I love him.”
Esme squeezed her friend’s arm. “Then you two will be fine.” Unlike Esme and Kh?i.
Angelika smiled before her expression went thoughtful. “A scholarship sounds good, but have you thought of dating other people?”
Esme shook her head.
Angelika sent her an impatient look. “It is just dating, Esmeralda.”
“Dating has kissing and touching and …” She couldn’t bring herself to say sex. The thought of being with another man so soon made her skin crawl. A different woman would be out romancing every desperate man she could find—she had Jade to think about, after all—but Esme couldn’t make herself do it. She was probably na?ve for thinking this way, but if she married, it had to be a real marriage. She didn’t have the heart to take advantage of anyone or hurt them. That meant she had to fall out of love first. “I am not ready.”
Angelika’s lips thinned, but she eventually nodded. “I hope you get that scholarship. I don’t want you to leave. You are my only friend here.”
Esme told herself to prepare for disappointment. But her heart wouldn’t listen. She had this dream now, and she’d never wanted anything so much. She clasped Angelika’s hand, and her friend squeezed back.
“Me, too,” Esme said. “Me, too.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Khai had done this before. He could do it today. He was mostly over his flu. Shoes off, sock-clad feet on hardwood, the fog of incense, the heavy floral scent emanating from the numerous white bouquets, and there, on the far side of the main room, an altar with a large golden statue of Buddha sitting on a lotus blossom.
He strode past the family and friends dressed mostly in gray robes, sitting cross-legged on the rugs on the floor, and approached the altar. One of the monks up there handed him a stick of incense, and Khai accepted it awkwardly. He didn’t know what the hell to do with it. This was his mom’s scene, not his. He stabbed it into the giant bowl of rice with the other incense and considered the photograph in front of the statue. Andy standing next to his blue Honda motorcycle.
Andy wore the same smartass grin he flashed every time he delivered a great comeback. He always had a comeback, always. Sometimes, he even thought up things to say in advance, so he’d be ready when the occasion came. Not like Khai, who either froze up when people teased him or didn’t realize he was being teased in the first place.
He touched his fingertips to the picture, and the coldness of the glass surprised him. He didn’t usually spend time contemplating philosophical questions about life and humanity, but right now, as he stared at his cousin’s likeness in paper and resin, he wondered what made a person a person. Was it something mystical like a soul? Something scientific like neural connections in the brain? Or something simpler like the ability to make someone miss you ten years after you’d died?