Sam grinned, and Meena squelched the spark of attraction. It surprised her. For Meena, attraction meant a one-night stand, and it wasn’t a good idea to get involved with someone she would run into over and over again.
“Neha seemed like a good person,” she said.
“She had her moments.” Sam glanced away. “She was also petty. Case in point: Wally. Neha wanted me to have a dog because she had a soft spot for me, and she wanted to stick it to Sabina one more time.”
“The two of you were good friends.”
“In a way. She’d grown up with my mom. My parents lived in my place before me. They’re now in Germany with my brother and his family. I came back from LA to live here. I grew up with her as Neha auntie, but in the last few years, we were friends. She liked people who did things for her that she didn’t want to do herself.”
“Did she live alone?” Meena wondered if Sam knew Neha’s husband or why he had left.
“She didn’t have use for a lot of people,” Sam said. “Not even me, unless it was on her terms. She had her limits as to how much time she spent away from her work and her books.”
“She has a massive collection.”
He nodded and focused his attention on Wally. Sam gently tugged away a fallen branch that was three times the dog’s size.
Meena sensed Sam was done talking about Neha. “You bought the apartment from your parents?”
There was hesitation in Sam’s voice. “No. It became mine. The apartments in the Engineer’s House are entailed, meaning they can’t be sold on the market. The eldest child inherits the unit when they turn twenty-five.”
“But the other women, the aunties, they still live in their units.”
“It’s a technicality. It’s up to the kids as to when they want to take it over.”
“Not a firm rule.”
“Are you making conversation or interviewing me?”
Meena smiled. “Habit. I ask a lot of questions.”
“You’ll fit right in with the aunties,” Sam said. “Wally, no.” He tugged a crumpled napkin out of Wally’s mouth.
“Did Neha have any siblings or children?”
Sam glanced at her and then looked away. “No.”
Meena pushed a little more. “Do you think Neha left the apartment to me on a whim? Or by accident?”
Sam kept quiet and focused on teaching Wally how to walk on a leash.
Meena sensed he was holding back and tried again. “If the apartments are entailed . . .”
“She didn’t have anyone to pass it on to,” Sam said. “Her parents are in Africa, and she had no other family.”
He sounded so definitive, it made Meena question her assumptions about her ties to Neha. If she and Neha weren’t biologically connected, why would Neha leave her actual home to Meena? A sliver of something snagged her mind. Petty. Was Meena ammo? Like a dog that wasn’t allowed but had been gifted posthumously?
As they turned right and approached their building, Wally did loops around her, and Meena became entangled with his leash. Sam caught her with one arm to steady her. For a few seconds embarrassment, comfort, and attraction swirled around her. She glanced into his dark-brown eyes. There was gentle humor in them that made her feel as if she knew him much better than she did. Meena disentangled herself from the leash.
“When is puppy school?” she asked.
“Not soon enough,” Sam said. “We need to learn a lot of things, don’t we, beast?”
Meena increased her pace to distract herself from the weird tingles on her arm where Sam had held her steady. As they came up to the front steps, Tanvi called out to them. “There you two are. Have you been out for a walk? Isn’t fall romantic?”