I rang the doorbell to her family’s house later that morning and waited for their servant to open it. Once I was shown to Dipti’s room, I saw her as I had left her before: lying in bed with a notebook on her lap. On the side table next to her was a thick stack of pages that had been ripped from the notebook, and I knew those were all letters to Uma.
“Did Neel send you?” she asked, not looking up from her letter.
“No,” I said, taking a seat in the chair next to her bed, where countless of her relatives must have been keeping vigil over her during this past week. “He would actually be really mad if he knew I was here, so I’d appreciate if you didn’t tell him.”
She raised an eyebrow and looked up at me. “Secrets between siblings? Who could dare imagine such a thing with you two?” she said snidely.
“We’re going through a bit of a rough patch,” I confessed, my eyes trained on her to watch her reaction.
She put her pen down next to her. It wasn’t capped, and the blue ink slowly seeped into the rajai beneath her.
“About what?”
I shook my head. “I’m not really sure. Maybe about you . . . I mean the situation with you. Maybe about more.” I sighed. “Maybe about a lot more. It’s hard to say.”
“Well, I guess that’s fair,” she said.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I’ve lost count of the number of fights he and I have had about you or your family. It’s probably time the tables were turned and you had one about me.”
I met her eyes. “You’re right. It’s probably fair.”
“What about me sparked this?”
I was so used to thinking several steps ahead and being careful with what I said—it had been my assimilation and legal training after all—but I knew in this situation, transparency was the only way to move forward.
“When he wanted to go back home and go back to work and leave you here, I told him he couldn’t do that. That it wasn’t fair to you, and you might never forgive him.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You told him to stay? Why would you do that?”
I sighed and slumped in my chair. “I may not say this often, but you guys are good together.”
“Since when did you become so supportive?” she said, an unmistakable edge to her tone.
Her words stung. I’m sure Dipti had sensed from the very beginning that I didn’t understand why Neel had chosen her, but it was something she and I had never spoken about openly. We were always cordial to each other, but there was a difference between cordial and comfortable.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice heavy.
And I was. For keeping my distance. For resenting her for taking Neel away from me. For not realizing she might have needed me. For having a long face at her baby shower. For all the pain she felt at losing the baby. For the distance that was growing between Neel and her. For not realizing what a strong person she was to be able to put one foot in front of the other with all that had happened.
“It’s okay.” She sounded deflated. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
I gingerly touched her arm. “No, you were right to say it. And you would have been right to say it years earlier. I saw you as the person who took Neel away from me, and I couldn’t get past that. It wasn’t right of me.”
“You know, when I first met Neel, one of the things I loved most was that he came from a family. Two parents, a sister, a childhood home. It was what I had always wanted after I lost my mother.”
I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat. “Even after you saw our dysfunctional mess?”
“Every family is dysfunctional in its own way.”
“Maybe you’re right, but sometimes it seems like we’re on the far end of the spectrum.”
Without any malice left in her voice, she said, “I don’t blame you, by the way. For not accepting me when Neel first introduced me. You two grew up very close. I know you felt like I was encroaching on that. The funny thing was that I wanted to be as close to you as Neel was. I wanted to know what it felt like to have a sister.”
“I am really sorry.” I hung my head. “It’s no secret that Mom and I have always butted heads. Then you swooped in, and it looked so easy for you to get along with her.” I sighed. “It made me realize she’s not difficult with everyone—just with me.”
“It’s because I had to try harder than you. Look at the baby shower. Do you think I liked being tucked into a sari and forcing polite conversation with all of her friends?” she said. “I was so jealous that you got to hide behind your camera.”