It had never dawned on me that Dipti had been putting on an act when it came to appeasing my mother. She had made it all look so natural. “You should have told her that. Or me. I would’ve told her for you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t have the benefit of the unconditional love that comes from being her actual daughter, like you do. If I had talked back to her, she’d remember it forever, so I held my tongue. And it’s not as though I hated doing those things. For me, it’s more important to feel like I have family than to argue about little things.”
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“So far in life I’ve lost my mother and my daughter. I don’t want to lose my only sister too.”
I hesitated a moment, my mind reeling from the power of her simple statement.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been better. I hate to admit it, but I was jealous, and it was easier to ignore you.”
She smiled ruefully. “Let’s agree to forget the past and focus on the future.”
“Does that mean you’ll come back home?” I asked. “Neel needs you. We all do. And if you let us, we can be there for you and get through this as a family.”
She glanced around the room. “I’m not sure if I’m ready yet.”
I nodded but heard less resolve in her voice than on my past visit. “Okay. But when you are, please know I’ll be there for you. Not like the past, but the way it should always have been.”
She managed a small smile for a fleeting second. “Okay.”
I sat for a few more moments in silence with her and longed for her and Neel to make it through this awful ordeal by learning to lean on each other and come out even stronger together.
Watching them go through this had taught me so much about them and about relationships in general. Maybe most important of all, I was learning how much I still had to learn.
When I went to Happy Snaps after leaving Dipti, I wasn’t sure what to expect. It was too embarrassing to tell Tushar that my family didn’t want me associating with him in public.
I took a deep breath and pasted on a smile that Carrie would have immediately known was fake before I walked through the door. The chimes echoed in the small shop. When Tushar looked at me, I could tell he had received the same lecture from his family.
“Good morning, Preeti,” he said, turning the page in his book. “I should stay in front today, but please let me know if you need help with anything.”
He had resumed his polite, formal demeanor from when we first met. My heart sank when I realized we were going to have to rebuild the openness upon which I’d come to depend. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing that.
I marched up to him and grabbed the book from his hands. Especially after my talk with Dipti, I couldn’t go back to fake conversations.
“Did you have fun yesterday?”
He looked startled. “Excuse me?”
“I asked if you had fun yesterday,” I said sternly, as if cross-examining him.
He nodded, looking amused by my straightforward manner.
“Good.” I smiled. “So did I. We should be able to hang out without throwing the societal balance off its axis. We like spending time together, and there’s nothing wrong with that, is there?”
He shook his head, a smile creeping onto his face.
I extended my hand to shake his. “Then it’s agreed. We’re friends, and no one can change that. We will respect our families and not flaunt it, but within these walls”—I gestured around the shop—“I want it to be like it was twenty-four hours ago. Joking, laughing, all of it!”
He clasped my hand. “Yes, madam.”
I smiled, knowing we were okay.
“You were quite a good lawyer, I suspect,” he said.
“I wasn’t bad.”
“Certainly better than you are at photography.”
I pretended to bop him upside the head with his book before setting it onto the counter. With a coy smile, I said, “Fine, wise guy, why don’t you teach me your skills?”
“To be truthful, I saw some of your photos from yesterday when we were walking the streets. They are quite unique.”
“Really?” I felt my cheeks warm at his praise.
He nodded. “They offer a different perspective. One that we Indians would not see.”
I focused on his words. We Indians.
He must have seen my face change, because he quickly backtracked. “You know I mean we resident Indians. You are Indian, too, of course.”
“I know what you meant,” I said.