21

Aarav.” Shanti’s shaky voice greeted me the moment I entered the house. “I’ve set out dinner. Your father’s expecting you.”

My intent had been to race upstairs as fast as I could, chase that fragment of memory before it faded or broke. But faced with her hopeful face and hunched shoulders, I nodded. “We should talk as a family anyway.”

She exhaled so hard that she ruffled the gauzy pink of the long scarf she wore with her pale yellow salwar kameez. The traditional tunic and pants outfit was her go-to at home. She seemed to have an endless collection.

The ends of the scarf lifting a little as she moved, she led me into the otherwise-empty dining room. The table was heavy oak polished to a shine. I had a clear memory of my mother running her fingers over the glossy surface, her nails polished a lustrous red and her body clad in a yellow sundress that flirted with her thighs.

“The things we could do on this table,” she’d purred to my father, while I played nearby.

I’d been young, probably five or six, but the memory was vivid to the point that it hurt against the eye. As if the contrast had been turned up, every painful color made extra dramatic. The red on her toenails, the shine that came off her thin gold anklet, the strokes of scarlet on her lips.

I’d often wondered if Shanti knew that, different paint job or not, she lived in a home shaped by the tastes and whims of another woman and the man who had always tried to own my mother and failed. Even back then, when they’d still been mostly functional as a couple, there had been an edge between them, a vicious sharpness to every interaction.

“This looks delicious,” I said after taking in the dishes on the table.

“I made your favorite pickles.”

“Mama.” Pari ran into the room, skidding to a halt the instant she saw a male, then breaking out into a smile when she realized it was me and not our father.

She quickly took the seat beside me, so that my body would screen hers from view. I tugged on one of her pigtails just as our father entered the room. The smiles faded, the air became brittle.

He sat down at the head of the table, Shanti to his right and me to his left.

“How did you do in school today?” he demanded of Pari.

Shrinking into her seat, my sister looked down at her hands. “The teacher said I did good.”

“Anything would be better than your last report. We don’t get Bs in this family.”

“Is that your priority today?” I broke in silkily before taking a sip of the water Shanti always put beside my plate in lieu of wine.

“We’re hardly going to discuss adult business with a child at the table.”

“Then let’s feed the child and get her to bed so we can talk.” I suited action to words by starting to serve myself.

My father’s lips pressed together, but I’d succeeded in distracting him. Shanti bustled around at the same time to dish things out for my father. She’d been doing that as long as I could remember.

I’d been eighteen when my father remarried—almost exactly a week after the divorce was finalized—and the first time I saw them interact, Shanti was bringing him a cup of coffee while he sat at the table reading the paper.

Today, he nodded curtly to show her he had enough of that particular dish.

Shanti went around to pick up another dish, while my father told her she needed to make more masala chili pickles as he was almost down to his last one.

I caught Pari’s gaze and winked while he was distracted. Her smile was fleeting but it returned when I scratched the side of my nose. I’d taught her the signal long ago—it meant I’d hidden a sweet treat in her bedroom.

I’d done it while she was in the kitchen after school, knowing tonight would be a bad night and that there was a good chance she’d be caught in the crossfire. It was how my father operated. He’d ripped me to shreds each time he and my mother had a fight, but I’d had the advantage of being obnoxiously clever and not giving a shit. I’d brought home straight As without trying.

When he pushed me too far, I made sure those glowing As turned into red Fs.

He’d soon learned to leave me alone unless he wanted to be shamed by a son who had to repeat a year of school. Pari was clever, too, but she wasn’t obnoxious. No, my younger sister was empathic to the extreme, the kind of person who carried bugs outside and worried whether the birds had enough to drink in summer.

We ate in chill silence. When Shanti tried to start conversation with an innocuous comment about how Paul and Margaret were thinking of getting a new dog now that their old one had been gone for a year, my father snapped, “At least they always cleaned up after their damn incontinent poodle. Not like the Fitzpatricks and their slobbering beast.”

Much as it pained me to agree with my father on anything, he wasn’t wrong there. The power couple, who were both senior associates in a major corporate law firm, had a habit of allowing their German shepherd to use their neighbors’ verges and even their gardens as its toilet. I’d seen poor Diana screwing up her nose and using a plastic bag to clear away a deposit left in her prized rose garden.

With so much bushland around us where the dog could dig a hole to do its business if its owners couldn’t be arsed cleaning up after it, there really was no excuse to befoul neighboring properties. It didn’t help that the dog was a badly trained menace. Add all that to some of its owners’ other behavior, and Brett and Veda were disliked by everyone in the Cul-de-Sac. Except maybe by Mellie.

Isaac’s current wife was a dimpled delight who seemed to find the entire world a joyous place. Of course, I was of the opinion that Mellie’s “sneaky cigarettes” had nothing to do with tobacco. As far as I was concerned, only someone who was as high as a kite would strip naked then dance in their backyard in the middle of winter.

“Didn’t Calvin report them about the dog?” I put down my fork.