“Good luck with the move,” Marin says.
Ranee wants to call out, to beg her daughter to stop before it is too late, but the words stay stuck in her throat. Her only option is to watch her family tear themselves up from the inside, until nothing but fragments remain of who they could have been. Just as Ranee starts to turn away, to accept the inevitable, Trisha reaches the door before her sister.
“Marin,” she says, her face filled with apology, “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.” She lays a palm against the wood, curling it into a fist as if she can hold on. “I love Gia. I love you. I’m just not in a good place right now.” She steps forward, her body tense, almost preparing for a rejection. When none comes, she slips her arms around Marin’s shoulders and brings her sister in for an embrace. They stand in silence for only a few seconds before Marin steps away. Opening the door, she walks out, shutting it quietly behind her.
Ranee walks through the darkened home, running her hands over the polished wood and fine furniture. The three of them finished packing the rest of the house in silence and then made a simple meal of potato sakh with naan. No one brought up what had happened between Trisha and Marin, preferring to pretend rather than confront. With so much they were already dealing with, selective amnesia felt easier. Sonya left soon after.
Ranee and Trisha quickly cleaned up after dinner. Trisha had released Eloise from her duties soon after Eric walked out, so the two of them were left to deal with the dishes. Once the kitchen sparkled, Trisha murmured that she was going to go lie down for a while. Ranee simply nodded, watching her daughter wearily climb the stairs toward her bedroom. She decided not to leave, an urge to remain with Trisha stronger than the desire to escape to the security of her own vacant home.
As the night sky falls, casting the room into darkness, Ranee chooses a seat in the den, glancing around at her daughter’s choice of décor. Simple but elegant, a statement on how far she has come from the humble home she was raised in. Ranee is the first to admit she does not have an eye for decorations. It seemed pointless to decorate a home that felt more like solitary confinement. But Trisha clearly had no similar notions and chose to make the most of her house. She allowed it to become the vessel for her dreams, the place where she made reality fit her vision of a life well lived.
But she rejected the one thing that promised her everything—a child. The irony does not escape Ranee. Her children bound her to the man she was forced to marry, while Trisha’s refusal to have a baby caused her to lose the man she loved. In the deafening quiet, Ranee imagines she can hear Trisha’s cries on the bed upstairs. Her weeping for the castle that has crumbled around her. Oblivious to the truth, she never knew the castle was built from a lie—a grenade meant to explode.
The truth, when she learned it, leveled Ranee. In a moment of vulnerability, Brent had uttered the words that Ranee was sure would stop her heart. That they didn’t shames her even now. Because his revelation, the one that no mother should imagine, let alone hear, is what makes women fall to their knees and wail, wonder how they could have failed so completely.