“Why now?” Raj asks. He shakes his head, knowing her better than she thought. “You didn’t like Gia’s decision, so now you rethink the strategy, right? Is this really what it comes down to?”
Marin contemplates denying his accusation, screaming at him for thinking she is capable of such callousness. But he has caught her off guard, his assessment too accurate to negate. “I can’t lose her, Raj,” Marin finally says, after a long pause during which they both seem to stand on a cliff that is crumbling. “She’s all I have.”
“You had me,” he says so quietly that Marin would have missed his words if the room weren’t deadly still. She doesn’t respond to him, doesn’t give his declaration its due. He appears to wait for something, but when seconds tick by and only silence continues to fill the room, he sighs. “What do you propose?”
“We keep living in the house, together.” They can return to the way they were, three souls coexisting under the same roof. “We help get her through this.”
“What about school?” They are negotiating now, a divorce settlement without the legalities. “That’s not something I will budge on.”
The control Marin was so sure she had starts to slip away again. Her instinct is to lash out, demand to know why Raj can’t see what the school means for Gia’s future. But the battle lines have been drawn, and Marin is on the wrong side of them. “Can we table the final decision for later?” Marin asks.
“I’ve contacted some private tutors,” Raj says, surprising Marin. “She can finish the school year out at home. I’ve also scheduled tours of the local schools. That way, Gia can have some options if she decides she wants to return to a school setting.”
“Her résumé may suffer with the homeschooling.” Marin tries to get him to understand. She can start to feel her dreams of Harvard or Yale slipping away. “She won’t have access to the types of activities she has now.”
“I’m not particularly concerned about her college right now. The priority is keeping her alive, and her wanting to stay that way.”
Marin wants to argue, but his face is set. Any argument will fall on deaf ears and may impede the delicate negotiations they are in. “Fine. Let’s agree to take it day by day. When she’s stabilized, let’s revisit the situation.”
TRISHA
I have lost count of how much time has passed since I learned the truth. Days blend into night. The only way I know the difference is when Sonya goes to sleep and awakens. She keeps a tight schedule, something else that is different from the girl I knew. As a child, she used to be the last one to wake up, as if facing life were too much to bear. At night, she was the last one to sleep, fearing what the night could bring. I used to mock her for such thoughts, believing it a sign of immaturity. Now I wonder if she wasn’t on to something, if she knew the true danger Papa represented, while I lived in my own world.
I try to put as many pieces together as possible. None of them fit with the image of the father I loved, the man I adored beyond reason. Last night, I had a dream that we were dancing on an empty dance floor. A father-daughter dance at my wedding. But soon the floor changed from white to red. When I looked down, my red sari—the traditional garb for a wedding—had changed to a white wedding gown, and the front was soaked with blood. I screamed, but he kept dancing, insisting everything was fine. I awoke with a start, sweat lining my body. Sonya stirred at my movement but continued to sleep.