“Yeah,” Amber says, shrugging her shoulders. To Marin she still seems like the young girl who used to come over for sleepovers and would cry for her mom in the middle of the night. The girl who Gia swore was her best friend for life. “It sucks.”
Marin nods, unsure how to move forward. Since this situation began, everything has felt new, without a roadmap to guide. “Gia is not herself. I was wondering if you knew anything about that,” Marin says, trying not to reveal too much.
“Is she in trouble?” Amber asks, her eyes wide.
“No,” Marin says, her nerves fraught. “Why aren’t you two friends anymore?”
Amber clearly fights telling her the truth. Her eyes dart away, staring at the trees swaying in the front yard. She still has on her school uniform. She plays with the pleats of her skirt, thinking. “The boy Gia is dating . . .”
“Gia’s dating a boy?” Marin steps back, trying to keep the shock out of her voice. She pauses, staring at a space above Amber’s head. “Who is he?”
“I don’t know him that well. He’s new.” Amber’s face falls. She is hedging, not telling Marin the complete truth, Marin is sure. “I think that’s why we aren’t friends anymore.”
Thanking her, Marin heads back to the car. Raj backs out of the driveway and turns onto the main street before asking, “What did she say?”
“Nothing,” Marin lies. A vine, stripped of its leaves, wraps around her, binding her arms and legs, paralyzing her. As she takes a breath, seeking strength to free herself, it tightens around her throat and face, cutting off all access to oxygen. With a life built on a foundation of lies, adding one more is seamless. “She just asked us to say hello to Gia for her.”
RANEE
Most of her hours she spends alone now, though she never imagined she’d prefer it that way. Raising a houseful of children makes you forget what your own time means. For some couples, when the children leave home and start their own lives, it is a blessing. More time to spend with your spouse, to rekindle the romance that was lost through the years. For Ranee, it simply meant increased loneliness. Alone with Brent in the house, she used to daydream about leaving. It mattered little where or how; she just wished to be gone.
Ranee often wondered if Sonya was happier far away than she had been with them. So many times, she picked up the phone to dial her daughter, only to lose her nerve and replace the receiver. She knew she had no right to seek advice from the daughter she betrayed. The one who escaped because Ranee had failed to offer her a haven.
Since she had married, Ranee prayed twice a day. Every morning, she repeated the Nimantran, a mantra of verses asking for forgiveness, protection, and humility in life. She added her own words afterward. Specifically, requests of guidance for her daughters, forgiveness for her lack of action, and kindness from her husband. At night, lying next to Brent, hearing his breathing, she only had one prayer: that she and her daughters would survive to see another day.
When she was young, her parents took the family on a pilgrimage to Palitana, eight hundred and sixty-three temples atop Mount Shatrunjaya. Over seven thousand feet above sea level, it took a full day to climb. People from all over the world came to pay homage, believing it to be a place of victory, where one conquers enemies. Pilgrims offered gold and silver in return for blessings of good health, marriage, and security.