One
The baggage carouselat Toronto’s Pearson International Airport clunked to life, and Priya Solanki stood back, watching suitcase after suitcase glide past until hers came into view. Two bags were all it took to hold ten years of her life—a failed marriage, a business she had walked away from, and the freedom she had built for herself. All now completely gone. She’d promised herself she’d never return, yet here she was, out of options.
After dragging her luggage through the terminal, she stepped outside and slid into the back of a waiting cab.
“Where to?” The driver met her eyes in the rearview mirror.
“Moksha Funeral Home,” Priya replied. “In Ajax.”
“Lucky you’re not heading downtown today,” he said as they merged into traffic. “I just returned from a drop-off there, and it was brutal. Bumper to bumper the whole way.”
“Construction?” Priya asked, peering out the window. It was late April, which in Toronto translated to the start of roadwork season.
“Not this time,” he replied. “There was a celebrity sighting at the Hazelton. Some big star from out of town. Turned the wholearea into a total gridlock. Traffic was backed up all the way to the highway, nobody moving an inch.”
Priya leaned back, only half listening. A traffic jam over a celebrity sipping an overpriced latte was both absurd and entirely expected. She’d spent the last ten years in Calgary, where the rhythm of life was slower. Here, even at a standstill, the city buzzed with urgency.
The drive to Ajax, a suburb east of Toronto, took a little under an hour. Clusters of daffodils and crocuses bloomed along the edges of the roadside. As they approached her old neighborhood, familiar sights greeted Priya like pages from an old diary: the community center where she first learned to swim, the No Frills grocery store where her family did their weekly shopping, the library where she met up with her friend Brooke, though they usually ended up at the McDonald’s across the street. Every place was exactly as she remembered, yet within Priya, everything had shifted.
When the cab finally turned into the parking lot of the funeral home, Priya straightened, her eyes locking on the building. The weight of what lay ahead twisted in her chest.
“Go around the back, please.” Priya gestured toward the rear lot.
She winced at the fare on the meter, mindful of her dwindling savings. Then she spotted a photo of the cabbie’s children smiling from the dashboard and gave him a generous tip anyway.
Sucker, her thrifty Gujarati ancestors scolded from beyond the grave.
The driver heaved her suitcases out of the trunk, chuckling as he read the tag on one: “You can’t handle my baggage.”
Priya felt a pang of guilt as he set the bag down with a huff. The joke was a little too on the nose. Her baggage, literal and otherwise, was ridiculously heavy.
As the cab drove away, Priya turned toward the building, standing in the very spot where bodies were delivered from the morgue. A shiver ran down her spine. Death was inevitable, and for her, so was this place. She thought she had escaped it, but as she stared at the side door to her parents’ second-floor apartment, her certainty crumbled.
She lugged her suitcases up the narrow stairs, each step groaning under her weight. The wood was worn and uneven, some planks smoothed by years of use, others jagged with splinters, the paint peeling on every one. She hesitated at the top step, the duct tape still holding it together after all these years. Despite herself, she smiled. Her father’s handiwork had somehow stubbornly stood the test of time.
Standing by the door, Priya took a deep breath, and almost immediately the rich, smoky scent ofrotlistransported her back in time. Over the years, her annual visits had been brief and dutiful, but some things never changed, like the way her mother’s cooking clung to the walls, familiar and comforting. She could almost taste the soft, warm flatbreads, and she hadn’t even stepped inside. As she lifted her hand to knock, the door burst open, and her mother stood there, arms outstretched.
“I knew it!” Her mother beamed, eyes shining. “I can recognize your footsteps anywhere. My Priya baby is home!”
“Mumma.” As Priya stepped into her mother’s embrace, her body relaxed. Ever since her divorce, she had carried the weight of letting them down, of returning as someone who hadn’t made it, but that feeling lifted, replaced by the quiet comfort of home.
“What Mumma-Mumma?” Her mother pulled back with a pout. “You forgot Mumma. You don’t call Mumma, don’t ask Mumma, don’t love Mumma.”
Priya chuckled at her mother’s lightning-fast transition from a warm welcome to a full-on guilt trip. Mumma had mastered the art of emotional drama, keeping the whole family on their toes.
“Enough, Seema,” her father intervened, appearing behind his wife. “She’s only just arrived, and you’ve already started. Let her relax and eat something. Then we’llbothgang up on her.”
Priya laughed, but tears stung the corners of her eyes as she hugged him. She hadn’t known what kind of welcome to expect, but this warmth, this lightness, filled her with relief and gratitude. Pulling both her parents close, she buried her face between them.
“I love you very much,” she said.
For a moment, the three of them remained locked together. Then, as if realizing they’d lingered too long, her parents pulled away. Seema and Rakesh Solanki dispensed affection in appropriate doses, but verbal declarations of love to each other or the kids?Na, baba, na.
Mumma smoothed her nightgown to dispel the awkwardness. Priya couldn’t remember her wearing anything other than button-down nightgowns around the house. When they grew flimsy, Mumma tore them into scraps and used them as apotuto mop the floor.
“Is this everything?” Puppa asked, reaching for Priya’s suitcases.
“This is it.” Priya forced a cheerful smile, hoping it would hide the ache beneath it. Coming home after years of trying to build a life of her own felt like proof that she had failed. She trailed behind her parents, stepping into the familiar living room of their modest apartment.
