“One big happy family.”
“I’m sure I was there on sufferance—big age gap. But still…” His expression grew soft. “Those were good times. Diya and Bobby used to spend so many nights at our place. Bobby bunked with me, and Diya with Shumi, and everyone knew to behave even when Shumi and Bobby hit their teens and the hormones kicked in.”
Round and round went the sugar packet, the younger man’s focus on it extreme.
“Otherwise,” he said, “the hammer would’ve come down andended the whole deal. The worst we did was sneak out of bed at night to raid the chocolate cookies or the leftover Diwali sweets.”
His smile faded. “Bobby was a great big brother to me. Patient in a way I didn’t appreciate until I was an older teenager myself.”
Yet another avatar of the boy who’d given a classmate a scar he carried to this day. “I heard a few difficult things while I was in Fiji—about him being a bully.” I twisted my lips, bit them a little, a man uncomfortable with what he was saying. “It just struck me as off. He always seemed like a good guy.”
The barista came over at that moment with our coffees, the conversation on pause until after she’d left. But Ajay didn’t say anything even then, concentrating on tearing open sachets of sugar and pouring them into his coffee.
“I’m sorry,” I began. “I didn’t mean—”
But he was shaking his head. “I hero-worshipped him, so even if he was a bully to others, he could’ve seen me as a mascot, I guess.” His hands tightened around the cup. “I could understand if he was different with other kids—his dad was tough on him.”
“Yeah?”
A small nod as he began to stir in the sugar. “Rajesh uncle expected him to be perfect. Best grades, first fifteen rugby team, top achievement certificates across all subjects. My parents were ecstatic when I pulled a B in my worst subject, but Rajesh uncle used to lose it if Bobby ever came home with less than an A in anything.”
I thought of what Kamal’s son had said about catching Bobby in tears because he’d received ninety-seven percent on a test. “Beatings?”
“No.” Ajay looked down at the table. “I don’t really know the facts. I just kind of heard my parents talking.”
“They’re all dead now, Ajay.” I made my voice gentle, suddenly piercingly aware that Ajay at twenty-one was far softer and less experienced than I’d been at the same age. “And I’m not going to spread rumors. You might as well get it out—it’s obviously on your mind.”
“Yeah. Just thinking about how we were…” He choked up, right as a member of the café staff delivered my toasted panini, with a side of fresh green salad.
After thanking her, I began to unroll my silverware from the paper towel in which it had been wrapped. Giving Shumi’s brother space.
“Dad was saying to Mum that Rajesh uncle had locked Bobby up in this space under the stairs that they had in their rental. It was a cubby meant for storage, I think, but a boy of Bobby’s size could just fit in there. There was no light.”
He swallowed hard. “I saw one of those slide locks on it when I went over the next time, and it was on the outside.”
“Jesus.” No wonder Bobby had turned out twisted. “Did they hurt Diya, too?” Rage ran molten in my blood, any sympathy I’d felt for the elder Prasads obliterated.
“No, I never heard that. She was younger and, honestly, she was a girl. Overprotected, not as much expected of her.” He winced. “I feel bad talking about them like this.”
Frowning, I swallowed the bite of food in my mouth. “Sarita didn’t strike me as that kind of traditional.” But then, neither had I imagined she’d stand aside and let her husband brutalize her son.
Ajay took off his glasses, began to clean them using the edge of his T-shirt. His face was suddenly young and exposed without that fragile shield between him and the world. “That’s just it,” he said. “She wasn’t, not with other women and girls.” He put the glassesback on. “She was so disappointed when Shumi gave up her engineering career after getting married to Bobby.”
“Engineering?” I almost dropped the fork I’d been using to eat the salad. “I had no idea.” In all honesty, I’d thought Diya’s sister-in-law sweet but a bit vacant. She seemed to have no interests of her own aside from Bobby.
It was cruel to think it, which was why I’d never given voice to it, but she’d struck me as a loyal golden retriever type. Cheerful and nice to be around, but without any original ideas. Happy to go along with others’ plans, or to help out with someone else’s hobby—whether that was drawing mandalas with Sarita, or helping Diya source images for the inspiration boards she put together for her events.
Honestly, it made her a good friend—as long as you were okay making all the decisions.
Ajay gave me a tight smile. “Shumi’s crazy smart. Always has been. But Bobby came first—and he didn’t want her to work. As for Sarita auntie…I think after she lost Ani, she kind of obsessed about protecting Diya. Never let her do sleepovers, always drove her even if Diya just wanted to walk to a local park with friends, made her share her location on the phone. Rajesh uncle was the same. They wanted her close to home, to them, all the time.”
No! I’m a full-grown woman, not a dog with a collar!
Another snippet of an argument I’d heard while at the condo. I hadn’t been able to understand the context then, but now I realized that Diya must’ve turned off her location so her parents could no longer track her.
She’d already told me that the only reason Rajesh and Sarita hadn’t found a way to stop her from coming to Los Angeles was because the friend whose bachelorette weekend it was—Risha Patel—was a former exchange student who’d lived with them for a year.
“They couldn’t say no when Mr.and Mrs.Patel invited me personally on Risha’s behalf, all expenses paid. The Patels are both senior partners in a law firm, and they’re older than my parents. It would’ve been a terrible insult for them to say no when the Patels had entrusted Risha to us for a whole year.”
