To my surprise, Mrs.Kumar got up. “I’ll come with you,” she said. “I need to get away for a while.”
Neither her husband nor Ajay made any move to stop her, and we were soon driving through the night-shadowed streets of Rotorua. I didn’t know what to say to her, so kept my silence…and as my father had taught me, the silence weighed her down until she had to break it, had to speak.
“You think I’m a bad mother, don’t you?” Words formed into hard little pellets. “I see the judgment on your face.”
I’d been extremely careful in all my interactions with her—and Iknew how good I was at hiding what I wanted to hide. “Mrs.Kumar, I don’t know you,” I said with open awkwardness. “I’ve been focused on Diya all this time.”
She was stiff in the passenger seat for a long minute before she seemed to fold in on herself. “I’m sorry.” Words so tired they were near inaudible. “I just…I could never bond with my daughter. That makes me sound awful, but I tried. I justcouldn’t.
“It wasn’t about Shumi being a girl and Ajay being a boy like some people whispered. Iwanteda little girl, had all these baby dresses already picked out for her, was ready for us to do the mother-daughter things I saw other mothers with girls doing, but when she came…I felt nothing.”
It took effort to see past my own experience of emotional neglect. “Postpartum depression?”
“Yes, I think so, looking back. But I’m not educated like Sarita was—I was a village girl. I didn’t understand that anything was wrong, just thought I was a bad mother. It did get better after a while, but by then, she was four and she knew deep inside that I didn’t love her.”
Her sobs were loud in the car, and even though we’d arrived at the fast-food restaurant, I didn’t go into the drive-through. Pulling into their small parking lot instead, I said, “I’m really sorry.”
This woman wasn’t Audrey, who’d made a conscious choice to neglect me.
“I blame myself,” she said at last, after she could speak again, “about how she got so hung up on Bobby. He paid attention to her when she was little, used to help her if she fell, small things like that. It sounds like nothing, but for a child who knows her mother doesn’t love her…it was everything.”
The waterfall of her words wouldn’t stop.
“She followed that whole family around like a little pet. She’d doanything for them—but at least Rajesh and Sarita and especially Diya were nice to her. I was happy she had a best friend in that house, even if Diya would never see the reality of who her brother was, what he did to Shumi when they were alone.”
Digging out a tissue from her bag, she wiped at her face. “I tried to get her away from Bobby after that girl died at the beach, but it was too late. She had no respect for me and no desire to follow my wishes. Later, when I saw the bruises on her, I told her that people who love you shouldn’t hurt you, and she just laughed in my face and told me I should’ve taught myself that lesson.”
Another bout of tears…followed by a painful silence.
“She’s alive,” I said to her. “You have a chance to be there for her if you really want to be.” I hadn’t forgotten what the nurse had said, about how disconnected Mrs.Kumar seemed when it came to her daughter.
“Yes.” She shoved the tissue back in her bag. “Let’s get the food. I know everyone’s hungry. And Ajay likes the sugary drinks they do, the ones with all the ice cream and chocolate. We have to make sure we order that.”
Chapter 60
Diya
Diya sent off the email to her favorite baked goods supplier—it was an order for a “cupcake cake” for a sixteenth-birthday bash. The birthday girl was the only grandchild in two very loving families, her sweet sixteen looking to be bigger than many a wedding.
Still, the girl didn’t seem spoiled—she’d been fun to work with when it came to selecting cupcake flavors and the style of decoration. But it was a good thing Diya had taken care of all of that before she’d made the impulsive decision to stay on in Los Angeles.
Teenagers might be fine with texting and video calls, but their parents wanted actual meetings with the event planner they’d hired to make their girl’s day “just perfect.”
Having ticked off that task, she scanned down the list to see what else was outstanding.
Her phone buzzed.
She glanced down, unsurprised to see Bobby’s smiling face populating the screen. She’d taken the photo the day of his wedding, happy that he’d now be focusing all his attention on his new bride. Shumi seemed to like thejealous intensity of his attention, and Diya was more than ready for the other woman to have all of it.
But, no, Bobby hadn’t backed off an inch when it came to Diya.
She declined the call as she’d declined multiple others in the past hour.
But of course her neurotically overprotective brother couldn’t let it go. He sent her a text:I’m coming to LA to bring you home.
Face hot, Diya picked up her phone, her fingers flying over the keyboard:Good luck finding me in a city of millions. And don’t try to ask Risha—she thinks I already flew home. She purposefully hadn’t told her friend about the change in plans, not wanting to put her in the middle of this mess. Risha was one of the few true friends she still had, and she couldn’t lose her as she’d lost Kalindra and Rhiannon and Violet.
Don’t be stupid, Dee, Bobby replied.You know I’m only looking out for you. Mum and Dad are worried sick—Mum found your extra meds, knows you’re about to run out. And, Dee, you know what happens when you don’t take your meds.
