Page 5

There is a mirror attached to the vanity in my mother’s bedroom.

Blotting my freshly-washed face with a paper towel, I sit down on the stool in front of it and breathe in deeply.

It smells like coming home.

No matter how different this home—with its good bones and warm neutrals and the small back garden, visible through her bedroom window, that my mother has filled up with herbs and blooms—it still smells like the powdery citrus of her perfume. She’s smelled like it all my life. It’s as comforting as the sight of how time has morphed my features into hers; we share the same deep brown skin and high cheekbones, as well as the dark chocolate hair she often wears in a low bun and I usually braid. The only sign of my father is the shock of my icy grey eyes and the five-feet-nine-inches of height my poor, doll-sized mother’s genes had nothing to do with.

As I busy myself dabbing concealer and swiping lipstick across my mouth, I also smell the delectable scent of my mother’s lamb curry wafting up the staircase to summon me. It’s my favorite. I know this means she started it this morning, always preferring to slow cook the meat and let the flavors percolate instead of popping it into the pressure-cooker like I’m wont to do. Despite my day from hell, it coaxes a smile to my lips.

This is how Gayatri loves: by doing, and without announcement.

“So late,” she clucks her tongue when I appear in the kitchen doorway.

And by being generally overbearing.

“The T was—”

“You have a car, beta. Are you worrying about fuel costs again?” A frown creases her forehead.

“No, Mumma. My car’s at the shop.”

She purses her lips but doesn’t launch into a lecture. “Go sit,” she says. “Neil’s been asking for you for an hour. Somehow, you’re the highlight of that boy’s week.”

That’s almost enough to make me downright cheerful. I don’t need to be told twice to scram.

My little brother is sprawled across the living room sofa like a starfish. His long, gangly limbs seem to stretch out in every direction. The black hair he inherited from Daniel is flopped over his face, and it works with the cheekbones my mother gave him too.

When I poke my head through the door, his whole face lights up. It makes my damn day.

“Fucking finally,” he huffs, and drops the textbook he was pretending to read unceremoniously on the coffee table.

For a fairly surly seventeen-year-old, Neil still always commits to a hug. Despite my considerable height, he’s already managed to get three inches on me. “Hello to you, too, Grouch,” I say into his shoulder. “Don’t let mom hear you using that kind of language.”

“Dude, you look kind of rough,” he mutters, pulling back and examining me with a candor only a little brother can really get away with. Though, to be honest, there’s little that Neil doesn’t get away with me. He may have a different father, but he’s been the light of my life since the first time my mom put him in my arms at the hospital.

“That’s so sweet,” I tease. “You’re looking very well yourself, Neil.”

“Seriously, dude. Shitty day?”

“Seriously shitty day,” I agree, and hook my arm through his. “But it’s nothing eating my feelings with my favorite brother won’t fix. Especially if you make me a glorious cup of chai after.”

“I’m your only brother,” he snorts, but leads the way into the dining room, seamlessly moving onto telling me about his week at school.

***

How on earth I got to a place in my life where I start yawning the minute the clock passes nine, I don’t know. But I can’t blame Neil for making fun of me for it when I start dozing off in the middle of an episode of Friends.

I decline the offer for Daniel to drive me home. Then, I accept the rest of the curry because my mother would sooner let me walk into oncoming traffic than send me off without a heap of leftovers.

The walk back to the T stop is going much smoother than the journey from it to my mother’s house hours earlier. It passes in a haze. In fact, I’m not sure I’m not dreaming when my phone rings and I find my father’s name on the screen. Not Daniel Martinez, the sweet, gentle architect who married my mother when I was twelve years old—but Ray Gallagher, one of Boston’s finest and a shoo-in Absentee Dad of the Year.

I trip over my own feet as I answer. “Hello?” Confusion saturates the word.

“Hey, Meer.”

And sure enough, it’s him. He doesn’t sound stricken. His voice is the same warm rumble it’s always been. That cop’s baritone and a natural-born salesman’s ease is convincing, when you don’t know any better. Unfortunately, I do. It’s been a long time since I stopped being the dumb kid who worshipped her big, broad-shouldered father and his shiny badge and beam with pride over the way he’d call her “my girl” like it was a title she’d won. That kid grew up. We all have to, don’t we? Even when it feels like the most impossible, most heartbreaking thing in the world.

I bite back a sigh. “What’s wrong, Daddy? Do you need something?”