Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (The Rajes #1)(42)

Trisha let out a deep sigh. Her mother was right. She couldn’t force Emma Caine into the OR.

She followed Ma into the sitting room and found Esha and Aji on the sofa. Esha gave them one of her beatific smiles. Which meant she was having a good day today. Ma stroked Esha’s head. There was a way her mother softened around her nieces. Her love for them seemed not to come with the same taint of expectation. It had driven Trisha crazy when she was younger, but she understood it now. It was quintessential Ma logic, to be just a tiny bit softer on her nieces than on her own children to make sure they knew that they were just as valued.

Trisha gave her grandmother a tight squeeze from behind and soaked up all the lovely Aji smell from her thick silver hair gathered into a bun.

“It’s been two days!” her grandmother said in Marathi. She spoke impeccable English, but it had been her rule to always speak to the children in Marathi. This was how she always started all her conversations. Whether it was a day or ten, she always started with how long they’d been apart. To let them know she had been counting.

Ma sank into the couch next to Aji and a look passed between them. Trisha didn’t bother to pretend she didn’t know what it was. Mission accomplished, it said.

Esha got up. “You’re a gift to your patients, Shasha. But you’re needed by more than just them,” she said with classic Esha crypticness. Then she gave Trisha one of her rare hugs, her slight frame pressing tightly into Trisha, her head resting under Trisha’s chin. Esha being physical meant she was having an exceptionally good day. This lifted Trisha’s mood. She blew kisses to everyone, hamming it up, then bowed to her grandma with a salaam in a perfect imitation of the staff in Sripore and backed out of the room, making all three of them laugh.

When she pulled out of the Anchorage gates, she felt a little bit worse and a little bit better than she had when she got here. Maybe that was the true meaning of going home.





Chapter Twelve


In her entire life Trisha had never heard the words I need you from her big sister. Let alone I need you right now, and if you don’t get here this minute I will never speak with you again. Let alone all this left on a voice-mail message while in tears.

Forgetting her phone in the car had been a really bad idea.

Nisha sniffling on the phone was not a pretty sound. It was, in fact, such a terrifying sound that Trisha turned the car toward Nisha and Neel’s house in Los Altos Hills while desperately dialing her sister’s number.

Trust Nisha to have an emergency (she had spelled the word out for Trisha, “E M E R G E N C Y, can you hear me?”) and now when Trisha was calling back, incessantly, Nisha wasn’t answering her phone. Calling Neel was out of the question, because Nisha had used her mad big sister voice to warn Trisha not to call anyone else.

“This is private. P R I V A T E.”

Her sister spelling one word was bad enough, but her spelling out multiple words in multiple voice messages—that just made Trisha’s mind ricochet in all sorts of dark directions. She restrained herself, using every focus technique she knew, and concentrated on getting to Neel and Nisha’s house without running red lights.

Not bothering with the doorbell, she punched in the garage code, entered the house, and kicked off her shoes. There were no signs of anything untoward. Everything was exactly as it always was: picture perfect. Books and artifacts strewn around just so. Signs of Mishka everywhere, sketches on the fridge, walls covered with family pictures. Trisha ran past it all.

“Nisha? Hello?”

No answer. She ran into the bedroom and saw her sister on the bed. Curled up in fetal position.

No.

“Nisha?” Trisha laid a tentative hand on her sister’s shoulder and heard a soft exhale in response. Relief whooshed out of her. She climbed on the bed and moved the hair off Nisha’s face.

Nisha opened one wet-lashed, swollen eyelid. “You’re here,” she said and burst into sobs.

Trisha pulled her close but she’d seen this before. Too many times. Somewhere deep inside her the memory of what this was rose like water filling her lungs. How had Nisha not mentioned that Neel and she were trying to have a baby again?

“It’s not what you think,” Nisha said between sniffs. “I haven’t . . . I haven’t lost it.”

Another wave of relief swept over Trisha. “Then why are you crying?”

“Why do you think?” Nisha reached for the box of tissues lying on its side next to her, pulled out a fistful, and blew into them with none of her usual grace. “I’ve lost six.” Her sob trapped so much pain it didn’t even sound human. “I can’t . . . I can’t lose another one.”

“You won’t.” That would have been the right thing to say.

But Trisha had seen her sister break six times and pick herself up. Six times she had watched her pretend that this time, this one time would be the time it worked. She had watched her sister’s marriage—without question the best marriage Trisha had ever witnessed—stretch at its seams as Neel struggled to understand why Nisha needed this so badly, why she would not see reason.

But Nisha wasn’t someone you argued with once she’d made up her mind. Being a mother was what she loved best and she had wanted another baby.

“Congratulations.” That would also have been the right thing to say, but they didn’t say that in their family anymore when someone got pregnant. Not until the baby was born.