Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (The Rajes #1)(43)

“I didn’t know you and Neel were still trying.” That’s what Trisha settled on saying.

“We weren’t. This one, Trisha . . . this one is like Mishka.” Hope spilled from her eyes, making its way past the tears. “No meds, no treatments. Just us. Just Neel and me.”

The hope in those words scared Trisha much more than the tears. How could Nisha do this to herself? She lay down next to her sister and curled around her.

“It has to be a sign, right? Please tell me you believe it’s a sign,” Nisha whispered.

Trisha gathered her favorite person in the world even closer. “Yes.” God, please let it be a sign.

They held each other like that for a while, sniffling together. Smiling every time their sniffs matched up. Those stupid smiles made hope bubble inside Trisha too.

“How did Neel take it?”

Nisha pulled away, leaving Trisha cold, and afraid. “He doesn’t know,” she said quietly. “No one knows except you. No one can know. Especially not Neel. Not yet.”

That’s what Trisha had been afraid of.

All Nisha’s failed pregnancies had terminated within the first trimester. A time when you can do almost nothing medically to save a pregnancy. Three months. Six months. Nine months. That was a long time to sustain hope, and keep a secret.

How on earth was Nisha going to keep this from the family, from Neel? From Esha!

One day at a time. It’s what Esha always said when asked how she handled not leaving the house in over thirty years. One moment. Then the next.

“How are you feeling?” First things first. “How far along are you?”

“I’ve been queasy as hell every morning for weeks now. And exhausted. But I was so busy with Yash’s dinner that I ignored it. Then this week it totally crashed on me. You know Mishka had the stomach flu last month. I thought I had picked that up. Finally I went to Sarita this morning.” Sarita was their family physician. She was also someone they had grown up with.

Nisha gave her nose a dab. “I couldn’t remember the last time I had my period. Sarita made me pee in a cup. Before I got home she had left me a message asking me to call her. She wanted me to call you over first. She didn’t want me to be alone when she told me. But I made her.” Nisha’s eyes turned fierce. “I’m twelve and a half weeks.”

Trisha sat up, her heart racing.

“I know! I’m almost at the end of the first trimester. One and a half more weeks. Just twelve days and it’s going to be safe.”

“Nisha . . .”

“No. I know it. In my heart I know it. If I can carry this baby for twelve more days.” She looked down at her flat belly. Her fingers twitched but Trisha knew she was too afraid to touch it. “I know we’ll have a chance. I’ll tell Neel after that. I’ll tell Ma, Dad, everyone else. But until then you have to help me.”

“You want me to lie to everyone?” Little lies for Ma were one thing, but this? There was no way.

“Neel’s leaving for his reunion tomorrow. Then he’s taking Mishka all over England. They’ll be gone for two weeks.”

“Come on, Nisha, you have to tell him before he goes.”

“No!” She almost shouted it. “I’m not putting him through this again. I can’t.”

“Nisha—”

“No! Do you know why I stopped trying?”

Trisha opened her mouth, then shut it. She had no idea—she’d never wondered why. What was to wonder? It had been incomprehensible to Trisha why they had gone on trying for as long as they had.

“Neel said he’d leave me if I tried again. He said he didn’t have the strength to go through it one more time. He was done.”

“Neel would never leave you. He didn’t mean that.”

“You’re right,” Nisha said too weakly. “Of course I know he would never do that. That doesn’t mean I get to push him to a point where he breaks.”

Having known her brother-in-law her entire life, Trisha knew how solid he was. She also knew how serious his relationship with his high school sweetheart, Barbara, had been. They had started dating in their senior year and he had followed her to the University of Michigan, although Harvard and Stanford had both accepted him. His parents had been livid, but “Neel does what Neel does”—as his mother loved to say. He had proposed at the graduation ceremony in Ann Arbor. Then they had headed off to Oxford for grad school and planned to get married after they came back.

Of course, everyone also knew that Nisha had carried a rather bright torch for Neel since they were children and the two mothers had done everything they could to encourage that match starting young. But once Barbara came along everyone seemed to forget about it. Everyone except Nisha. Because the day they had heard the news about the engagement, the look that had crossed her sister’s face had made Trisha want to hunt Barbara down and kill her. Or at least tell her to get out of the way because she was in the middle of someone else’s love story.

But the universe had a way of setting things straight. Barbara, who had never left California until she went to Ann Arbor, had fallen in love with England and refused to return home after they graduated. Neel, being Neel, had changed his plans and stayed back even though he had wanted to come home.

Then something had gone wrong between them. Six months after earning his master’s in international law at Oxford, Neel had returned home without a fiancée and one diamond lighter. “Three carats at that!” his mother loved to point out.