Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (The Rajes #1)(59)
“Ew,” Nisha said, grinning at her phone. “Ma says she’s excited about their repeat honeymoon.”
Ma loved to call any time she spent alone with HRH that.
“Ew!” Trisha echoed her sister and they both wiggled their shoulders to shake off the particularly unwelcome thought of their parents being romantic.
They both giggled.
As for the illustrious Yash Raje, he was in Washington, DC, gathering the other half of the capital required for a political campaign: endorsements. Ashna was far too stressed out about revamping the menu and saving Curried Dreams. Plus, she was the only one who wouldn’t dig for answers someone didn’t want to give, no matter how suspicious she got.
That left their grandmother and Esha. The good news was that those two never left the house, never used a cell phone. If the pregnancy came to Esha in one of her visions, Nisha was insistent that they didn’t need to know about it.
Aji and Esha were used to seeing Nisha, like Trisha, stop by every few days, but they also knew that the announcement and the fund-raiser were keeping Nisha busy. They’d complain about it, but in the end Nisha could do no wrong in their eyes.
The biggest advantage, truly, was that none of the family ever visited Trisha’s condo.
It was a miracle Ma had even agreed to let her kids get their own places. Yash had been the first person to do it and it had broken her heart a million times over. HRH, naturally, had considered it perfectly normal because it was the American way.
Their views on assimilation and owning their heritage were the one thing Ma and HRH always disagreed on. Ma believed their heritage was their greatest strength, and the more they stayed connected to their Indian roots, the more comfortable they’d be in their skin.
HRH’s take on it was this advice to his children: “This is our home. This country is yours. Take everything you need. Give everything you have. From the beginning of time, humans have migrated. We’ve claimed land and let it claim us. Don’t ever fulfill anybody else’s definition of your relationship with your country. How many generations ago their forefathers got here may be how some people stake their claim, but I stake mine with how much I give. How wholly I love. This place called to me, I’m here, it’s mine. And now, it’s yours.”
As in most things, Ma had deferred to HRH and accepted that her unmarried children would live outside of their home even though they lived in the same area. But despite her usually madly overactive protective instinct, she never could bring herself to visit their individual homes.
Nisha was the only exception. Since it was her married home, Neel and Nisha’s house was okay. Even then, Ma’s visits were restricted to when Nisha hosted one of her family dinners every few months, and there would be none of that until this fund-raiser was done. The idyllic and impeccable Los Altos Hills house would remain locked up until Neel and Mishka came back.
Trisha picked up the tray that Nisha had cleaned out nicely. She let out a silent sigh of relief. A good appetite meant all was well with the baby.
Nisha lay back down on Trisha’s bed. “In all this confusion of trying to hide the pregnancy, I forgot that Neel’s ex is going to be at the reunion.” Trisha had never heard her sister utter Barbara’s name.
“And?” Trisha asked, looking her straight in the eye.
“And . . . nothing. It must be the hormones that I even mentioned it.”
“Hmm,” Trisha said skeptically, keeping her lecture about trusting Neel to herself as she moved to put the tray in the sink.
Nonetheless, she heard Nisha pick up her phone and call Neel as she began to get dressed for the day. The underpinning of desperate sweetness that laced her sister’s voice when she said, “Hi, honey, missing me yet?” Trisha hoped was just her imagination.
Chapter Eighteen
It had been four days since Emma had been discharged and had returned to work. Usually DJ dropped her off and picked her up outside, but today they were going to meet Julia Wickham here. The receptionist at Green Acres threw DJ a look that he tried not to interpret as suspicious. “That’s not an American license, sir,” she said in a tone that suggested that she couldn’t comprehend that people from other countries actually possessed driver’s licenses.
“It’s a London license,” he said, giving her his most charming smile. “I’m Emma Caine’s brother. Emma has worked here for five years. I’m just here to pick her up.”
“I’m sorry, you’re going to have to wait while I find Ms. Caine. She didn’t sign you in, so I can’t just let you in.” She fixed him with a stare that was meant to be assertive, but there was enough of a nervous undertone in it that he could plainly see all the things she thought him capable of.
They see us as outsiders, mate, we’re fucking aliens to them. Look at their faces, Gulshan had loved to say while pointing at every white face on the Tube as they rode into Kingsgate.
Gulshan’s anger had felt raw and freeing to seventeen-year-old DJ for those few ill-fated weeks when he’d befriended Gulshan and his gang. But even back then he had known that Gulshan’s obnoxiousness had been a pathetic attempt at asserting their right to be there, to be in London, which was the only home they knew. This is our home too, innit? But fuck if they think so. He had jabbed a thumb in the direction of an old white woman in a floral dress and she had burst into tears.