Star Daughter(21)

“All right,” said Minal, sprawling over the leather sofa. It squeaked in protest. “Lay it on me. How’s your dad? How’re you?”

Sheetal sat down, too, trying not to think of how, just hours earlier, she’d been here with Dad. “He’s—not great.”

She recounted the afternoon at Dev’s, coming home to burn Dad, and her botched attempt to heal him. Like a ticking clock, the astral melody framed the moment in chimes and trills.

As if she didn’t know how little time Dad had.

She stared at the familiar cloth painting of Krishna dancing with all his gopis. Her blood had come so close. Almost close enough. But almost wouldn’t heal anyone.

“Ouch,” Minal said. “I’d say that definitely qualifies as the day from hell.” She paused, then added, “You know none of this is your fault, right?”

Sheetal wouldn’t look at her. Of course it was.

Her phone dinged. She glanced at the screen, then buried the phone under a cushion. “Why can’t he take a hint?”

Minal held out her hand. “Give me that.” Sheetal did, and Minal scrolled back through the messages. “Listen, I really need to talk to you.”

Sheetal tilted her head. “We are talking?”

“That’s what Dev said, you dork: ‘Listen, I really need to talk to you.’”

“Well, too bad for him.” Sheetal had meant that to be sarcastic, but it just sounded sad. “He had his chance.”

When Minal didn’t immediately agree, Sheetal narrowed her eyes. “What?”

“It was crap of him not to tell you what was going on sooner, for sure, but how do you bring up something like that? ‘Hey, so I hear you’re a star?’” Minal shrugged. “I’m just saying it might be worth hearing him out.”

Sheetal didn’t want to be reasonable, not when she couldn’t forget the red smudge on Dad’s chest, couldn’t help fearing he was gone for good. She wanted to be mad. “I don’t care. He should have told me.”

Radhikafoi charged back in then, armed with an envelope. “I knew this day would come,” she announced, cutting off whatever Minal might have said, “and I prayed every night it would be years from now. Decades. But your naseeb says otherwise, and I cannot hold you here. Take this.”

“What is it?” Sheetal asked. She wasn’t sure what to make of that little speech.

When Radhikafoi met Sheetal’s stare, there was pain in her face. She looked weary. “A letter from your mummy. About you.”

Radhikafoi’s words seemed to echo through a long, winding tunnel, barely finding Sheetal before breaking apart. And when they did, they didn’t fit together. A letter from Charumati? About her?

It took Sheetal three short steps to reach her auntie and claim the envelope. The paper’s velvety texture felt like the spell that held her in its sway when she played her music, when she gazed up at the stars. It felt like something immense and wondrous, like the night sky itself. “Where did you get this, Radhikafoi?”

“Your mummy—who else? She never forgot you, beta. She left you here to keep you safe.”

Just one day ago, Sheetal had been so sure she knew the people in her life. Now she had to wonder if they’d all turned into strangers.

She grasped for the anger that had sustained her all evening, but all she found was emptiness. “You had my mother’s letter,” she whispered. “All this time.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What do you think I’m doing now?” Radhikafoi asked with her usual impatience. “It’s in Gujarati. I’ll read it to you.”

Sheetal shook her head. She couldn’t let her foi read her mother’s message to her. “Minal can do it.”

Minal watched her with concern. “Are you sure?”

Part of Sheetal—her raw, lonely heart—couldn’t wait to devour her mother’s words. The rest of her, the bones that had always acted as armor to shield that susceptible heart, wanted to shred the letter before it could possibly hurt her.

She left you here to keep you safe.

Sheetal sat back down next to Minal. “I’m sure.”

The envelope and single slip of paper within were a light purple the color of lilacs, with a blue-green peacock feather motif in the corner of each. Charumati’s neat Gujarati script lined the page in silver ink bright enough to be starlight. As Minal read the words aloud, Sheetal imagined she could feel her mother’s pen pressing the syllables into the paper.

Dear Radhikaben,

You and I might have had our differences, but trust me when I say you can no more marvel at the stars than we do at mortal men and women. Indeed, you have always been a source of wonder and fascination to me, in your rigidness and love of order and your distrust of all things outside your control. Surely you will be the first to applaud my decision to return to Svargalok. This world of mortals is no place for me, where your kind would stone me merely for shining or hunt me for my blood. How merrily, how callously, you prey on one another like predators in the lanternless dark.

So I take my leave but beseech you as one mother to another to turn your vigilance to your niece, my daughter. My heart grows heavy with regret at parting from her sweet smile, yet my court is no haven for her at present. Still, the time will come when she must ascend, when she will hear our call, and as I have told Gautam, you will know when to give her this missive and bring her to the harp sisters. They will show her the way. Until then, I trust you to teach my Sheetal all the ways of being human and, above all, to guard her well.