Star Daughter(6)

“Dad!” If only she could sink into the lawn and disappear the way her appalled eyebrows must have vanished into her hair. “What. Are. You. Doing. Please stop.”

Still keeping a straight face, Dad helped himself to a cheese puff. “Don’t tell me I need to invite the Merai clan over for Scrabble night just to keep an eye on you.”

Sheetal wished she could zip her hoodie up over her face. “Radhikafoi told you, didn’t she.” Not that there was really anything to tell. It wasn’t like she and Dev had been making out in public.

And ew, she did not want to be thinking of making out with anyone while Dad stood two feet away.

Dad chuckled. “No, but you just told me yourself.”

Here came the no-boys, no-dating lecture. But Sheetal knew how to throw him off. As a kid, she would ask Dad what he saw when he watched the heavens, and he always said the same thing: Your mummy.

Tonight, still overwhelmed by the sudden appearance of the starsong, she whispered, “Aren’t you tired of missing her? Mom, I mean?”

“I hear her, dikri,” Dad said simply. “I’ll never be tired of that.”

“How, though?” Sheetal stared at him. “She’s gone.”

“I hear her,” Dad repeated. “I hear her singing. It’s as beautiful as the day we met.”

“I don’t understand.” He’d never told her that before. Her chest tightened in confusion and hurt. Did he hear Charumati more often than Sheetal did?

Dad looked up at the sky, and his gaze went soft. There it was, the murky gray sorrow they’d both gotten so good at keeping from anyone else. “You’re going to be seventeen soon. Growing up.”

“In four days.” Sheetal didn’t know what else to say. Maybe it didn’t matter how much Dad could hear her mother. It didn’t make her not being there any better.

“Chakli,” Dad said, pulling Sheetal to him. “My little chakli. You know I love you, right?” She buried her head in his chest. He smelled like shaving cream and security.

For a minute, she let herself forget that she wasn’t his little sparrow anymore, let herself forget all her questions, all her doubts. She just let herself be in the past, when everything was the way it was supposed to be. Summer days wading into the ocean at Point Pleasant with Dad, but only up to her waist so her hair stayed clear of the salty surf, while her mother knelt on the shore to chat with the seagulls.

Or Friday nights ordering pizza and playing Trivial Pursuit, which Charumati somehow always won. She’d reject the pizza as too greasy, but she couldn’t get enough of human trivia and politics, to the point that Dad took to calling her an undercover spy for the stars.

Of course, all that had screeched to a halt when she left. Though seven-year-old Sheetal had pleaded for Dad to keep playing with her, he’d stashed the game away in a closet and given her biographies instead.

They were mostly about physicists. But it wasn’t like science could teach her how to be half a star.

Or how to keep her stupid silver roots from glowing like a beacon for the entire banquet hall to see. Ugh—she so didn’t want to tell Dad about that, but if she didn’t, Radhikafoi definitely would.

Sheetal stepped back from the hug. “Dad, my hair. The dye—I don’t know what happened.”

“Say what?” he asked, his voice calm. His just collecting data scientist voice.

The story poured out of her. Something like alarm flitted over Dad’s face, but when she looked closer, he was only frowning. “Just try another box. It was probably a bad batch.”

“Yeah, probably,” Sheetal said. Too bad her tingling palms didn’t agree.

Dad had glanced up again to where clouds were rolling in, concealing the stars from his sight, and melancholy spread over his face. After Charumati left, well-meaning aunties and uncles had tried to set him up with other women, insisting Sheetal needed a mother and he needed a wife. He’d politely but steadfastly refused every single potential match. Sheetal knew there would never be anyone for him but her mother.

“Dad—” she began, wanting to reach out but not sure how.

“Almost seventeen. You’re still too young for boys,” he said sternly, cutting her off. “Don’t think I forgot.”

Sheetal’s sympathy dried right up. Gods, he really had no clue. Half the desi kids she knew dated, even if they did it behind their parents’ backs.

But that wasn’t the point. Something bizarre and kind of scary was happening to her, and here Dad had gotten hung up on making sure she didn’t date. “It’s not like Dev saw. No one did!”

Dad shook his head, still staring up into the night. “No, Sheetal. You’re my daughter, and it’s my job to keep you safe. No boys at least until you finish high school, understood? I want you to promise me.”

It was so unfair. Why wasn’t he listening? “Dad!”

Iron entered his words, a warning not to push him any further. “I mean it.”

Sheetal managed not to sigh out loud. “Fine.”

Her heart twisted. Even if he was being totally unreasonable, she hated lying to him.

Dad rubbed his forehead. “Good.”

It wasn’t good at all, and Sheetal really didn’t like how he could be okay with all this. With Charumati abandoning them to fend for themselves. With Sheetal having to hide. She gesticulated wildly at the glittering firmament with its landscape of stars and shades of blue and black, and anger erupted from her like lava. “You can’t wait for her anymore, Dad. You know that, right?”