You're Invited(49)

EP: Could you elaborate on this a little further?

RD: Yes, well. I wasn’t drinking that day so I remember it quite clearly. I was having, um, some digestion issues. I think the Sri Lankan curries hadn’t been agreeing with me too well, and so I spent a fair bit of time in the bathroom. That’s when I saw Amaya and Tehani together, actually.

By the time I came out, the girls had moved from the hotel terrace to the beach. I was going to give Kaavi a quick hug and leave. I didn’t have it in me to stay, and I wanted to save my energy for the traditional ceremony the next day.

I was on my way down the corridor when I heard shouting. I didn’t know who it was at first. Many of the girls had been drinking, and I was feeling too ill to get in the middle of anything, so I hung back and hoped they would leave without noticing me. But it soon became obvious that it was Kaavi and Amaya.

EP: How could you be sure it was them?

RD: Well, they used their names, for one.

EP: And you had interacted with Miss Bloom before?

RD: That’s Amaya, right? I was introduced to her, yes. At the Fonseka’s cocktail party, though she didn’t really leave much of an impression, if I’m being honest. She seemed quite boring. Timid. Even with Tehani when they were whispering. Not at all like the person I heard in the corridor later that evening.

EP: And what did the two women say?

RD: I can’t remember all of it—not word for word, anyway. It caught me by surprise and I wasn’t even sure I should be listening. But I do remember Amaya saying, very clearly, that she wanted to kill Kaavi.





11


AMAYA


Three Days before the Wedding


I DIDN’T GO over to the Fonsekas the next morning. I spent it pacing around my room, and when that felt too small, I paced around my house. I set a timer on my phone and checked Kaavi’s social media accounts every fifteen minutes.

There were reposts from the party last night. Boomerangs of glasses clinking, girls twirling, funny moments on the dance floor. There were pictures of the decor, panning videos of the dinner buffet, many, many shots of Kaavi and Spencer staring adoringly at each other. I didn’t even know what I was looking for.

That something had gone wrong.

A sign that my plan had worked.

But of course, Kaavi wouldn’t post about something so negative immediately. She would find a way to spin it. To frame her failed engagement in a way that made her look good. Empowering to women, perhaps. Or maybe to set her up as a martyr—that she decided to put her charity before her own happiness.

But there was a new thought nagging at me now. A thought that was fixated on Kaavi’s face after Spencer proposed. If she wasn’t really excited about marrying him, then why go through with everything? I’d bet her mother was putting a ton of pressure on her to get married, but it wasn’t like Kaavi to cave so easily. Or was Spencer just a trophy to her? Someone who was Insta-worthy. Someone who fit her perfect narrative.

I scribbled in my notebook between refreshes and pacing. This plan was definitely not going to work.

Poison? I wrote.

Accidental drowning?

Kidnap until everything blows over?

I crossed that last one out. There could be no loose ends.

Seetha made me a typical Sri Lankan lunch of rice and various separately curried vegetables. She’d fried up some papadam just the way I liked when I was a teenager. I could barely touch it.

“Why, Baba? Too spicy?” she asked. “I didn’t put much chili. I know you don’t like too much anymore.”

“No, no, Seetha, it’s great. Thank you.” I made myself take a few more mouthfuls. Seetha eyed me eating with a fork but didn’t say anything. Rice and curry is typically eaten with your hand, but I’d lost touch and it was struggle enough to force something down my throat as it was.

“Baba, are you okay?” Seetha asked. She’d never really asked me if I was okay before. Seetha cooked for me, and took care of my house, and stayed up for me when I went out. She kept an eye on me when I was a teenager, scaring off boys and hovering around if anyone ever came to see me. But we never really spoke. We had a kind of quiet peace between us, which I had grown accustomed to. Which is why I responded immediately.

“I’m fine, Seetha.”

But she came and stood near me. She’d never take a seat at the table with me, even though I had asked her to eat with me many, many times. It didn’t matter if she was my guardian and took it upon herself to give me a curfew when I was younger—social hierarchies were social hierarchies.

“Baba, I know that you and Kaavindi Baba are old friends. But Baba, please be careful.”

I almost choked on my rice and curry.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you are a good girl. You have always been. But Kaavindi Baba is not like you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Seetha.” Kaavi had hurt me, of course, but what I was about to do to her was far, far worse.

She didn’t say anything else. Of course she didn’t. It wasn’t her place. But I could feel her eyes on me as I twisted and turned and wrung myself out waiting for something.

I distracted myself by staring at the painting that hung closest to me. It was a woman wearing a pale gray dress, tipping her toes into a river. Her arm wrapped around the branch of a willow tree as she peered into the water. My mother took a lot of liberties with her art. Nothing was photographic. The woman’s hair flowed long and wild, like it had a life of its own. The tears that trailed down her face glistened brighter than the water in front of her. The leaves from the tree floated like confetti in the breeze. The river churned around her greedily, just a moment away from sucking her in. And the woman herself—well, my mother told me she imagined the woman very brave, fearful of the danger she was about to submerge herself into, but willing to move forward, all the same. She used the tree branch to steady herself, my mother said, so the woman could spring forward. To me, the woman simply looked like she was possessed. Someone who had lost her footing on the shore. Who was plunging her foot into the water not because she was fearless, but because she felt the land had nothing left to give her anymore. Someone who was just a step away from drowning.