The Art of Inheriting Secrets(34)

He shot a glance toward Pavi, who nodded. “It doesn’t matter, Dad. She’s been dead for more than forty years.”

“Mmm. We were a little afraid of her, all of us children, including Caroline. She could be generous and full of laughter, or she could be mean and petty, and you never knew which one it would be. I once saw her slap my mother so hard it left a mark for hours.”

“What? Really? And your mother continued to go visit her?”

“They had been quarreling about something, something old, maybe, back in India, and it made my mother angry, but she said that Lady Violet had demons and we weren’t to judge.”

I thought of the photograph, the unsmiling, straight-on way she looked at the camera. “She didn’t want to leave India.”

“No. She was freer there, but she inherited the title, so she had to come back.”

My mind whirled. “So why did everyone leave, if the inheritance was so important that Violet gave up the life she wanted to come back here?”

“She did her duty. That’s what people did then. She stayed until she died, but my mother said she never got over missing India.” He pierced a stray pea with the tine of a fork. “She’s buried in the churchyard.”

“I didn’t know that. I’ll have to go look.”

Something passed between father and daughter, and I rushed to ask one more question. “Were you still friends with my mother when she left?”

“Things were different for us then. We’d grown up, and I was grieving my sister, and it was all . . . just a very dark time.”

“Your sister? What happened to her?”

“Disappeared.” He wiped his face as if to erase the memory. “She went to the market one day, and we never saw her again. No one ever confessed to killing her or kidnapping her. She just vanished.”

“That must be excruciating,” I said slowly, “to never know.”

“Yes.” He carefully tucked his napkin next to his plate. “You must excuse me.”

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up painful memories . . . I just don’t know how to get answers to all of this.”

He paused. “Maybe you don’t really want the answers. Sometimes it’s better to let dead dogs lie.”

As he walked away, his shoulders hunched as if under a great weight, I said to Pavi, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked all those questions.”

“It’s all right. I can’t imagine how strange it is to have no answers about who you are, who your people are.”

I took a breath, feeling the hollowness in my chest again. “Exactly.”

“But now,” she said, her voice light, “you must tell me about the Egg and Hen and how it feels to write for such a magazine.”

I took a breath, glad for the shift in tone. “Yes. Let’s talk about that—in a moment.” I pointed toward the ladies’ room, and she nodded.

“I’m going to check on my father. We’ll meet back here in a few minutes. Can you possibly make room for some gulab jamun? I make the rose syrup myself.”

I laughed, touching my belly. “Maybe in a little while.”

In the ladies’ room, tastefully appointed with two walls white and one stenciled with an arty peacock, I washed my hands and noticed that my cheeks were quite flushed. A little tipsy. It always showed in my cheeks. My lipstick had lasted remarkably well, but I touched it up a bit, and as I leaned in, I realized the scarf probably wasn’t hiding the too-much cleavage as well as I’d hoped. Maybe I’d have to give this dress up until exercise got me back down to my usual, still-not-svelte self. Too bad. It was my favorite.

In the meantime, I adjusted the scarf again and headed back to the table. Pavi wasn’t back as I approached the table, but Amika paused. “Would you like anything? Water, perhaps?”

“Yes,” I said emphatically. “Please.”

As I slid in, I sat on my scarf and pulled it sideways, a winner of an awkward move, and I was chuckling to myself as I tugged it out from beneath my rear end when I sensed Pavi. Laughing, I said, “My friend used to tell me it’s hard to be cool when—”

But it wasn’t Pavi, because it had to be Samir standing there in going-out clothes, a pale-blue shirt with tiny dark stripes and black jeans that hugged his legs all the way down. “When?” he echoed, one side of his mouth lifting.

I managed to free the scarf and clutched it in my fist, very aware of the “too much” that was on full display in my one and only dress. I could feel him noticing, too, and tried not to look at him as I draped the scarf around my neck and tied it demurely. “When you’re a klutz,” I said, folding my hands.

“I rather liked it the other way,” he said. One hand rested on the tabletop, long and elegant, the nails perfect ovals. The hands of an artist. A lover.

A shiver rippled up the back of my neck, as if those hands had touched me. But he only stood by the table, still as a cat, his eyes capturing me, seeing me. I reminded myself that he was thirty-three. That he could, theoretically, date twenty-five-year-olds.

But his gaze waited for me, and in the end I could only meet it, let that steady regard draw me into something quiet and private, a country of our own creation.

“Samir!”

The country disappeared as Pavi bustled out of the kitchen, her hands full with a wide, shallow bowl. The gulab jamun, no doubt. As she settled it on the table, I saw the sprinkles of rose petals. Beautiful.