A Change of Heart (18 page)

24

 

—Dr. Jen Joshi

 

 

S
himmering silk and intricately embroidered gold spilled from the bag as Nikhil threw it open. Just his luck that the first thing staring at him when he opened it was Jen's wedding sari. Jade. That's what she had called the color. It was Ria's word, of course. The only way Jen would ever use
jade
for a color was if it identified a radiology dye. And yet on their wedding day she had looked as elegant, as beautiful, as impeccably put together as the most fastidious fashionista.

He squeezed his eyes shut. Jen walking up the aisle to him as he waited for her under an altar of lilies, running those last few steps—it was a vision he was going to carry to his dying day. It would always be as fresh, as real, as the moment it happened.

The silk slid between his fingers, every one of his senses searching for her beneath it. He'd peeled it off her body fast, too fast, mindless in his hurry to get to her. Her skin. Her smell. She had smelled like a drug. She had
been
a drug. Familiar, irresistible, sparking unfathomable hunger, bringing incomparable numbing peace. His tough, take-on-the-world wife had been his drug. She was
charas
to his
charsi
. Weed to his pothead.

What kind of idiot smiled now? Here. Where his dead wife was all around him. In boxes and bags and lifeless saris. But he'd just called her “weed” and it was hilarious. And she would have thought so too.

He let the sari go. How could you want something so badly and be so very tired of it all at once?

“Nikhil?” The soft hand on his shoulder wasn't her, he knew it wasn't. And yet it kept him from folding over and throwing up the grief that consumed him.

“Sometimes I feel like this isn't happening. That I'll wake up and she'll be here and all of this will have been a nightmare.”

“I know.”

“How? How could you possibly know what this feels like?” Even as he said it he was certain she knew what it was to be altered by loss. “Was it Joy's dad? Was he someone you loved?”

That trademark blast of pain, which he'd grown to recognize, flickered across her face and was gone. “Will it be easier if I went through the bags?” she said with a gentleness that turned her into someone entirely different from that yogic Goddess of Darkness she wore so well.

He let go of the sari he was gripping. “No.” He had to do this himself.

He started filing through the saris. Shoving away the images of Jen in each one of them. The midnight-blue, in which Ria had first taught her how to wear a sari. The shimmering burgundy she had carried with the confidence of a princess at their reception. The black-and-gold, in which he had twirled and twirled her as they danced at Ria and Vic's wedding. When she'd told him she was pregnant.

When she'd told him she didn't want to be.

But she had learned to want it, for him.
Because she's yours, Spikey.

“She's ours,” he'd told her, and she'd repeated it in wonder.
Because she's ours.

Their little girl.

Under all the saris was the jewelry. Coordinated sets of necklaces and earrings and bracelets Aie had bought for her daughter-in-law even before Nikhil had met Jen. Nothing made Jen cry, but having his mother slip his grandmother's gold bracelets onto her wrists at the engagement ceremony had made tears stream down her cheeks.

She would have slipped those bracelets on their little girl's wrists at her wedding.

“I wouldn't get rid of any of this stuff,” he said, turning to Jess's hopeful eyes. “But there's nothing in here that looks like any kind of storage device would fit in it.”

He opened a red velvet–lined box, removed the bracelets, and pulled at the lining, tearing it off, trying not to let the ripping sound bring satisfaction. There was nothing there. He put it aside and started on the rest of the jewelry boxes. Ripping and ripping.

But he found nothing. Jess put each box back together when he was done tearing it up. Folding the velvet lining and pushing it in place until it looked like it had never come apart.

Nothing. The bag held nothing but the remnants of his life with Jen.

Opening it had been hard enough. Putting it away—the lingering smells, the fresh-as-a-flesh-wound feel of the memories—was impossible.

Jess pulled the bag away from him and put everything back in place, her movements quick and efficient and soundless. She snapped it shut, her jaw so tight her lips all but disappeared. Her hands hesitated a second before she moved the other bright yellow bag toward him.

The same bright red nail-polish letters emblazoned this one too.

Given how much they traveled, Jen had believed the best way to spot their bags on baggage claim belts was to buy the brightest color. But on their first flight into Heathrow it had been clear that all travelers basically had the same idea.

Jen had bought red nail polish at the airport and painted their names on. Actually, she had done one and he had done the other. The closest he had ever come to carving his name into a tree for a girl.

She had laughed at him about that.
What kind of man marries the only girl he's ever fallen for? You have to have someone break your heart before you find your soul mate. You're so unromantic, Spikey.

Or too darned romantic. Depending on how you looked at it.

He threw the second bag open.

This one was chockfull of what looked like crushed-up newspaper balls. He picked one up. Wrapped in the newspaper was a cup. They never moved with this stuff. They always gave it away to their local friends or people they had worked with. Then they bought all of it again at their next posting. But Vic or Ria, whoever had packed up the stuff, had wrapped each piece. Baggage gathered on Jen's behalf when she had fought so hard not to collect any on her own.

“It's not in this one,” he said and turned to the boxes.

He ripped one open before his brain kicked in. Books, clothes, bedding. More smells and sights. More
them
.

Coffins. These weren't boxes. They were cardboard coffins. Body parts of their marriage, chopped up by a killer and disposed of in garbage bags. Mangled and maimed and entirely unrecognizable. Not a trace of the beautiful body that was gone.

“How do you deal with it?” he asked when they had spent God knows how many hours, lifetimes, trudging through the Dumpster of severed limbs and he found in his hands a picture of himself with his head on Jen's lap. A selfie she had taken and then printed to take with her when she left for Mumbai.

“Deal with what?” Jess had been silent for so long the sound of her voice was like breaking through the surface of water and filling his lungs with air.

“With whatever it was that happened to you.” His own voice came from miles away. They were solidified distance. Each particle vibrating between them its full-blown self.

“That depends,” she said, her hands working methodically on wrapping up and putting away everything he had pulled apart.

“On what?”

“On what you mean by dealing with it.”

“How do you fucking go on?”

“As opposed to what?”

He pushed himself off the floor and stood, her eyes following him like floodlit probes, demanding to be answered.

He flipped the mirror on her. “Didn't you ever consider it? The alternative?”

She looked away, going back to folding and wrapping, the precise care in her actions falling on his frayed senses, soothing one moment, gouging the next, an unperturbed glance her only reaction to the hideous question that had just come out of his mouth.

“I had Joy. How could I?”

And he had nothing. But it sounded too weak, too selfish to say it.

Her hands stilled. “There's a difference between considering it and doing it.” Her words were empty, but her eyes, they filled them in. “It's okay to consider it, Nikhil. If that gets you through. It's okay to do whatever you have to do to make it through the hours.”

That was the problem. Making it through the hours.

“Look at you,” she said. “You just went through all these boxes and you're still here. You're going on.”

“I'm really not. This isn't going on. I can't even get out of bed in the morning.”

“But you do get out of bed every morning.”

“But I don't want to. All of this—it doesn't feel like my life. It doesn't even feel like life. I don't feel alive.”

* * *

The pain in his eyes was so raw she wanted to run from it. Instead she made herself stand and face him. People with healed injuries claimed forgotten pain returned when they heard someone else talk about their pain. Muscles and nerves had memory and the reminder resurrected those memories. Jen had already brought all her suppressed memories back to life. Now here was the pain in Nikhil's eyes to give those memories bulk and blow them up like an inflatable raft.

“You're right. You don't feel alive. You feel trapped in what happened. Like you're still in the middle of it. Like it's still happening. Like it will never stop. But the feeling passes, in flashes at first, then for longer and longer stretches of time. You live in those stretches of time. That's all I can tell you.”

He reached for her then and the shock of it jolted through her. She had been wrong; his pain wasn't like hers. His tragedy was completely different from her own. He needed to touch someone, needed to feel something real in his hands. Something alive. His arms circled her waist, his head found its way to her shoulder. “Tell me something she told you. Tell me what she wanted. How she sounded. Tell me where she is.”

“I told you I don't . . .” Her hand went to his shoulder. She patted it tentatively, trying not to think about it. Trying not to think about the fact that he was a man, and that his hands were around her. Somehow it was different this time. He wasn't half unconscious with alcohol. “Jen wanted you to be happy. She worried that if something happened to her, that you would not be okay. She wanted more than anything for you to continue to be who you are. To never lose your faith. She knew you would find it again. Find your way. Even if you got lost for a while, she knew you would find your way in the end.”

He started to shake in her arms, a subtle, unwilling trembling. A kite fluttering to break free as you tried to hold it in place against the wind.

For long moments the shaking went on, him struggling to hold it in and failing. The need to soothe him was a wave and it took her down. She stroked his shoulders, his hair. She couldn't not hold him, couldn't not speak words she knew he needed to hear, as, body and soul, he fell into his pain.

When he finally pulled away, his eyes were bloodshot, but unlike the last time he'd cried in her arms, there was courage there.

He cupped her cheek. “Do you mind going up by yourself? I need a moment.”

“Of course.” She should have run up, run away from him and his brave, hurt-soaked eyes. But she stood there a moment watching him before turning around and slipping out the door.

“Jess,” he said when she was halfway to the stairs. He was leaning on the door frame.

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

25

 

—Dr. Jen Joshi

 

 

S
he heard voices coming from the kitchen and couldn't bring herself to go in. But she couldn't go back down either. He wasn't the only one who needed a moment. The feel of his hair was imprinted on her palms. A strange bundle of knots was lodged in her chest, and she tried to untangle it and find the triumph she should've been feeling.

This was a huge step after all. It was why she was here. She pulled out her phone and typed out the words
Search begun
.

Almost immediately he responded with his Naag strike.
About time. And?

She pressed back into the wall. She was going to throw up.

If you go anywhere near him, I'll go tell Nikhil what you're up to right now.
Her thumb hovered over the send button. Why would Nikhil care? She deleted the juvenile words.

I am in his house. He trusts me. If you pressure me like this I can't work. One more week.
Then she typed the hardest word.
Please.

Nausea squeezed up her throat. But he wasn't done.

Oh, and I was talking to some old friends from Calcutta and trying to find out about Joy's father.
Her knees buckled.

Her hand was shaking when she erased the messages.
Please, Jen, give me a clue. Give me something.

But Jen had helped her as much as she could. It was all up to her now. Watching Nikhil go through the remnants of his marriage had made her feel like someone had peeled off her scabs and left her perennially ripe wounds exposed. Despite her lecturing Nikhil about moving on and getting through the pain one step at a time, all she wanted was to shove past it for him.

And no, it wasn't because she couldn't bear to see him in pain, but because running out of time meant losing everything.

For all the relief of having dragged Nikhil away from the absolute darkness he'd been trapped inside, she was here to steal from him. She wasn't a complete idiot. She knew exactly why she'd been able to get this far. He sensed her brokenness, recognized it, unlike everyone else who never saw beyond the frozen exterior. At first she'd thought that was the reason he leaned on her, because her brokenness made his own less daunting. It was why he focused on her pain every time he needed to deal with his own. But that wasn't all it was. Truth was, he was someone who couldn't walk away from broken things without trying to fix them.

Luck had been on Naag's side when he had picked her out on set because of her Nepalese features and then found out that she was a single mother. Such an easy target.

The fact that she came with the horrors of her past was entirely coincidental. Without those she would never have been able to get through to Nikhil. Who would have thought a time would come when she would have to be grateful for what had happened to her?

In the kitchen, Ria Parkar was still talking to Nikhil's mother in hushed tones, and there was no way to get out of the basement without passing through the kitchen. Those two were the last people on earth she wanted to face right now. The looks they had thrown her when they'd heard she was going to be with Nikhil when he went through Jen's things still stabbed at her skin like needles.

Not that she blamed them. They had good instincts to know that she was after something. Only, contrary to what they believed, it wasn't Nikhil.

“We have to cancel, Uma Atya,” Ria Parkar said. “Nikhil can't handle it. There is no way I'm having a baby shower with Nikhil in the house. You know what that baby meant to him.”

“We can't not have the ceremony,” Nikhil's mother's voice said after a long pause. She sounded like she was crying. “We have to do the
aarti
blessings and I have to make the cravings feast. This baby is a miracle,
beta.
We can't let her come into the world with no celebration. It's inauspicious. It's not what Jen would have wanted.”

“Do you know his plans? Maybe we can wait.”

“He's spoken all of two lines to me.” Nikhil's mother sounded so sad, Jess's heart did that horrible squeeze again. “But I hope he's not leaving soon. I don't know what I would do if he took off again.”

“Viky can talk to him and find out. If he's going back to the ship, can't we do it then? I don't want him to leave either, Uma Atya, but I can't do that to him. As it is, this feels wrong.”

Uma gasped. “Don't say that. How can it be wrong that you have this gift?”

“Nikhil and Jen.” Now Ria seemed to be struggling with tears. “They were the ones who should have been here. We should have planned Jen's
dohal jevan,
not mine.” For a moment the resentment Jess felt toward the woman eased.

“But we can't wait. It's the ninth month.”

“What are you doing?” Nikhil's voice floated up the stairs behind Jess.

She spun around and ran down the steps before he made it all the way up. “I was coming back to see how you were.”

“I'm fine,” he said, only one step below her, his eyes level with hers. The red-rimmed exhaustion in them made a strange restlessness churn inside her.

A normal person would be able to say something, maybe stroke his cheek, do something to soothe him. She just stood there looking in his pain-ripe eyes.

He was the one who reached up and touched her face, flipping the world on its head by soothing her. “I couldn't have done this without you. Thanks.”

She took two steps up. “You thanked me already.”

“I'm sorry, that was horrible of me.” His lips quirked the slightest bit, but the pain in his eyes didn't budge.

She should smile back, say something to lighten the moment, to acknowledge how brave he was. She backed up another step, trying to get away from all that gratitude and courage.

The door above them flew open, and she spun around and lost her balance, fumbling for the railing as she fell backward. Her back slammed against Nikhil. His arms wrapped around her. His body kept them both from toppling over and landing on their bums. A shock of heat flushed through her, the push of his thighs registering against her bottom, the press of his forearms finding the undersides of her breasts.

Nikhil's mother and Ria Parker gaped at them as though they'd been caught holding each other naked. Behind her Nikhil started to shake, his shoulders vibrating against hers. She spun around in his arms to find him laughing. Of all things.

“You should have seen your face when the door opened,” he told her. “Aie, one of these days you'll learn to knock.”

She turned to Nikhil's mother's half-frowning, half-smiling face. “Are you all right?” she asked Jess and then shook her head at Nikhil. “Nikhil has this horrible habit of laughing at the most inappropriate times.”

For one second, the three of them smiled at one another as if it were just another day.

“She's right,” he said through the laughter that wiped him clean. “It's a horrible habit.” But his arms were still around her, gentler than any touch she'd ever experienced, and she couldn't respond to his smile.

She pushed him away and he set her straight, his hands slipping off her waist carefully. Completely clinical. He didn't even seem to suspect the fire that burned where his thigh had touched hers, where her back had molded into his chest.

In a flash the heat was gone. Shame and panic doused everything that had just bubbled up inside her, and it left the feel of other hands in its wake.

Hands that tore at her. No. Don't fall into that darkness. Not now. She tried to step away, but was trapped between Nikhil's body and his mother's. Don't start shaking. Don't dare start shaking.

Nikhil's mother stepped back quickly. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you,
beta
.”

The gentleness in her voice made Jess want to start shaking even more. “No. Please, it's not your fault. I just lost my balance.”

She knew Nikhil was watching her, but she couldn't look at him. The stairway was too narrow, and the walls started to close around her. She would not faint. God, please don't let her faint.

“Aie, let's go up. You two look pretty scary glowering down at us like that. It's a good thing I was standing right here, because she could have hurt herself if she'd fallen.” All the levity was gone from him now.

“Nikhil, please. I'm fine.”

Ria pushed through the door and Nikhil's mother followed her into the kitchen. “I was just going to bring down some coffee. Unless, Jess, you prefer chai?” she said, the bright kitchen lighting her up from behind.

Jess was about to say no when Nikhil walked past her. “She prefers chai. But she doesn't like ginger in hers. I'll just make her a cup.” He picked up a stainless-steel kettle and held it under the faucet.

“You don't like ginger in your chai? What kind of person doesn't like ginger in their chai?” his mother asked, placing the softest hand on her shoulder, that touch taking away all the panic from before.

“Don't let her scare you,” Nikhil said, when the kettle was on the stove. “Admonishing you is how she shows affection.”

Ria Parkar and Nikhil exchanged commiserating glances as Ria arranged some biscuits on a plate. “Nikhil, I think you should sit down, because guess what Uma Atya made?”

Nikhil stuck his nose up and sniffed the air like a dog. His hand reached for the lid on a pot sitting on the countertop.

His mother smacked his hand. “It's not a guess if you look!”

“Oh, you think I can't smell your carrot
halwa
now?” He lifted the lid off the pot, stuck a finger into the bright orange dessert, and popped a fingerful into his mouth. His eyes fluttered shut. “Wow, Aie!” He was about to stick those fingers, which had just come out of his mouth, back in when Ria Parkar shook a spoon in his face and jabbed it into the
halwa
. The woman did have some redeeming qualities after all.

He used it to scoop a heaped spoonful of it into his mouth.

Before he could dunk his spoon back in the
halwa,
Ria slid a plate at him and used a different spoon to serve him some. A smile played around Nikhil's mouth.

His mother put some on another plate and handed it to Jess. “How about you at least offer it to your friend first? I would ask where your manners are, but you just stuck your fingers in a serving bowl.” She patted Jess's cheek. “Eat,
beta
. Do you like sweets?”

She had loved sweets as a child. Hungered for them even, but she'd rarely had any. Now she just felt strange eating them.

Nikhil held her gaze. “Seriously, I think wars might be fought if someone discovered Aie's carrot
halwa
.” He pointed to her plate with his spoon and put another spoonful in his mouth.

She followed his unspoken advice and tried some.

Holy. Lord. Above!

Nikhil threw her a smug grin. Ria grabbed a spoon and dug into Nikhil's plate. Nikhil's
aie
sank into a chair with a satisfied smile.

For a few moments they just ate. There could be nothing else when there was this, this crazy assault of sweet, buttery flavor on your tongue. No wonder Jen had loved it so much.

Everyone around her froze.

Please, God, don't let her have spoken that out loud.

“How did you know Je—did you know her well?” Ria's voice was strained, and her eyes darted to Nikhil, who had stopped eating. “Did you work with her?”

“Jess has Jen's—” Nikhil's flat words never had the chance to make it out of his mouth.

She cut him off. “Yes, I knew her well. It was for a very short time, but I did know her well.” She looked at Nikhil, silently pleading with him to not tell them about the heart. They absolutely could not find out.

“Did you work at the clinic with her?” Ria said, studying her. “Actually, you look familiar. Have we met?”

Fantastic. Perfect timing for the star's memory to kick in.

Nikhil raised an eyebrow at her, every trace of laughter gone from his eyes. His quicksilver mood swinging all the way back to the darkest dark. Fortunately, he held his silence, taking his time to chew the dessert he suddenly didn't seem to want anymore. It was clear he wasn't going to say anything about the heart. But he wasn't about to help her either.

It was a good thing she had enough practice doing just fine without help. “I never had a chance to meet any of you because we knew each other for too short a time.”

“Really? Jen usually took so long to make friends,” Ria said, still watching her like a hawk.