Amala distracted herself from her own tumultuous thoughts by listening more attentively to her sister. She loved Kat dearly and knew her to be completely without guile, although she sometimes didn’t come across to others that way. What Amala and her parents all knew—because they had discussed it privately—was that Kat had a very simplistic way of looking at life. She didn’t think or feel as deeply as did Amala, and therefore she often didn’t think through her ideas or feelings very well before speaking them—or even acting upon them. But Kat’s intentions were never selfish or meant to be unkind. She had always been there for Amala; they had shared everything since that horrible day when they’d been together at the time of the tragic death of Amala’s Indian parents. But Kat never wanted to talk about that; in fact, Amala wasn’t sure she even remembered it. Oliver had once told Amala he’d heard that sometimes people’s minds would block out something traumatic because it was too much to bear. And Amala wondered if Kat had done exactly that, which had spilled over into her only seeing the good in everything and everyone, which in and of itself was an admirable trait—even if it made Kat somewhat naive in regard to the realities of the world.

Amala, on the other hand, could never forget what had happened that night. It still haunted her, just as other memories of her childhood did. But she chose to focus on all she had been blessed with in her life and to seek to find something joyful each and every day. She believed she could live a good and fulfilling life without ever marrying or having children of her own. It had to be that way. She knew it and she’d known it for a long time. But her time alone with Henry Beckenridge had made that knowledge more difficult to accept, which made it more difficult than usual to listen to Kat’s assessment of the eligible bachelors who had visited their home earlier in the day.