“I’ll just be over here,” I called unnecessarily. “I’ll just be over here while you guys do your girl thing over there, don’t worry.”

I fingered the lehenga, laid out on the conference table. It was surprisingly rough.

“It’s amazing, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not sure it’s totally my style, Anita,” Prachi said. “And it’s a summer wedding, in Georgia—it’ll be so hot.”

“Give yourself a chance to get it altered,” Anita said. “You’ll fall in love with it when Mr. Harsh sizes it perfectly. Trust me, I’ve seen Deepika Padukone in this, you two have the same figure, and it looks like a lot, yes, but when it hangs on you, ooh, it’s stunning. If you hate it, give it to a cousin or something. Mr. Harsh will leave space for a few sizes, right?”

I began to pull the Jhaveri gold from my pockets and the Screwvala and Mehta pieces from the bag; felt inside the skirt for the trick pockets, each one sewn into the middle liner… there, there was the first one. I grabbed at the loose thread and felt something give way. I shoved the first bangles in, then retied the string.

It was so much less gold than we’d planned on. What if I didn’t bother with smuggling it in the lehenga, just carried it out on me? But then came Anita’s determined eyes, peering round the bamboo. She didn’t know how little I’d gathered. And besides, what if someone—what if Minkus Jhaveri, or the single security guard—demanded I empty my bag? No one would guess about these trick pockets. I kept at it. I tried to work without the awareness of Anita’s gaze on me. Leave you, she’d made me recite how many times. If something goes wrong, I leave you, and I take everything to Anjali Auntie.

You know I’d have to leave you, too, right, Neil? she’d said to me. You understand that if something goes wrong, I will get to my mom first?

“Turn. Arms up.”

“I hate to ask, Anita, but…” Prachi was saying on the other side of the divider.

“Arms down.”

“It was all… fair and square, wasn’t it? I mean, I don’t want you to do something, like, to get me to like you. Because you feel you need approval from our family?”

“Of course it isn’t that.”

I finished tying up the gold in the skirt. I smoothed the lehenga. I stepped back and saw Mr. Harsh gripping my sister’s hips like they were flanks of meat.

The tailor drew a datebook from his breast pocket. “Thursday after next,” he said, head waggling, that indeterminate promise.