I know that there are years of this to pass. Years and years, wherein I will not be able to extricate you from the experiences that will shape me, make me. I will grow up with your unknowing spectre by my side, and I know someday our paths will—well, I'll hold on to a hope that they meet, not cross.

And I thought back to the dinner table at home a few days before I’d returned from summer break.

My mother had passed my dad the salad and said, ‘The Sood cocktail is tomorrow.’

‘I have to be in Delhi for a meeting. The Ghaziabad hotel hasn’t been signed.’

‘Can’t you push it back for a day?’

He poured himself another measure of clear gold liquid, and I thought, just for an instant, that I saw a shadow flicker past my mother’s face and settle in her eyes.

‘No, dear, I can’t. Aditya Dhillon doesn’t hand out appointments at anyone else’s convenience.’

A loud clatter told me I’d dropped my fork on the plate. No one noticed. Or if they did, it wasn’t important enough to comment upon.

Working hard to keep the frenetic contingency-building in my head off my face, I swallowed a sawdust bite of soft lamb and asked, ‘Is he related to Vijay Dhillon?’

My dad turned to me, mildly surprised. ‘Same family, different branch. This group owns the hotels and hospitals. The ones you’re talking about are in shipping and real estate.’

‘How do you know him, beta?’

I was prepared. I had spent enough time scouring for snippets about him online and in the papers to come up with a solid plausibility. ‘Oh, he’d come to one of my SAT prep classes once, to tell us about college in America. He went to Yale or something. Some Ivy League place.’

My dad nodded and dressed his lamb clean off its bones. ‘I’ve met him. He gave up his chair for me in the waiting room outside his uncle’s offi ce. Very polite boy.’

‘Really? That’s nice. I’m glad they had him come in and talk to you kids. You’re all so competitive these days— manners get left by the wayside, from everything I’m seeing.’

I excused myself from the table.

The thing was, I could have ceased aching for his perishable mind and the spread of his smile. But not his empathy, not his honour. I knew that—sitting at a table where everyone loved each other but no one knew how to talk to each other. I knew I could never shake him off.

And all the while, I was also trying to shake off the sudden, inexplicable face of a little girl—a little girl who had Jay’s mouth and big, brown eyes—willing herself not to cry as shadows flickered and faded and settled on a cold mother’s face around her.

Senior