Omkar took Aria over to the living room in order to show her some of the items in the house. He made her touch the yellow flush of the curtains, which had been sewn by hand by his grandmother. He showed her a pair of ornately embroidered fabric shoes, called jutti, on a shelf and joked that they were his mother’s best weapon in the house when he was growing up. He explained the portrait of Guru Nanak as well as the sheathed sword, which was mounted on the wall beneath the painting. There was no plan behind the decoration of the house. Oil marks still stained the wall in rectangles where pictures used to hang. The items that served as decoration had been added over the years one by one and as a result, it boasted no aestheticism. Like a nest for a magpie who had been collecting things, the house served as a personal treasure box for Jarminder. And Neeraj had let her do whatever she wanted with it.

Omkar pulled a photo album out of the bookcase and started flipping through it for Aria to see. Most of the pictures had yellowed; the plastic covering them had lost its flex. They cracked with stickiness when Omkar opened the pages. Aria found it painful to see so many years of a life that he had lived before her. She watched him lose his baby fat, learn to ride a bike, spend his first years in America and every birthday that had passed before she’d met him. She saw his aunties, who, according to Omkar, could give the FBI a run for its money when it came to keeping tabs on everyone they knew. She saw the faces of his brother and sister who had died. The tragedy had projected sorrow over their smiles.

“I thought your last name was Agarwal. Why does your name here say Singh?” Aria asked, pointing to the names written beside the pictures.

“Actually, it isn’t a last name, it’s a kind of middle name. Every man in our culture has the same middle name, which is Singh, which means lion. And every woman in our culture has the same middle name, which is Kaur, which means princess,” Omkar replied.

“Ooh, that’s sexy, the lion and the princess,” Aria whispered under her breath, softly enough so that Omkar’s parents wouldn’t hear her or see her wink at him.

When the food was ready, they all sat down at the tiny dining table beside the kitchen. Neeraj and Jarminder studied the lines of Aria’s face. They found it beautiful, but distrusted the motives beneath it. The conversation that happened at the dinner table was a concerted effort to avoid sitting there mutely. Though they had set the table with utensils, they ate with their hands instead. Aria copied them, leaving her fork untouched, which made them smile.