That night, Omkar sat with Aria until she fell asleep. Sensing that his opportunity was upon him, when he walked upstairs, instead of going to his room, he walked straight into his parents’ bedroom. Jarminder was already asleep. With the side table lamp still on, Neeraj was flipping through the pages of a book on acupressure and locating the corresponding pressure points on himself.

Knowing his son would only interrupt them at night when he had unpleasant news to share, he grumbled in response to Omkar’s intrusion. “Mama, Mama, I need to talk to you,” Omkar said, bulldozing Neeraj’s resistance to Jarminder being woken up. She opened her eyes groggily but was immediately stricken with panic that something must be terribly wrong.

“Mama, I have come to ask you for something. Do you remember what you said when Auntie Chann was going to marry that man last year? You said that if you have to think about whether or not you love someone, that isn’t really love. Mama, I was listening. I don’t have to think about whether I love Aria because I do. I can only hope that in the past little while that she has been living here, you have come to love her too. Mama, you said a long time ago that when I met the girl that I wanted to marry, you had a ring for me to give to her. Mama, I have met the girl I am going to marry. And I am going to ask her to marry me. But I am asking for you and Papa to give me your blessing.”

Neeraj huffed and sat up against the headboard with his arms folded. “She is a very good girl. We like her. But why are you thinking about this at your age? Why can’t you wait until your schooling is finished? Why can’t you behave your age? I do not believe you are ready for such a thing as you are proposing,” he said.

Jarminder was uncharacteristically quiet. She stared through Omkar instead of at him. It was not the first time Omkar had mentioned that he thought of Aria as a potential wife. Having seen Omkar and Aria together, both she and Neeraj had come to terms with the possibility that they would one day be married. The strength of Neeraj’s protest surprised her because it exceeded her own.

Neeraj continued. “Omkar, marriage is not a trivial thing. It is not something that you can pick up one minute and drop the next. I do not understand why …”

Jarminder cut him off by grabbing hold of the sleeve of his nightshirt. In Punjabi, she told him to stop. She scolded him for refusing to even hear Omkar out.

Omkar’s heart leapt. He had barged into the room expecting a fight from both of them, and instead, it seemed his mother was on his side.