The restaurant had always made all of Shobi’s rage at Bram surface. Even today she hadn’t been able to stand being there. How did Ashna do it? How did she go in there day after day with that room in the back, Bram’s lair, where he’d trapped himself those last few years, where Shobi had finally told him she was done with their farce of a marriage, and where he had taken his own life, with no regard for the child who had found him in a pool of his own blood?

In the end, Shobi had left without helping Mina and come back to the house. The bottle of red wine she had been nursing all evening was only half-depleted. She poured herself another glass. She’d had to walk to the Whole Foods down the street to pick up the wine, because the house was entirely and completely dry. Dry enough to make Mahatma Gandhi proud.

It was understandable that Ashna didn’t drink. Shobi remembered packing all the bottles in the house—hundreds of them, Bram was not one for moderation—into boxes on one of her visits and sending Bram’s man Friday off to the Anchorage with them. It had been a desperate attempt to get the man to see sense. Seeing sense was another thing her late husband had not been known for.

The front door opened, and Shobi jumped up. Patting her sari into place, she made her way out of the kitchen, and stopped short when she found Ashna tiptoeing to the stairs. Ashna had obviously seen the lights on and had been trying to avoid her. The poor child almost made it before Shobi cleared her throat. The guilt on her face at being intercepted tugged at Shobi’s heart.

“Hi, beta. How was today’s shoot?”

At first when Mina had asked Shobi to join them on their visit to Ashna’s set, she had agreed to go. Then she’d realized that putting Ashna through that in public without warning would be too cruel, and she’d stayed back.

Ashna stepped backward and off the stairs. “It was fine. Just some pictures and sound bites. Yash got some good coverage, which was great.” She bit her lip. “They didn’t tell us. So I didn’t know families were coming.”

“I know. Mina asked me. But I had an interview.”

Ashna took her withdrawing breath and pulled on her blank face. “Right. How did it go?”

Was Ashna saying she had wanted Shobi to be there? “It was fine. The usual questions. I might have permanently given up on getting a journalist to come up with a surprising question. Your interview on the morning show was great. You came across as sweet and poised as always.”

Ashna colored and rubbed a nonexistent spot off her giant handbag. “Thanks. I barely needed to say anything. They are mostly interested in Ri . . . Frederico anyway.”