“I know that. But I was put in a position where I had no choice.” The horror of leaving her little girl in the care of an alcoholic never went away, no matter how hard she tried. No matter how much she told herself that she had left Ashna in the care of Mina and Shree and not Bram. “I tried to take you with me, Ashna. I asked you to come home with me. You’re the one who refused to leave your father. How can you forget that part?”

Shobi had repeatedly asked Ashna to go with her to India. Until a time had come when putting Ashna in a position where she had to make that choice over and over again just felt cruel.

Then there was the brutal reality of her situation, the part where Shobi had to travel so much for work. Since the death of Esha’s parents and Esha and Ma-saheb’s move to California, the Sripore palace had sat mostly vacant except for servants. Ashna would have to go to boarding school if Shobi forced her to go to India with her. She’d have to leave her cousins, her friends, be uprooted again. The only other choice had been giving up everything Shobi herself wanted and letting Bram win again. In the end, she hadn’t been able to let what she wanted be the thing sacrificed. Because who was going to break that cycle if they kept capitulating?

“Wow! Are you seriously blaming me for not running back to India with you? What kind of choice was that to give a child? Baba didn’t make me choose. He never left me.”

“He did make you choose. You just always chose him. And how did he not leave you? By being in his drunken stupor? When did he ever ask what you wanted?”

Ashna’s grip on the glass tightened. “Fine. You’re right. You both abandoned me. Yay me. There, are you happy now? Is this the heart-to-heart you were hoping for?”

With that she left the kitchen and ran up the stairs.

Shobi watched her go, unable to follow her. She poured herself another glass of wine and raised a toast to the man who had tried his best to ruin her life.

“I thought I had beaten you, Bram,” she said to the kitchen that captured his spirit. Dark, seemingly modern yet stubbornly traditional, reeking of privilege. “But you won, didn’t you? First you put her inside me without my permission. Then you used her as a dog collar around my neck. Then you wedged a wall of lies between us that I would have to break her spirit to break down.” She took a sip of the wine. “Congratulations, you sick bastard, you won.”

Chapter Twenty-Three