It was the first time they were talking. Not using words to transfer pain and regret, just talking. Suddenly he was terribly curious about her life.

“Is it hard to manage the restaurant with the show?” Talking about the restaurant felt tenuous, but they were crawling along. He’d never been so grateful for traffic.

“My aunt’s helping. That’s Trisha’s m-mother.” Her voice stuttered on the word mother and she pursed her lips, obviously mortified that it had.

“I know,” he said gently, knowing their moment of casual conversation had passed. “Is your mother still in Sripore?”

Another word that made a muscle twitch in her jaw. At first he’d found it amazing that she had grown up in a palace, then he’d realized that to her it was just a home she missed.

When was the last time you visited? If he asked her, he’d have to deal with the fact that he’d never gone back to the home of his childhood even when he went to Rio.

“She’s here right now.”

Okay. The one person she had never talked about was her mother. All Rico knew was that any mention of her mother turned Ashna into a ball of longing and anger. Having her here was obviously not a simple thing. “Does she live here permanently now?” He had no idea why he pushed, but it felt important to.

“She’s been here a few weeks.” A breath. “She just won a prestigious national award in India and she’s having . . . never mind.”

“Let me guess. She’s having a Large Life Moment. She wants to go back and examine all the things that went wrong.” If that didn’t cut too close to home, Rico didn’t know what did.

Is that why you’re here? Maybe the question didn’t actually shine in her eyes. Maybe he just imagined it. “Something like that,” she said.

“So, you don’t want her here then.”

“She’s my mother.” She kept her voice dead flat. It was one of those lines that could mean entirely different things depending on which word you emphasized. Like one of those acting exercises. But she didn’t let emphasis fall on any single word.

“And yet you don’t want her here.” That he would do anything for another day with his parents was plain in his voice.

Growing up, Rico could never have imagined being able to live in a world without his parents. They hadn’t let him feel unloved a single day that he’d had them. For all the challenges a relationship like theirs had to have come with, his mãe and pai had always put his happiness before everything.