“It’s terrible to hate a dead person as much as I hate him, isn’t it?” she said through a constricted throat. She started pacing again.

The kitchen was exactly as it had been twelve years ago. Bram’s kitchen. Every detail made to his unbending standards. Many years ago, before he had conspired with her father to break her, Shobi had appreciated his love of beautiful things. He’d had such an eye, known how to make spaces, clothes, food beautiful. Just the way Omar had always known how to make words and thoughts beautiful.

They were both men who saw beauty. But where one believed in nurturing it, the other had known only how to grab. He had crushed every beautiful thing he touched because he only valued his wanting of it, his grip on it, not the thing itself.

“I have to tell her.” There was so much she hadn’t told Ashna, but she didn’t need to tell Mina which particular secret she was talking about. Mina knew them all.

Mina nodded. “Telling her might be the only way to get her to start to understand any of this.”

Shobi had finally told Bram that she wanted a divorce. Ashna was finishing high school. She was almost an adult ready to leave home and go to college, away from Bram’s influence. There was no longer the need to lie to her. Bram’s threat to keep them apart no longer worked. Shobi and Omar had been together for years by then, and other than Bram’s threats there was no reason to hide their relationship.

Never in Shobi’s wildest dreams had she expected him to put a bullet through his head because of it.

“She’ll hate me even more than she already does. She already blames me for his death; telling her it was me who pushed him over the edge will just confirm her belief. I’ll lose her.” Just the way Bram had wanted her to.

Mina was kind enough not to mention that Shobi had lost her a long time ago. “Or you’ll get her back. You’re right that something about Ashna is different now. Maybe it’s the show. Maybe it’s the fact that Curried Dreams has actually turned around. It’s been years since I’ve seen her happy.”

Shobi loved Mina for having been such a good mother to her daughter, but she hated it when Mina explained Ashna to her, especially because she was always right.

What if Mina was wrong this time?

Shobi bore no guilt about the fact that her leaving had caused Bram to end his life. That was on him. But Ashna would never understand.