Breaking into a run, she made her way out of the restaurant and started walking. She walked and she walked. The sun was long gone from the sky, leaving suburbia in a blanket of lights. She found herself on Caltrain headed to the city. By the time she got off at the Fourth and King station, memories had clogged up inside her like sludge, a backed-up drain that wouldn’t move.

How could so much anger for your parents live inside you, even as you hurt for them? Wasn’t hurting for someone a sign of love? How could she love someone capable of such hateful things?

Why had she blocked out Baba’s cruelty until now? For the last few years of his life he had barely ever emerged from behind the haze of depression and alcohol. All Ashna had wanted was to help him, to save him. To show her mother that care was what people needed, and time.

How colossally stupid she was.

She’d completely ignored the fact that Shobi had shown nothing but care for all the world. She’d given all her time to it.

So much Ashna had blocked out. A year after moving to Palo Alto, when the high of the restaurant’s success had made Baba seem the happiest Ashna had ever seen him, she had asked him if she could move back home to Sripore. He’d taken his rifle out of its case and looked Ashna straight in the eye.

“You’ve already lost your mother. She doesn’t want us. If you leave me like she left us, I’ll have no choice but to kill myself. Then you’ll have no one left.”

Ashna had been ten.

Mina Kaki had found her terrified and unable to get out of bed the next day. Her aunt had tried everything to get Ashna to tell her what was wrong. But Ashna hadn’t been able to. Mina had called Shobi to ask her to come out and take care of Ashna.

Ashna had picked up the extension and overheard their conversation. “Can you manage things with Ashi one more time, Minu? I have to be in Ratnagiri. We’re inaugurating our biggest school yet. It’s going to serve all of Konkan. Too many people are counting on me.” At least Baba wanted her badly enough that losing her would kill him.

Finally, Mina Kaki had been the one to “manage things.” She’d moved Ashna into school in Woodside. HRH and she had given Bram no choice, insisting Ashna needed her cousins and the feminine influence of her aunt and grandmother. Now Ashna wondered if he hadn’t been relieved to be rid of her.

If her aunt and uncle hadn’t moved her into their home, what would Ashna have done?