“In the end, that’s all you want,” Mamma continued. “To be His Highness Bram Raje, free to do whatever the hell your rotten heart desires. Don’t pretend you care about Ashi. Anyone with half a brain can see that you only want her here so you can make me look bad. Everyone knows that the child babysits you more than the other way around. She’s twelve, Bram. Have some shame!”

“You’re abandoning your twelve-year-old again and you want me to have shame? At least I’ve never left her.”

“Is getting drunk and passing out not abandoning her? Your brother and his wife had to take her in and you want me to have shame? This is the problem. You should have married a stupid woman, or at least one who lapped up your overentitled crap.”

“If I’m such a bad father, you should stay here and protect her from me.”

Mamma’s hand went to her forehead, her gold bangles crashing together on her wrist. Even in America Mamma never bothered to remove her bangles or the big red bindi she wore in the center of her forehead. She always dressed like she was in the Sripore palace, no matter where she was. Always in her starched white saris, with her waist-length hair in a bun at her nape. She didn’t care about fitting in or about not looking foreign, the way Ashna did when she dressed for school every day.

“How low can you fall, Bram? When will you stop using people this way? I don’t leave her here with you, God knows I’m not that heartless. I leave her with Shree and Mina. Your brother and his wife are better parents to her than either one of us anyway. I’m the one who has to make the choice between my child and my work. You don’t. You get to have both. You don’t lose anything. Men never do. Your hands always stay clean.”

“I lose you. I want you. And I don’t get to keep you. I love you.” Baba’s slurring always got more pronounced as these arguments escalated and their voices got louder. The glass of scotch on the table between them wobbled as Ashi’s vision blurred with tears.

“You bastard, I’m not a thing you get to keep. I begged you not to force me into this marriage. But you let them pack me up like a piece of meat and hand me to you. How is that love? If you knew what love meant you’d have cared what I wanted. You’d have seen that this could never work. Not just because I had already chosen my life partner, but because you and I have nothing in common, even without Omar.”