Mina Kaki stroked her arm. “I know where she is. Go up and calm down. I’ll take care of it. She doesn’t need to see you like this. Not just before you leave.” She tried to whisper so Ashi wouldn’t hear. She failed.

Mamma, who went to battle with everyone about everything, never argued with her sister-in-law. Especially not about Ashi. She left and Ashi quickly wiped her cheeks on the flannel sleeves of her pajamas. It was her first grown-up pair, pink plaid instead of the soccer ball and lollipop prints she used to wear. Mina Kaki had taken her shopping for them. Mina Kaki shopped for all her clothes, and Ashi had wanted pajamas just like her aunt’s.

“Is it okay for me to come in?” Mina Kaki asked from the other side of the curtain.

Ashi let a sniff escape.

“I’m going to take that as a yes.” Even so, Mina Kaki parted the curtain slowly, careful to allow Ashi a chance to pull it back if she wanted. But Ashi wanted nothing more than to crawl into her aunt’s arms right now. She was cold. The cold was trembling inside her chest.

Mina sat down on the window seat next to her and ran a hand over Ashi’s head. “I’m sorry.”

Ashi wanted to tell her it wasn’t her fault, but if she said anything she would never stop crying and she couldn’t do that to her aunt. So when Mina Kaki pulled Ashna’s head into her lap, she went easily.

Then, despite her best effort, she proceeded to wet her aunt’s linen pants with her tears as her aunt stroked her hair.

For a long while they sat there without words, just the solidity of her aunt’s lap beneath her cheek and the comforting rhythm of her hand on her hair.

When the tears slowed and Ashna sat up, Mina Kaki met her eyes, her warm, clear brown gaze fierce. “The only thing I want you to remember from anything that you heard today is this: It is not your fault. None of this is your fault, beta.”

SOMETIMES ASHNA WONDERED how time hadn’t touched her aunt at all. The Mina Kaki of her childhood had seamlessly transformed into the Mina Kaki of the present day. If anything, she’d become more energetic, thanks to her obsession with running marathons. Even her hair was the exact same color—rich, perfectly highlighted auburn—and the same length, a sharp-edged bob that skimmed her jaw, and no one ever saw her until she was impeccably dressed in perfectly fitted linen pants and tailored blouses. Their mother’s seeming perfection was a point of amused frustration for her daughters, Trisha and Nisha, but to Ashna it was such a comforting cornerstone that the world fell back in place anytime she saw her aunt.