How she hated that man. Thinking about him still stung like oil burns across her skin. To think he had been her friend once. Then he’d betrayed her. So large had her anger at him been that she’d let go of something precious. Something she wanted back.

Why should Mina be the one who got to help Ashi? To be her mother? When Shobi wanted it so badly.

It’s because you’re here and not there with her, the waves whispered.

Shobi dusted the sand off her hands. Their last conversation had made it obvious that Ashi didn’t want her. There had been sheer panic in her voice at the thought of having to see Shobi. “You don’t know anything, so just shut up,” she said to the waves.

They went back to their rhythmic churning.

Sitting down on the beach, Shobi removed her sneakers and socks and neatly folded and tucked them together. Her toes were their usual coppery red. Having her toenails painted was a habit she had picked up from her own mother, who’d insisted that it was a sign of gentility. Even in her cricket-playing days Shobi had kept her feet pedicured, the deeply embedded need to please her mother lingering on past all the work she had done to become the person she was under the conditioning.

“You must be so proud of what you’ve achieved,” a journalist had said to her last week.

She was.

Wasn’t she?

Shobi had no experience with questioning herself. If she had stopped for doubts, life would have stomped her into the earth.

She rested her chin on her knees and watched the waves.

“Tell me what I’m missing?” she asked them as they rolled and rolled without pause. They never got a break to question their actions. They had to keep going to sustain the life they contained.

That wasn’t true. Even the ocean receded into low tide so the beaches might breathe.

Ashi had a way of breathing that told Shobi she was upset. It was her withdrawing-into-herself breathing, which she had used to lock Shobi out her whole life. The first time Shobi had noticed it was when she’d returned from the World Cup tournament when Ashi was eight.

“Mamma missed you,” Shobi had said, and Ashi’s eyes had gone flat. She’d breathed in slowly and deliberately but had not responded.

Your daughter told you she’s never learned to be happy.

Her child, who hadn’t told her anything important in a very long time, had told her a truth that people spoke only when they were desperate to be heard. Or when they had given up.

Don’t you see she’s asking you for help? the ocean said.

“I offered to help her, and she panicked.”

Maybe she just doesn’t know how to ask.