“Shob— Mom?” Ashna said, frozen in place, as Shobi squatted and fished the phone out from beneath the white wicker chair without dislodging a strand of hair or disturbing her neatly draped starched cotton sari.

“The very one.” Shobi handed Ashna her phone and walked into Ashna’s house as though it were her own. Which technically it was, if you defined ownership strictly in legal terms.

“What are you doing here?” Ashna looked around her usually fastidiously tidy living room, a sense of dread growing inside her.

Cups—at least four of them—were scattered across the coffee table along with file folders and papers, and a plate of cookies (or biscuits, as Shobi called them). An unfolded kantha quilt draped the antique Queen Anne couch. The pillows that usually lined the straight back in a perfect diamond pattern were strewn everywhere.

A sour feeling bubbled in Ashna’s stomach. The house had always been in this kind of disarray when Shobi visited. It used to feel warm and cozy, until Ashna started to associate the mess with the constant fear of Shobi leaving. Ashna lined the cushions up, one mustard and one olive in order.

“Sorry. I’ll clean up. I got caught up in some work. I . . . I wasn’t expecting you not to be here. I . . . I have the garage code. I . . . um . . . I wanted to surprise you.” Shobi smiled as though they were just any mother-daughter pair who routinely did things like surprise each other with visits. “I didn’t realize you wouldn’t be home.” Shobi never rambled. Was she nervous? Shobi was never nervous.

“I told you I’m doing the show. We shoot in San Francisco. Traffic coming home was bad.” Ashna picked up the empty and half-empty cups. Anger at the fact that Shobi hadn’t believed her about the show rose fast, which led to the realization that it was Shobi’s fault that she was stuck with Rico, and that did nothing to help the anger.

“It’s not like I didn’t believe you.” Shobi picked up the plate of biscuits and followed Ashna into the kitchen. “It’s just that I really wanted to see you and you refused to come to India. So I thought . . .”

Ashna started rinsing the cups out.

“We have to talk, Ashna. It’s about time.”

A horrid laugh spurted from Ashna. She pressed a fist into her mouth and swallowed it back.

She checked the Swiss cuckoo clock next to the fridge. In five hours she had to be up and at the farmer’s market.

The need to turn Baba’s restaurant around flared inside her afresh. Her mother’s presence always made her grief, her protectiveness, her guilt over Baba a hundred times worse.