“There isn’t much in the fridge,” Kavita tells her father as she peruses its anorexic contents. “How about grilled cheese?”

“Fine,” he shrugs.

From the fridge, she pulls out margarine, sourdough, and cheddar, and lays them out on the island, where he father is perched on a stool, looking as though he’s eating at a diner counter. She starts buttering a slice of bread.

“So,” she says at last. “You want to talk about it?”

“What is there to say? I’ve told you everything already.”

“You haven’t told me how you feel.”

“What does that matter? It is what it is.”

“It matters, Dad. You have to let these things out. Otherwise they can eat you up inside.” She can appreciate how hypocritical she sounds.

Her father frowns into his glass of water.

“You’ve had blow-outs before, but you’ve never left.” Leaving the home and the family that has been the centre of his existence for the past thirty years goes against everything she knows her father to be, everything he believes in, everything he has built. As a young man, he left his home once before, and if that kind of amputation had to be endured, once in a lifetime was enough.

“I can’t go back there, not ever.”

“But it’s your home.”

“Not anymore. Some things are unforgivable.”

Kavita grills her father’s sandwich in silence, recalling the London incident. She knows exactly what her father means. When the sandwich is perfectly brown and crispy, she slices it, and places it in front of him. He hands her one half, telling her that she has gotten too skinny, khaana, eat. Reluctantly, she takes the sandwich. They chew in silence for a while.

Once he is finished, he drinks half the water in his glass, and seems ready to talk. “When I started my own family,” he tells her, “I promised myself I would provide my children with everything. A good home. A good education. The safety and security I never had. Every decision I’ve ever made, I made with you in mind.”

Kavita knows this to be true. Generational and cultural indulgences like “me-time” or “man cave” or “mid-life crisis” were concepts as foreign to him as infidelity and divorce. He chose to work for the government because it was a good job if you wanted to raise a family. He was home every day by three o’clock, in time to make them after-school snacks. He never invested much in friendships or vied for promotions or conferences at work, because those things would take time away from his family. Kavita couldn’t speak to how he was as a husband, but he was a good father.

“Look at how things have turned out,” he continues. “I have devoted my life to my family, and now I have nothing.”