Chapters (50)
Kavita stops, mid-chew. Looks at him with glossy pain in her eyes. Remembers the words her mother uttered weeks earlier: I’ve already lost the most precious thing in my life.
“You haven’t lost everything, Dad,” she says.
“I don’t even have a place to live. I tried to make a place for myself in this country, this world, but it didn’t work. Now I have to try something else.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I have been reading about Buddhism, lately. Buddha understood suffering.”
“Okay….”
“There’s a monastery out east. They accept students. You can live there while you study.”
Kavita remembers the day her father borrowed her laptop and the page he left open on the browser. She had been right back then. He had been planning his Great Escape. “Are you telling me you want to go there?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“As long as it takes for me to understand what has happened to my life, and what it all means.”
“Dad, please don’t go. Not now.”
“Your mother doesn’t want me around. My son is gone. You have your own life, Kavita. A husband to take care of. Life is pushing me in a new direction.”
“I…” she stutters. “I don’t know what to say.”
“There is nothing to say. I have already contacted them. They have accepted my application and invited me to stay.”
“When did you apply? While I was gone?”
He pauses. “No, before.”
“So, even if you and Mom hadn’t fought, you would have left us?”
“Our family is broken, Kavita,” he says, as he peers deeply into her eyes. “There is nothing left to leave.”
Kavita stares at him, moon-eyed, unsure of the man sitting across from her. I don’t have your magic, she thinks to Sunil. I can’t make people stay.
Suddenly she can’t stand to be around her father any longer, as if the threat of his desertion has already thrust her away. She marches to the front door.
“Where are you going?” he calls out.
“To check on Mom.” She pulls on her jean jacket and sneakers.
“While you’re there, can you get a few things from my room?”
Blaze climbs. Up. Up. Up. She squeezes her fist, spearing her nails into her fresh scar.
“Kavita?”
Shuts her eyes tightly. Waits for the release.
“Beti?”
She squeezes harder and harder.
“Are you still there?”
But the pain isn’t enough. It isn’t enough to stifle Blaze. It burns, burns, burns. If she stays a moment longer, it will burn her alive.
She rushes out the door, its gusty thwack echoing along the hallway in a ripple of sound that chases and overtakes her, as if it were pain.