“Stop it, Sunil.” Kavita hobbled over the pebbles and held his shoulders, firm. “You’re not fucked.” She waited for a sign of recognition. “You’re not. People come back from these sorts of setbacks all the time. You need to cut yourself some slack, okay? And be patient. It’ll happen. We’ll get there.”

His dark eyes were soft and dull. “You’re so naïve, Little One.”

“Not so naïve, Sunil. And not so little anymore, either. I’m right about this. You have to trust me. Things are already working themselves out. Can’t you see that?” He shrugged out of her grasp. Inch by inch, she felt him retreating inward. “You know everything’s going to be okay, right?”

He stared at the horizon with a firm look, clear and resolute. “I know,” he said. A few long moments passed. “Come on, let’s head back.”

She stuffed her hands into her pockets and followed him. Then she felt it—the rakhi.

Reaching into her pocket, she pulls out the bracelet made of crimson thread she has been carrying since then. It was her gift to Sunil for Raksha Bandhan, brother-sister day. The day they reaffirmed their bond, their promise to protect each other. Normally, while she tied a rakhi to Sunil’s wrist, their mother would retell the old story of the mythical twins, Yami, the goddess of the sacred river Yamuna, and Yama, the God of Death. How Yami had tied a rakhi to Yama’s wrist thus making him immortal. Yama, touched by his sister’s gesture, had declared any brother who received a rakhi from their sister would be blessed with long life.

“I thought you gave that to him,” Nirav says.

Kavita twists the bracelet around her forefinger so tightly that her florid fingertip pulses in unison with her heart. “I meant to after his appointment, but with everything going on, it kept slipping my mind. Then at the lighthouse, things got so tense, the timing didn’t feel right.” Her throat aches. “I thought I’d get another chance.” She twists the bracelet around her fingertip once more, focusing on the heat and the pressure, which feels only right to her, feels like the least of what she deserves. “Maybe if I had given it to him, he would have remembered us. He would have known he wasn’t alone.” In his darkest moment, he might have glimpsed the thin red thread and remembered how much she loved him. She thinks of Yama and Yami, and the sacred bond between brother and sister. “I didn’t protect him like I was supposed to.”

“You were with him all the time.”

Kavita thinks this is how people must feel in confession. “Not all the time.”