At its heart, that is what Hawthorn’s offer is. A hand to hold. A way out of winter.

He offers, so easily. The opportunity to hew herself from her past, like a tree branch, and escape downriver with the fast-flowing current. Is that so bad? Everywhere she looks, she sees failure, loss, pain. Is it so bad to want to get away from that? To start over as the person she is today? Whoever that is.

Of course, leaving isn’t easy, not that Hawthorn will ever truly understand, winged-like creature that he is. Sequoia was right about that. There is Nirav to consider. The man she fell in love with. The man she married, who once seemed as essential to her as sunbeams and air. The man who abandoned her to loneliness and shame. The man she doubts she can ever forgive.

The wind blows harder. Kavita hugs her jacket around her waist a little tighter.

In the end, she always confronts the same obstacle. Filial duty, as weighty as tradition, as present as her cells, not easily dismissed, especially not by something as anaemic as her own wants.

The truth remains that her life is her family.

Their joy is her joy.

Their pain is her pain.

Their survival is her survival.

Even if her family hasn’t always treated her with such care, to her, they are inseparable, like the tangled roots of a banyan. What she feels for them is more than duty—it’s love. The most tangled connection of them all.

Hawthorn assumes she can deny the strength of this bond, and be like him, spin through the air as free and daring as the papery, winged seeds of a maple.

If she joins him, he has promised her good earth in which to plant themselves, a new place to grow green things that will creep over and cover the memory of all that went wrong, maybe even growing so thick one day, she might forget what was ever underneath.

Closing her eyes, she stares at the blood-orange imprints on the insides of her eyelids. The low chatter of the other visitors feels far away. She tries to remember the last time she visited the park with Sunil, the autumn before he disappeared.

They hiked around Pink Lake, with its surprising blue-green waters, straying from the trail to discover a small beaver pond. Sitting on a fallen tree, hushed with awe, they watched as a beaver swam noiselessly through the water, ever-watchful of their presence. Afterwards, they drove up to the Lookout. She might have sat in the same spot she is sitting now. Without speaking, they enjoyed the flight of the hawks.

Please, Sunil, she begs him. Send me a sign.

Slowly, she opens her eyes. Wincing against the midday light, she sees two hawks gliding side by side, drawing interconnected figure eights in the sky, symbols of infinity braided together on the wind.