With his mouth slightly open, he drops his leather messenger bag on the floor in a noisy display and takes a seat at the island.

She lowers back onto the sofa and folds her hands over her lap.

“Well?” he asks.

“I’m going on a trip.”

“Oh really? Nice of you to tell me. Where abouts, might I ask?”

“California. I’m helping a friend from group scatter his sister’s ashes. I didn’t tell you because it’s taken me a while to decide whether or not I was going. Besides, we haven’t exactly been on speaking terms.” He leaves for work early and stays late and eats and sleeps in the guest room. Part of her thought it was possible he might not register her absence for days.

“He?”

“Hawthorn’s parents are going too.”

“What does this have to do with you?”

“He’s helped me a lot this year. Now it’s my turn to help him.” That is what relationships are supposed to be about: give and take. Although, Kavita realizes now that she and Nirav have always struggled to find the right balance.”

“How long will you be away?”

“We’ll be in San Francisco for a week.”

“All right, so you’ll be back in a week, then.”

“Not exactly.”

“You said a week?”

“What I mean is, I don’t know when I’ll be coming back here.”

What she sees on his face isn’t shock, exactly. It is more like the arrival of something inevitable, something he has had his eye on for weeks, and is finally as large as a ship in front of him. “I know we’ve been having problems. But I didn’t think things were this bad.”

“Well, they are.” She walls her courage around her. There is no time to waste. She needs to ask him what she has been too afraid to ask for too long. “Nirav,” she says. “Why don’t you ever talk about Sunil?”

His eyes flare for a moment, then close halfway. “I don’t know what you mean. I talk about him plenty.”

“I wish that were true. But it isn’t. Didn’t you love him? Don’t you miss him?”

“Of course I did. I do.”

“Don’t say of course like it’s obvious. It hasn’t been obvious to me. You never so much as mention his name.”

A tight-lipped pause. “I suppose I don’t have anything good to say.”

“What do you mean?”

Three long beats. “I’m angry.”

“Angry?”

“Yes.”

“With me? Have I done something?”

“It’s not you,” he says. “It’s him. I can’t speak his name because I’m too angry at him all the time.”

“I don’t understand.”