“I’m going to work.”

“I could use your help today. There are a lot of calls to make.”

“I don’t even know a quarter of the people on that list.”

“Well, remember to call your family, okay?”

“What shall I tell them?”

“Please don’t be like that, Niru.”

“She’s acting like she’s ashamed.”

“It isn’t about shame. She just wants to keep him safe. You heard her story about that horrible pandit.”

“Everyone’s always saying we need to speak up about these sorts of things, isn’t it?”

“Well, it’s easy to be brave in a commercial.” Real life was riskier. Real people, harder to predict. Not everyone was worthy of the personal truths entrusted to them. Whom you told was as important as telling.

Nirav slings his backpack over one shoulder and marches for the door.

“Niru?”

“I’ll call you later.”

Kavita slumps on the edge of the bed, too exhausted to convince her husband of why he should stay.

Kavita has always been a terrible actor. But if she hopes to make it through the long list of phone calls in front of her, she is going to need lines. Seated at her desk, she considers the two scripts scribbled on the notepad in front of her: the fiction and the truth.

First, she practices the fiction.

“I’m sorry to call you with bad news,” she recites to her imaginary listener. “It’s about Sunil. He passed away unexpectedly. It was a car accident. We’re having a memorial soon. I’ll have to get back to you with the date and time. Yes, of course, I’ll tell them.”

She blinks at her notes, equally unsatisfied with her material as with her performance. She clears her throat. Next, the truth.

“I’m sorry to call you with bad news. It’s about Sunil.” Her heart beats in her throat. “He passed away unexpectedly. He was very sick. He succumbed to his illness.” But even this is only a partial truth. The whole truth is something she has voiced inside her head but has yet to say out loud. A steep drop plunges between the partial and whole truth—a freefall. Where is the bottom of this grief? Will her body bounce when she slams against it? Or will she just keep falling, and falling?

“He killed himself,” she says, numb. It is the whole truth that sounds like fiction to her ears. It is the whole truth that is too unfathomable to be real. Kavita tears the scripts away from the notepad and squelches the stories in her fist.

Without thinking, she picks up her cell and dials her best friend, Chi. Back in grade nine, Chi had a crush on Sunil. Her nickname for him was Hot Chocolate, HC for short, not that she ever had the nerve to say it to his face.