Kavita drops the plastic bag of albums and bounds upstairs, two at a time. They pause and stare at her. The anger drops from their faces, leaving behind only self-conscious surprise. She grabs the photo album and hugs it to her chest. “What’s going on?” Her gaze darts between them.

“I came upstairs and I found him taking apart our family albums. I knew he was going to ruin them, the way he ruins everything. I had to stop him!”

“I was not going to ruin anything,” her father says. “Beti, you know what I was doing. Explain it to her.”

“He’s just making an album of Sunil’s pictures, Mom. It’s a nice idea, don’t you think?”

“No!” her mother cries. She gathers as many albums as she can carry. “He doesn’t deserve to look at these pictures. He doesn’t deserve any piece of my son!”

“Mom, please, don’t say that.”

“You lied to me! You said we would have a better life here. You took me away from my family! With family around us Sunil would have been happy. He would have had more people to talk to. More people looking out for him….”

“You could have left at anytime but you knew no one would take you back.”

“Stop!” Kavita cries. “Please. You don’t mean it. Everyone, just calm down.” She lowers the album she has been clutching to her chest like a shield to the floor and reaches for her mother’s forearm. With the other, she reaches for her father’s hand.

“Please, don’t fight. We’re all we have left. We need to stick together. We love each other.” Wide-eyed, she waits.

“I have never loved him,” her mother says. She wriggles free of Kavita’s grasp, fills her arms with albums, and rushes down the hallway.

Kavita lets go of her father’s hand, disorientated, as she processes the melee. Her father disappears into his bedroom a few moments after her mother, shutting his door with a clack.

A few albums remain scattered on the carpet. Kavita leaves them where they lay and trudges down the front stairs to the foyer. She takes a seat, hunching on the second last step, and reaches for the plastic bag. She draws out one of the new albums and starts turning its empty sleeves.

“This is what we’re like now,” she says to Sunil.

Black Gloom spreads from her centre, outwards, like a drop of India ink in water.

They stayed together for Sunil, it tells her. They loved him more.

She swallows, hard.

You promised you would look after them. But you can’t look after anyone. You didn’t save him, and you won’t save them either.