‘I mean exactly that. Whether I think of him or miss him or wish things had gone differently, we are where we are now, and it’s better this way.’ After a while she said ‘Look at your garden. Your father would have loved it.’

I think about that now, how we always talked about Papi as though he were dead, even though Ma was the first to go. I think about Lucia and I living the way we do now. How we, too, are spinster sisters.

Chapter 24

24

Blake arrives early one July morning. The neighbours are burning rubbish again, so the sky is the colour of lead. It has been three years since we last saw each other, but there is nothing surprising about the way he steps out of the taxi and says, ‘Hey.’ He looks thinner. The hair on his head meagre, clinging valiantly. Arms and legs whittled into sharp objects.

‘Grace,’ he says, those familiar lips askew. I go to him and put my face in his chest.

Kadar, my regular taxi guy, inspects the garden while Blake sorts through notes in his wallet. ‘I brought you a curry-leaf plant,’ Kadar says. ‘You should put it here,’ he points to a space in the garden bed.

He deposits the sapling in the mud and walks over to us. The dogs are at his ankles, licking and whimpering. Bagheera fat with new life. Raja, Golly and Dimple, pink-tongued, exuberant. He slaps them softly on their heads.

‘What happened to all your other dogs?’

‘They died. The villagers poisoned some of them and all the puppies got sick and died.’

Kadar’s face closes momentarily. He makes a click-clicking noise with his tongue, which is meant to express the inexpressible. He moves on to another subject. ‘Sir was full of tension for the journey, but I did what you said and drove slowly.’

After he leaves, Blake and I stand in front of the house, looking at each other. Mallika tries to take his suitcase and the duty-free bags inside, but Blake tells her in Tamil, ‘No, no, I’ll do it.’ His accent is terrible, but her eyes widen when she hears him speak, and her mouth opens into a laugh. ‘But how?’ she asks, shaking her head. I tell her we are old friends from Kodaikanal. That he learned Tamil in school.

Blake stares at the house, the blue shutters. ‘What a place this is. I’d imagined something more rustic. This is like a palace.’

Lucia wanders out to take a look. She’s wearing a Bon Jovi T-shirt and a frilly tutu skirt. Her hair is loose around her neck the way she likes it these days. Her glasses are smeared with dirt.

Blake lifts a hand. ‘Hey!’

She stares at him, pirouettes, retreats inside.