A twin-headed snake coiled tightly around her chest. Grief and guilt, their flat eyes stared at her impassively as they squeezed and choked her. Siva found her sitting on the tiles of her front foyer, her back against the wall and her arm around the warm leg of the sandalwood side table her parents had given her.

‘What are we going to do?’ he asked quietly, sitting down beside her. He had lost too. He grieved too.

She looked the snake in the eyes and squeezed back.

‘I’ve been afraid for so long—afraid that if we told her, we would lose her. And now I’ve lost anyway. My sister …’ her voice choked and she stopped, tears streaming down her face. ‘That is enough loss. It’s more than I can bear. I will carry my guilt—my failures—with me into my next life, as will Dhara. Perhaps this grief is my punishment for our mistakes.’

‘I don’t think it works like that, Priya,’ Siva replied hesitantly.

‘I don’t think you’re Lord Krishna, so I don’t think you know exactly how the law of karma works.’ She rested her head against the wall.

He looked at her, startled. Her eyes were closed, fringed by dark shadows underneath, but the edges of her mouth were almost upturned.

‘Eleven thousand, seven hundred and seventeen days,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Eleven thousand, seven hundred and seventeen days—I calculated all the days that I loved Smrithi—all the days that Smrithi didn’t know Dhara, and the days, the thousands of moments, that Dhara didn’t have with her child.’

‘That wasn’t your fault—that was Dhara’s choice. You can’t regret those moments. They were a gift, a blessing, they were lived for both of you … I don’t know how to explain it. The two of you …’ He faltered again.

‘Those moments were … shared. I know.’ She pressed her face to her husband’s tears. ‘They were shared, and yet they weren’t. They were mostly mine.

‘I promised my sister I would raise Smrithi. I’m going to give her time; and space—as much as she needs. Unless she takes too long. I’m going to keep raising her. For Dhara and for me.

‘I need some help. There are boxes in the attic.’ She stood up slowly and held out her hand.

The attic housed thirty-two years of hoarding: every postcard their children had sent them, every school report and merit award, cardiology journals Siva wouldn’t throw out, saris Priya had no time to wear.

And boxes containing letters—hundreds of blue aerograms postmarked Sri Lanka. A lifetime of correspondence from Dhara that always began and ended the same way. Priya had kept them all. She had memorised them all. She pressed the skin of the last one to her face, inhaling it. Then she put it back in a box with the others and taped the box shut.