‘We are very comfortable, thank you,’ Sulethi replied. ‘Dr Fonseka’s grandson lives next door now. He has moved back to his family home. He checks on us regularly. The servant boy is good-hearted, a little lazy, but good-hearted. We need someone young and strong here. Senthan is getting older too, but he runs the house for us as he has done for years. He and I have taken a wager with your grandmother to see who will go first.’

Smrithi said, ‘That’s a little morbid isn’t it?’

Sulethi laughed. ‘I suppose so. Nala has put her money on herself.’

She laughed too. ‘Of course she has. If you’re happy, you should stay here, Aunty. I think the house still has a little time left in it.’

•

Smrithi walked around Dhara’s apartment. She had played there as a child when her uncle Nandan lived in it. The apartment was above Nala’s house, separate but still connected. She looked at photographs of herself on Dhara’s shelves: school portraits, formals, graduations, family holidays, with her children. Her life, captured at so many contiguous points that Dhara could feel like she was there with her, observing—if not participating in—her life as it happened.

In a cupboard in Dhara’s study, she found folders of letters, post-marked Australia, and filed chronologically. A lifetime of correspondence from Priya to Dhara that always began the same way: ‘My darling Dhara, I miss you. Smrithi is beautiful.’ The letters all ended the same way too: ‘Please let me tell her. I love you dearly, Acca.’

So much of the story was communal—the memories of two were merged into one and placed in an ageing house. The weight of it was crushing. She didn’t think she could bear it.

She sat on the floor, her tears blurring the words, as she read more letters. She could see that each one narrated the details of her life; everything from the cardinal moments to the banal. The rituals of her existence had been preserved and made meaningful over and over again. The letters held the minutiae that only a mother would notice and record; the minutiae that only a mother would care about and read.

Smrithi wept for her mothers—both of them—and for all of them.

•

She returned to her bedroom. Prashanth had opened the curtains, flooding the room with the young morning light. She remembered the way she slept as a child: sometimes with Dhara and sometimes with Priya. If she was very lucky, she slept with her grandparents. Nala’s stomach was the softest.

She looked at her bed. Prashanth had made it. She remade it quickly before he returned from the bathroom.

‘If you’re going to do something, child, you should do it properly.’

It soothed her: the bed, the memory, the principle.

She missed Rajan. She missed Dhara. She missed her mother and her father.