The next morning, Naina came down to an empty kitchen and found a note on the island in her father’s doctor’s scrawl. “Disobedient girls go to school without breakfast.”

Naina didn’t care about breakfast. All she cared about was having her mother show up at practice. But, of course, she didn’t. Instead Naina was met by the coach’s sad eyes.

“Your mother was in an accident, Naina. You can be excused from practice today to go home early.”

J-Auntie, Yash’s housekeeper, had driven her home with Yash. Mina Auntie, Yash’s mom, always stepped in to help when Mummy felt badly. Yash had held her hand through the entire twenty-minute drive as tears streamed from Naina’s eyes. He’d known without her telling him that if he asked any questions she would die of shame.

“Do you think you can come help me with my chemistry project later?” he’d asked, his eyes so kind she’d felt like there was more to the world than what waited for her inside her house. “Ma will speak to your dad and J-Auntie will come get you.”

Naina had nodded yes and walked inside by herself. She had no idea what she expected but it hadn’t been her mother with her arm in a cast on a sling. One side of her face was swollen, and the skin squeezing her eye shut was dark purple.

Before that day Naina had been infuriated by her mother’s cowering, by her pandering, by her jumping to do his bidding even before her father spoke. Now she felt shame. Her mother had known something she hadn’t. Her mother had known and she’d made sure Naina never got to see this. Then Naina had put her in a position where the choice had been between something she wanted to show Naina and something she didn’t want her to see.

Naina, even at twelve, had known without a doubt that there was no right choice for her mother to make. That’s just what life was: a string of bad options to choose from.

God knew Naina had made her fair share of them. Sucking her best friend into a ten-year-long fake relationship was a pretty stellar example. Needing to give her father the finger at every available opportunity had been an irresistible and delicious motivator. She didn’t need a therapist to tell her that.

Now, here she was, sitting on a five-thousand-dollar Japanese commode that knew how to keep her butt warm even when she was using it as a chair with the top down. In a house her father had spent most of Naina’s life dreaming of her moving into as a daughter-in-law, because in his head that was how the world still worked. Your success lay in how well you married off your daughter. The fact that he’d never have that satisfaction made Naina positively light-headed.