“Your Vansh. He don’t just apologize, he mean. Did you know he make campaign for me?” She fanned herself. “A little too much handsome he is, no? But most important, very brave. Not afraid to admit wrong. Not afraid of be wrong. Not anything even little like your father.”

Vansh is not anything at all like anyone else in the world.

Mummy swirled a bejeweled finger in Naina’s face, a perfect circle that said QED, quod erat demonstrandum. “That. What you just thinking about him. That truth. That how you feel about him. Come on, beta, you are so brave girl. Same-to-same like him. Not like Mummy. You’re always fighting fighting fighting. Don’t give up now when person for fight is yourself.”

Naina found herself laughing through her tears. Vansh had put on some lotus-embroidered shirts and her mother was suddenly this new person? Seriously, that’s all it had taken?

“I don’t think I’m meant for this, Mummy . . . for domesticity. Women have worked too hard to have it be a choice.”

“Yes. That’s why when they get to make choice, when it not force on them, that beautiful thing.”

What was beautiful was Vansh, and it wasn’t just his perfect face and his flawless body. It was something deep inside him. Something that was a miracle given how everything on the outside would have been enough for any other person, but inside him was this drive to love.

Naina had always seen it as a drive to be loved. But he was loved. He just never took it without returning it a thousandfold. To everyone, not just those who coddled him. Mummy had not coddled him. He’d won her love.

He’s too good for me. Too unsullied. Too bright.

Getting off the couch, Naina started pacing, glad to have the use of her limbs again even though they still felt like they were dragging behind her, her whole self made of balls and chains. The food was settling in her stomach. The metallic nauseated feeling kept rising and falling.

“You know what a mess I made with Yash. Because all this . . . what if it’s just not for me?”

“I wish you never lie for so much long, but not all things between you and Yash lie. You best friend for full life. That is not lie. I was there. And that is not because you useful to him and him to you. That because you funniest, smartest, strongest person. You stand with him, always. Support, always.”

Her eyes dimmed with guilt and she stroked Naina’s arm again. “And you do that when Yash life is fill with all gifts you want and not have. Not once you hold grudge on him or on any Rajes or on any our other friends. You make others laugh even when you hurting. You force Yash to push ahead even when no one support you.”