“I think so. No one has complained to me. Poor kid. I feel so bad for her. I wish I could take her with me, but Mom wouldn’t allow it and that would be unfair to Yasmine. It’s all she can do to cope with medical school.”

“Both of you are busy people. Juleen will be fine as long as she has her mother.”

“Juleen is resilient. Even more than Mom.” A pause. “Rina, I’m sorry, but I have to go. I’m already late. Can I call you later?”

“Sure. Where are you?”

“Japan. How was Israel, by the way?”

“Fabulous.”

“Good. Both Peter and you deserve a little fabulous.”

THE FIRST FOUR days, I barely remember anything, sleeping most of the time, occasionally waking up for a protein shake, then going back to sleep. It took about five days to wake up and stay up. The door to the bedroom was partially open and I didn’t hear any signs of life. Whatever I felt about Chris personally, I had interrupted the man’s life. An enterprise of this magnitude did not run itself, and for the last couple of weeks, he had focused on me. I’m sure he was playing catch-up with everything in his business. I assumed I was alone, trapped in his vault of a bedroom like some modern-day Rapunzel. I had the long hair as a go-with. Living in Mumbai for the past decade, I hadn’t cut it at all, as is the style of a lot of Indian women.

I didn’t mind being alone. In Mumbai, solitude was a concept encountered solely in ashrams, certainly not in the streets that teemed with people regardless of the hour. On the rare opportunities that solitude presented itself at home, I breathed easier, unencumbered by children or husbands who kept an eye out. Devek was always sneaky about it; Chris was blatant. Whenever we were among people, his eyes were always focused on me even when he was working the crowd. Chris was jealous, but since I wasn’t a flirt, he never had cause to accuse me of anything. The affair truly caught him by surprise. I know it gutted him. Not that being faithful was ever high on his list, but I had been his property, and someone else had stolen it. I was shocked that he didn’t come after me. I thought I had finally dodged the bullet.

And here I was in the same situation as I had been over two decades ago.

It was eleven-thirty in the morning. I had slept for almost twenty-four hours. I should have been ravenous. Instead, I was sick to my stomach. There was a water bottle on my nightstand. I opened it and drained it and waited for the nausea to pass. About ten minutes later, I felt better. But I was sticky and dirty, and my mouth, shut tight with wires and braces, felt like glue.