Her healing began the day she realized she needed to escape Jersey City. Some of her dearest friends, some of the first people they met when they immigrated to the States, had insinuated that Harjeet’s death was her fault, that she’d not been a good enough wife. Maybe if you had just … Just what? They had no idea what all she had done to try to help her husband.

Few of her friends believed in mental illness. They condemned therapy and medication. She knew how they talked, how they whispered about someone having “issues in the head.” Indians, at least the ones she knew, didn’t believe depression was a disease, like cancer. They considered it a character flaw, a sign of a bad marriage, a lack of faith.

A younger niece had convinced her to come to Atlanta to make a fresh start, to get away from the cliques, the wives who centered their lives around their husbands, children, and grandchildren, who didn’t know what to do with a widow.

Chandani’s “fresh start,” until recently, had been a lonely one. She found it difficult to make friends. She knew she could be abrupt, but she wasn’t always this way. It wasn’t until Harjeet fell ill that she became so defensive, so judgmental. Her niece invited her to parties, but Chandani didn’t gel too well with her wealthy Buckhead clique. She couldn’t relate to this second generation of Indian Americans. They drank too much alcohol and flirted openly with other people’s spouses. She’d declined the last few invitations to dinner parties.

At home, she talked with her sister in Amritsar on WhatsApp, gardened, discovered a love of poetry. Khalil Gibran, Maya Angelou, and Sarojini Naidu were among her favorites. Naidu, in particular, captured the depth of Chandani’s grief in “Autumn’s Song.” My heart is weary and sad and alone. For its dreams like the fluttering leaves have gone.

She settled on the steps to her porch, watched Shan slowly pull into her garage. Her neighbor emerged a moment later carrying three bags of trash, set them out in a row on the curb. She paused, set her hands on her hips. A wistful look settled over her face.

Chandani imagined the contents of the bags, what parts of her marriage Shan had disposed of, what she might have needed to purge from her life in order to move forward—receipts from romantic dinners, utility bills for their marital home, checkbooks with both of their names printed in block letters.

“Shan,” she called. “Ready for chai?”

“Be there in a few. Just going to wash up first.”