Chandani stepped inside the house and headed to the kitchen, where she filled a small cast iron pot with enough water for two full cups. She spent so much of her life married, forty-three years to be exact, she could calibrate water in a pot for two people down to the last drop. How strange it had been to live alone, to relearn food portions. She hadn’t noticed how much her husband used to eat until she started halving her own recipes. Even just half lasted her three full meals, though after eating the same thing two days in a row, she’d grow tired of it and simply toss it out.

The chai seemed to replenish Shan a little, or so Chandani thought. She knew her neighbor needed something strong, so she made sure to boil it for a full fifteen minutes, added whole milk, a couple of cinnamon sticks, cracked cardamom seeds, a touch of fresh grated ginger. Feeding Shan, nurturing her was all she could think to do to help.

They sat together in the formal dining room, a room Chandani had decided to reserve for special occasions, dinner parties and such, and as a result, had not used once since moving to Atlanta. She’d purchased the rosewood table and chairs from a furniture importer in Jersey City, who said he got it from the woodshop of a renowned carpenter in Mumbai. Who knew whether this was true? Origin stories, she found, rarely had any truth to them. No matter. She didn’t need authenticity to appreciate the set.

In the good years, she and Harjeet loved to entertain at this table, routinely opened their house to the local South Asian community, usually new families who’d been transferred to New York or New Jersey for work. Every Friday night, some thirty, forty people milled about their home, snacked on treats Chandani prepared, usually pakoras and chaat. They sat down to a full dinner around nine, a dinner that Harjeet had spent days preparing. He was a magnificent cook, and not just of traditional Punjabi food. He made lasagna, several kinds of quiche, chili, burritos, hearty soups and stews, and, under the close tutelage of an Ethiopian neighbor, mastered shiro wat. Their guests dined on Harjeet’s international menu well past midnight, topped their bellies full, and then pushed all the chairs and tables to the walls of the room so they could dance until the wee hours of the morning.

Chandani picked up a set of matches, lit the candles. Wax budded along the sides forming a column of beads. The flames bobbed and danced whenever Chandani or Shan moved. Either the table or the floor was uneven. Chandani hadn’t noticed it until now.

Shan set her cup down. It rattled against the dish. She picked up a pakora, inspected it, nibbled. “Hmm … this is so, so good.”

“Shan, do you ever cook Indian food?”