Dad shakes his head. “No, that we ran into the boy you used to be with at Lenox Mall. Rohit? Roshan? It was only a few days before Zack asked me to meet. Anyway, Mom and I were window-shopping and stopped to get California Pizza Kitchen. He came up to us while we were eating. He introduced himself, asked if we remembered him.”

“And?”

“And”—Dad shifts his gaze to the floor—“he told us you meant a lot to him, that he was going to reach out to you about settling back in Atlanta.”

“How are you only telling me this now?” Suhani’s thoughts go back to that time in her life when she was fully wrapped up in her relationship with Zack. She remembers that one night when she realized it had been months since she’d thought of Roshan. It felt like a true accomplishment to finally be that detached from someone she thought would haunt her forever.

“We debated about whether we would ever tell you,” Dad says. “But at that time, we were confused. And wrong. You have to understand that Zack wasn’t who we pictured for you.”

He wasn’t who Suhani had pictured for herself, either. Then again, her younger self’s idea of the perfect husband came from a mix of Bollywood and Disney movies. Not the most reliable mash-up for a real future.

“We worried about how your different backgrounds would affect your future together. We didn’t understand why you would purposefully make your life harder when marriage is already hard enough,” Dad says. “When we came home from the mall we told Natasha everything. She really let us have it.” He shakes his head and chuckles, confirming one of Mom’s long-standing complaints about Dad: he always lets Natasha get away with everything.

“She actually sat us down and said we were being closed-minded and stupid. And she reminded us that we went against our parents to marry each other, and here we were, doing the same thing to you. Isn’t she clever?” Dad smiles. “We didn’t think about things the right way. Yes, we weren’t perfect as parents, and I think in a lot of ways, Mom and I always worried about you the most. Because when something was bothering you, you kept it inside. When you were a lot younger, it showed in how you were in school. We were shocked when you didn’t get into the gifted program, but after we met with that terrible teacher who put you down, we realized you were showing your frustration with her by not trying in school. After that, we felt you needed more consistent encouragement to make sure you really lived up to your potential, regardless of how other people may or may not treat you.”