I took a deep breath. I counted to five. I checked the clock on my TV. The time was 5:05 p.m. Not the best of all the signs, but certainly a very, very good one.

I read Kaavi’s email one last time, just to be sure.

Beth was right. I had to go.

This is not jealousy. This is protecting what once was and always will be mine.

3

AMAYA

Five Days before the Wedding

The heat clamped down on my nose and mouth like it was trying to choke me the moment I stepped out of the airport. It takes on a life of its own in Sri Lanka. It’s easy to forget when you’re looking at the postcards and travel vlogs. How the humidity swirls around you like a fog, making it hard to breathe, coating you in a constant, unyielding film of sweat.

But I can’t focus on the heat because I have to spend every ounce of concentration on not getting run over by the stampede of trolley-bearing travelers. Cars honked, porters hollered, tearful families embraced. I took a breath to steady myself, even though it felt like I was inhaling through a wet towel that stank of a boys’ locker room.

Urgh, I really shouldn’t be like this. I’m not one of those stuck-up Sri Lankans who leave for a few years and come back wrinkling their noses at the heat and the smell and the definite inability to line up patiently for anything. Being Sri Lankan was such a cliché at times—we love our country for the sum of its parts, just not the individual components that make up its whole.

Well, that wasn’t going to be me. Steeling myself, I forced another deep breath. I looked around for a clock, or a sign, or, well, anything really.

“Stoothi,” I called out in thanks to a porter who let me pass by, and instantly regretted how terrible my accent was. I’ve been gone awhile. I needed to ease myself in. Five years is a long time for anyone. Five whole years. Half a decade. And yet, here I was, ebbing and flowing with the crowd, listening to the louder-than-average voices with their lilting melodies, and it didn’t feel like it’d been that long. Like I was just waking up from a nap.

“Ammi!” a little girl screamed, darting past me and nearly jumping on the lady pushing a trolley behind me. The mother picked up the child and held her close, tears running down both their cheeks. I forced myself to look away. To give them their moment. I missed my own mother. I missed the life I could have had.

Rolling my trolley farther away to an empty spot on the walkway, I wondered whether I’d be able to spot Mahesh. There was usually a lot of fanfare at the arrivals terminal at Bandaranaike International Airport—families turning up in full vans to greet loved ones returning to Sri Lanka. There were flower garlands for tourists, pushy taxi drivers for those who hadn’t booked their transport into Colombo. But apart from just a “see you outside,” Mahesh hadn’t given me any other instructions.