“Baba, I know that you and Kaavindi Baba are old friends. But Baba, please be careful.”

I almost choked on my rice and curry.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you are a good girl. You have always been. But Kaavindi Baba is not like you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Seetha.” Kaavi had hurt me, of course, but what I was about to do to her was far, far worse.

She didn’t say anything else. Of course she didn’t. It wasn’t her place. But I could feel her eyes on me as I twisted and turned and wrung myself out waiting for something.

I distracted myself by staring at the painting that hung closest to me. It was a woman wearing a pale gray dress, tipping her toes into a river. Her arm wrapped around the branch of a willow tree as she peered into the water. My mother took a lot of liberties with her art. Nothing was photographic. The woman’s hair flowed long and wild, like it had a life of its own. The tears that trailed down her face glistened brighter than the water in front of her. The leaves from the tree floated like confetti in the breeze. The river churned around her greedily, just a moment away from sucking her in. And the woman herself—well, my mother told me she imagined the woman very brave, fearful of the danger she was about to submerge herself into, but willing to move forward, all the same. She used the tree branch to steady herself, my mother said, so the woman could spring forward. To me, the woman simply looked like she was possessed. Someone who had lost her footing on the shore. Who was plunging her foot into the water not because she was fearless, but because she felt the land had nothing left to give her anymore. Someone who was just a step away from drowning.

Was that the way I felt about my mother? Or was that just how I saw myself?

I reached for my phone. I needed to message Beth. I needed to speak to someone before I completely spiraled away.

I did something last night.

Don’t know if it worked.

I waited awhile, refreshing Kaavi’s social media feeds, hoping for something. It was the middle of the night in the US. I doubted Beth would even reply.

I was in luck though. My phone dinged back a few minutes later.

What did you do?

I fed some information about Spencer to one of the gossips.

The information was real, by the way. Information he hadn’t wanted to share with me either. Information that left him feeling embarrassed and upset and made me wish I had never stumbled upon it to begin with. I don’t really know, to this day, whether it was the information or the way he reacted after I told him I knew that made me see him as a completely different person.

Oh wow. Have you heard anything yet?