The Boy Toy - Nicola Marsh Page 0,46

could her mom let them interfere in her life when she’d effectively turned her back on all this over a decade ago?

It might’ve been fatigue after a long week at work, it might’ve been the residual aftereffects of her falling-out with Rory, or it might’ve been plain old anger at the busybody biddies in the family room, but tears stung her eyes, and she brushed them away with the back of her hand.

She heard a door close before a hand landed on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry, betee, you know they can be blunt.”

“Rude, more like it,” she muttered, turning to face her mom, who appeared surprised by the sheen in her eyes but wisely didn’t say anything. “How can you stand it?”

Because Samira knew without a doubt if the aunties had confronted her so soon after not seeing her all these years, they must be constantly giving Kushi grief over her unmarried daughter. Happiness in their community consisted of seeing all their children attend university to gain appropriate degrees before being married off to prosperous partners, followed by becoming grandmothers to equally clever grandchildren.

Samira may be a successful physical therapist and had accumulated a healthy nest egg courtesy of her hard work, but without a man to put a ring on her finger, she was equated with failure. These women had lived in Australia for decades; when would they leave the traditions of the past behind and move into the twenty-first century?

“I tolerate them because I worked hard for their acceptance,” Kushi said with a fatalistic shrug. “They belittled me when I married your father, for going against tradition, and I was effectively ostracized.” She gestured toward the closed door leading to the family room. “When he died, they surprisingly rallied around me when I needed them most.”

A hint of accusation hung unsaid in the air. I needed them because you weren’t around.

In that moment, Samira understood. She’d virtually abandoned her mom not long after her dad’s funeral. Not because she couldn’t cope with the sly stares and gossip mongering but because deep down a small part of her still blamed Kushi for the fiasco that had been her marriage. But in hanging on to her resentment, she’d left Kushi alone at a time her mom needed her most. She should be ashamed of herself. She’d been selfish, fleeing back to LA to nurse her own grief, oblivious to her mom’s.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” she said, enveloping Kushi in a hug. She didn’t need to elaborate, and they clung to each other for a while before Kushi eased away, dabbing at her eyes with the corner of her sari.

“I’ll get rid of them so we can talk.”

“That’ll be nice,” Samira said. “Tell them I’m on a call and can’t say goodbye.”

“I didn’t teach you to lie.” Kushi waggled her finger, but a smile tugged at her mouth. “But after what that tactless Sushma said, I’ll gladly do it.”

They shared a conspiratorial smile before Samira ducked out of the kitchen and into her childhood bedroom to wait out the interminable farewells. She knew it would take a while, as Kushi exhorted her guests to take home any leftover food and the aunties pretended to refuse but would leave with foil-wrapped parcels regardless.

She closed the door and reached for the light switch, illuminating a virtual time warp.

Nothing had changed.

Emotion welled in her chest as she spun a slow three-sixty, taking in the batik bedspread, the bookshelves crammed to overflowing, the anatomy textbooks stacked in a corner. She’d favored a yellow-and-white color scheme in her teens, with fake bunches of daisies and daffodils in tall vases bracketing either end of her desk, where she’d spent countless hours poring over online study guides for her physical therapy exams.

Taking a deep breath, she opened the wardrobe, not surprised to see a rainbow-colored salwar kameez pushed to one side. Kushi had bought her one every six months in the hope she’d change her mind about wearing Indian garb, but she never had; it hadn’t stopped her mom from buying more.

Slamming the door shut, she whirled back to face the room, unprepared for the flood of nostalgia that made her want to crawl under the covers and hide out for a week.

She’d lived at home until her marriage to Avi and hadn’t set foot in this room since the night before her wedding. When they’d separated, she’d rented a tiny one-bedroom flat in Carnegie until she’d fled Melbourne altogether, so being here thrust her back to a time she