Girl Gone Viral - Alisha Rai Page 0,65

“I’ll put this in the kitchen too.” He left after one more searching look.

Katrina turned to Andrés, determined. It wasn’t imperative Jas’s family liked her. It wasn’t imperative anyone liked her.

She did like to be liked, though, and it was easy enough to surmise where Andrés’s soft spot might lie. “This is a beautiful home.”

Sure enough, Andrés beamed with pride. “Thank you. It was my father’s dream to own such a place. I only wish he could have lived to see it.” He gestured to a large frame over the ornate marble fireplace, containing a portrait of a young man dressed in silk, with a red turban and a thick beard.

There were hints of Jas in his powerful frame, his dark eyes, his stern visage. “He’s very handsome. When was this painted?”

“I had it painted, from a photograph I have of him. From right before he came to America in 1910.”

Katrina tried to bury the wisp of longing. Her mother had been born so much later, and yet Katrina had no photographs of her from her youth like this. “Wow.”

“You like history, yes? Come here.”

She followed him to a large display case running the length of the room. There were framed photos, clippings, household objects, and books under the glass, each painstakingly arranged and preserved. Andrés pulled out his phone and pressed something, and dim lighting filled the case.

She whistled, genuinely impressed. “I thought the family photos in the little house were cool, but this is like a museum.”

“This is nothing. There’s an actual museum dedicated to Punjabi-American history in town. I’ve donated many pieces for their exhibits there.”

“It’s wonderful you have this connection to the past that you can pass on to your community.”

Andrés’s chest puffed out with pride. “It’s the least I can do. Our descendants should know about their forefathers, the part they played in this nation’s history.”

She drifted down the case, curiously absorbing the seemingly mundane articles that created a life. Bills of sale for livestock, correspondence for seed and supplies. “Did your father come to the States to farm?”

“He came here to survive. Farming was what he knew. He worked as a laborer when he first got here, earned pennies a day, until he found his own plot of land.” He pointed to another faded photo. It was the same man from the photo above the fireplace, but this time Jas’s great-grandfather was older, his face weathered. His turban and facial hair were gone, his hair cut short. The only tangible thing that remained from the large portrait above the fireplace was the iron bracelet around his wrist. “That was him in 1930. He had a couple acres by this time, worked them with his friend.” Andrés rolled his eyes. “Your late husband’s grandfather. He was younger and flightier and left, of course, after a couple years.”

“Ah,” she said, because she wasn’t sure what to say. Hardeep had never spoken about Jas’s family with anything but fondness, but now that she thought about it, he’d mostly talked about Jas’s mother. He’d told Katrina he and Tara had been close friends in their youth, though they’d drifted apart as he made fewer visits to this part of the world, and he considered Jas one of his nephews.

It was a little weird when she thought of the fact she’d been married to someone who was of Jas’s mother’s generation, but her relationship with Hardeep had been a special case.

“That still upsets you, that he left? Enough that you resent his grandson?”

“That’s not exactly why I don’t like Hardeep.”

“Oh?”

Much to her dismay, he didn’t elaborate on Hardeep. “Yes, I do carry some bitterness over Arora leaving my father. Farming life can be lonely, and it was lonelier then. My father couldn’t even own the land he farmed. Some of his friends put their land in the names of their citizen children, but my father felt the possibility of a family was out of reach for him.”

“Why?”

Andrés gave her a measuring look. “Do you know about the Immigration Act of 1917? It was also called the Asiatic Barred Zone Act.”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“Not many have.”

“My mother was Thai. She didn’t care much for history, but I like to learn. It’s my history.”

Andrés rocked back on his heels, clearly at home in professor mode. “Well, then you know that the law barred immigration from most of Asia for decades. The majority of South Asians who came to America before that were men, and California’s laws made marrying outside one’s race