name for decades.”
“Can you spell Gloria’s last name?”
“Like it was tattooed on my arm.” He did.
“That little girl of his would be in her…what, sixties by now?” Ralph said.
“Something like that.”
“Maybe she ought to go on thinking her father died all those years ago.”
“And maybe she’d rather know the truth, so she can really put him to rest.”
“Glad it’s your problem, not mine.”
“Ralph…Studley…” She smiled. “We’re done here. I didn’t see you, you didn’t see me.”
“I always knew you were older than twenty-five.”
“And I always knew you were one good-looking son of a gun. You can tell a lot about a man from his voice.”
Ralph actually smiled.
Janya was tired but elated by the time she parked in front of her house. Driving was beginning to feel natural, and she was increasingly comfortable behind the wheel. Soon she would head back out to pick up Rishi and proudly drive him home. In the meantime, she thought she might spend a few minutes reading the India Post, which had come in yesterday’s mail. She might get more updated news on the Internet, but nothing was better than holding a real newspaper about her own country in her hands.
She didn’t notice the car parked just beyond her cottage until she started inside. Then the driver’s door opened and somebody called her name.
“Janya…”
Startled, she turned. The man, outside the car now and cutting through her yard, was familiar.
Oh, so very familiar.
She stopped, and her heart seemed to stop with her. Her limbs felt unnaturally light.
“Darshan?”
“It’s you. It’s really you.” He strode over quickly and stopped in front of her. He didn’t touch her, but he stood close, and she could almost feel him pulling her closer.
“What are you doing here?” Her words were choked, uncertain.
“I had to see you.”
She didn’t know what to say. She was afraid to study his face, and more afraid not to. When her eyes lifted to his, she saw that he looked exactly the same, still tall and broad-shouldered. As an artist, she had analyzed his features many times, trying to understand what made him so handsome, so appealing. Not just to her, but to every woman who saw him.
She still wasn’t certain. He had a strong nose, cleft chin, high cheekbones. His eyes were almond-shaped but wide, heavily fringed with long lashes. His hair was thick and lustrous. Taken separately, his features were attractive, but not stunning. Despite that, everything worked together in exquisite harmony. Had he come from a different sort of family, he might have headed right for India’s flourishing film industry. All he had to do was flash that enveloping, caressing smile, and every woman in the theater would have fallen in love with him.
“I tried to tell you I was coming,” he said. “But you never answered my e-mails.”
“I didn’t read them.”
“You couldn’t bear to open them?”
“I couldn’t see the point.” She was glad she was beginning to sound more like herself. She was not a lovesick girl, devastated by loss. She was a married woman, living in another land, finding her bearings at last.
“The point was that we loved each other,” he said, in a voice that was as caressing as the smile. “We were to be married.”
“Yes, Darshan. But you let your parents destroy that. And you stood by as I married someone else. And now you’re to marry the woman who caused all my pain.”
“Padmini swears she had nothing to do with what happened.”
“Padmini is a liar.”
He didn’t protest. “I’m not here to talk about your cousin.”
“Oh? You will decide for both of us what we discuss? Suppose you tell me what subjects are safe, then. Not my family, who hate me for what I did to them. Not your family, who believe I was a fool. Not Padmini the liar, not the end of our betrothal. Certainly not my marriage to a man I didn’t even know. Shall we discuss the weather? Tell me about the monsoons. I hope everybody who believed the worst of me drowns in them!”
She turned to start up the walkway to her house, but he took her arm.
“Let’s talk about what didn’t end—what couldn’t end—Janya. I thought I could forget you. I thought your coming here would be best for everyone. I tried to believe it, but I can’t.”
She didn’t turn. “Why are you here? To tell me you’re miserable? So I’ll feel better knowing you suffer, too?”
“Too, Janya? Then you feel it? You know how wrong this is? You haven’t given your heart to