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been summoned and she’d recovered from the fainting spell, but afterward she was never the same. She’d suffered an emotional breakdown and taken to her bed for more than three weeks. She had lost some weight from the trauma, too. And what little humor she had possessed before the episode was gone.
    Now, although she was gradually beginning to ease back into her social pattern and dress elegantly like she used to, she walked around in a surly mood, with a perpetual line between her eyebrows.
    Ayee wore a turquoise print cotton sari this morning. Her hair was neatly coiled into her usual bun. There was plenty of gray in her hair, much more than most women her age. But she covered it with hair color. With the sudden weight loss, her face looked drawn, her blouse hung loose in the sleeves and waist-line, and the excess skin jiggled around her upper arms whenever she moved them.
    As Ayee entered the dining room, Isha could smell the laven-der-scented talcum powder the older woman liked to wear.
    Seeing Priya in Isha’s lap, sniffling, with her face buried in her mother’s shoulder, Ayee frowned. “Why is she crying again?”
    “The usual morning blues,” replied Isha, hoping Priya would cease the fussing and get on with her breakfast. Ayee seemed particularly cantankerous this morning. It didn’t bode well.
    “Such a crybaby.” Ayee shook her head. “Every morning and night it is the same story. She does nothing but cry.”
    “She’s crying for Nikhil, Ayee. She misses him.” He was the one who dropped her off at school before he went to work.
    Poor Priya couldn’t understand why her father wasn’t around anymore. The palpable misery around her didn’t help matters, either.
    “She’s not the only one. We all miss him,” Ayee said, her lower lip trembling, the tears already glistening in her eyes.
    Isha nodded, keeping her own emotions tightly reined in. If she broke down, Priya’s sniveling would only get worse. Nikhil’s presence was still very much there. Everywhere. It would always remain with them.

    32 Shobhan Bantwal
    Ayee blinked and looked at the wall clock. “Priya has to go to school soon, no? Why is she wasting time?”
    “I’m trying to get her to eat her breakfast so I can get her ready for school,” Isha assured her mother-in-law. Couldn’t the woman see that Priya was only five years old and needed a little extra comforting at the moment? Had she forgotten that the child was usually very sunny by nature? Labeling her a crybaby was so unfair!
    “What she needs is strictness, not more coddling.” Ayee threw an exasperated look at Priya’s pajama-clad back.
    With a resigned sigh Isha said, “Time to finish your breakfast, sweetie. I bet all your friends are dressed and ready for school. You don’t want to be late, do you?”
    A sob erupted from Priya. “I don’t . . . want . . . to go . . . to school.” She refused to remove her face from Isha’s shoulder. “I want Papa.”
    Stifling her own desire to burst into tears, Isha patted Priya’s head. “I told you Papa is in heaven. Dev-bappa needs him more than we do,” she whispered in her ear, using the child’s term for God, or Holy Father. “But I’ll take you to school. Maybe we can go for ice cream after school.”
    Instead of making things better, Isha realized she’d made them worse. Priya threw a full-blown tantrum, her ears turning red. “I don’t want ice cream! I want my Papa!”
    Ayee accepted the cup of tea poured for her by one of the servants and let out a long-suffering sigh. After taking a sip she gazed out the window at the interminable rain, making her ag-gravation very clear to Isha. Her mother-in-law had her own passive-aggressive ways of making her feelings known.
    Realizing that sternness was the only way to deal with the child, Isha held her by the shoulders and forced her to make eye contact. “Priya, I told you Papa can’t be here. I want you to finish your egg and toast and then change into your