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you after the baby is born. You’ve helped Krysta move, like, a million times, and you’ve spent God knows how much money on Nina’s kids—they owe you, and if not, I’ll get Athar to buy what we need. Farah will probably jump at the idea,” Madhu said.
    “No way. I’ll ask Krysta. I don’t want Farah anywhere near my baby’s room,” Priya said. Her friends she loved and trusted implicitly to know her taste, but not Madhu’s. And besides, she couldn’t stand his best friend, Athar, and his wife, Farah.
    “As you wish—and I don’t think I’d want Farah decorating any room in our house,” Madhu said. “She has a distinct style.”
    “You mean gaudy?” Priya suggested.
    Madhu laughed. “I was thinking vulgar, but yeah, same ballpark.”
    They drove silently for a while.
    “There’s no guarantee, is there?” Priya asked quietly.
    “No,” Madhu said, and put his hand on hers. “But I have a good feeling about this.”
    “I’m scared, Madhu,” Priya told him.
    Madhu didn’t say anything for a long while, and then as he pulled his hand away from hers to shift gears, he said, “I’m scared, too.”

    Prasanna was waiting with an open box of ladoos at home. Madhu had called his parents from the road to give them the good news. Prasanna confessed she had bought the sweets the day before and hidden them, just in case. Priya decided to call Poonam before she called her parents.
    “See, it happened just like I told you it would,” Poonam said, her voice loud against the screaming sounds of her girls. “Ranbir, I’m on the phone; can you get Tara? Natasha, stop pulling your sister’s hair.” Then there was a pause, and she said, “No, she’s not a doll. Ranbir, can you please deal with this? I’m on the phone.
    “Sorry,” Poonam said. “I’m back and now have found sanctuary in the bathroom. Some days these girls drive me crazy.”
    “I can’t wait to feel like you,” Priya said, unable to contain her excitement. Usually she would have made a mental promise not to raise her kids like Poonam, but right then she would have given anything to be able to say that her kid was driving her crazy.
    “It’s going to happen sooner than you think,” Poonam said.
    “But what if she loses the baby? We’ve got no guarantees yet.” Priya voiced her concerns.
    First they had needed to get through conception, then the two-week check, then the twelve-week check, then the twenty-week check, then the twenty-five-week check, then . . . 
    “Indian women are tough; she won’t lose the baby,” Poonam assured her.
    After hanging up with Poonam, Priya called Krysta, her closest friend, and then, begrudgingly, her parents. Talking to her mother when she was this happy was never a good idea; Sush could only ruin it. But Priya had to tell them. They were the grandparents, after all. Still, Priya thought, better to call Dad’s cell phone.
    “She’s pregnant, Dad,” Priya said as soon as he said hello. “We’re pregnant. We’re going to have a baby.”
    “That’s great news,” her father said. They chatted for a while before he asked if she wanted to talk to her mother.
    “No,” Priya said.
    “Why not?”
    “Because she’ll be difficult about the whole adoption-versus-surrogate thing again,” Priya said. “And I’m too happy to be brought down by—”
    “Come on, Priya,” Andrew interrupted. “Sush is happy for you.”
    “No, she isn’t,” Priya said, frustrated. She knew what Sush would say, and she prepared herself for the soapbox speech.
    “Yes, yes, she is. Here . . .” Her father handed the phone to Priya’s mother despite her protests. He did this all the time, had done it all her life. Andrew was an absent parent—a present husband but an absent parent. He loved Priya, she had no doubt about that, but he had always kept himself out of her relationship with Sush.
    “I can have a relationship with you and with your mother, but I can’t broker a relationship between the two