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to be in California. He probably wasn’t even allowed to leave the state.
    “I’ll let you know if I need you,” she told Sherrie, “but CJ must realize I don’t want anything to do with him. He’s an old hand at ex-wives. I was just the last bimbo who made him look good. If he wants companionship, he’ll find somebody younger and thinner.”
    She wasn’t sure where that last adjective had come from. She really was a mess.
    “If you’re wrong, stay away from him, okay? I mean, prosecutorial misconduct is not the same as not guilty. It doesn’t mean CJ is innocent.”
    They talked for another minute, then Tracy hung up.
    She couldn’t help herself. Still wearing one high heel, she turned off the lights, then limped to the window.
    She stood absolutely still for half an hour, gazing into the darkness, but only tree limbs moved in the lazy Florida breeze.

chapter three
    Rishi rarely slept past dawn, but this morning Janya had already been up for an hour when she finally heard the shower. She suspected her husband’s long hours at work had finally caught up with him. By the time he arrived at the table, an omelet, coffee and fresh fruit were ready in the kitchen.
    “I did not mean to sleep so late.” Rishi took his seat and rested his head in his hands, as if he wasn’t yet ready to hold it erect.
    She thought many men would phrase the sentiment differently. “You should not have let me sleep so late,” they would say, and she, as a woman, would be expected to accept this as just. But Rishi was not such a man. He took responsibility for his own actions. Raised by a resentful aunt and uncle after the death of his parents, no one had cared enough to be responsible for him. Everything Rishi had become was due to his own hard work.
    She poured cream into his coffee and brought it to him. “I am glad you slept. You are tired. It’s no wonder you stayed in bed a bit on your day off.”
    “You are good to me.”
    He was easy to be good to, but she didn’t say so. Theirs was not that kind of marriage.
    “I made your favorite.” She returned with the omelet, prepared the way they were made in Mumbai, where she had grown up. The eggs had been whipped with finely chopped red onion, tomatoes, chilies and herbs, cooked on one side, then flipped. The fruit was fanned out at the bottom of the plate like a happy smile.
    “Ah, Janya, I have no idea what I did to deserve you.”
    “You arrived in India at precisely the right moment.” She smiled to let him see that even if this was true, the truth was now a joke. She was sure Rishi knew he was more to her than simply the man who had rescued her from a bad situation in her home country.
    “Lord Vishnu must have guided my footsteps.”
    “I am glad he was not too busy to guide them to me.” Janya returned with her own plate and settled herself across from him.
    “I am particularly sorry I overslept,” he said. “I had hoped to spend some of the morning with you, but now I must get ready and go to work.”
    “Again?” Janya was surprised, and surprise was quickly followed by worry. Rishi was a wiry, athletic man in excellent health. But lately he had been distant, a fact she blamed on exhaustion. He was working later and later each evening, and this was not the first Saturday that he had gone into the office. In fact, working through the weekend was becoming normal. She missed her husband and the intimacy they had slowly begun to develop, the give-and-take of a marriage built on more than convenience and tradition.
    When she didn’t speak, he cocked his head. “And now you are angry with me?”
    “How can I be angry? My mother telephoned last night.” Janya shook off her concerns and proceeded to tell Rishi what had transpired.
    He finished the last bite of his fruit before he spoke. “And you have no idea what she is sending?”
    “Perhaps a photograph album of all the grandchildren of her friends. To shame me.”
    Rishi looked uncomfortable. “You told her