Page 116 of The Art of Taking Second Chances

Our eyes were instinctively drawn toward the living room.

That evening, I took Riya back to her home. She wept continuously as she gathered her life into bags to be carried across the ocean to another country, to a home she had never known. The only consolation, she repeatedly told me, was that her mother had trusted me, and she trusted her mother’s judgment. The driver helped us load her bags into the car as she said goodbye to the house she’d grown up in.

On our way back to Amar’s, I told her about the rituals surrounding death that I had seen in the family and asked if she wanted to perform any.

“No,” she said. “But I would like to scatter her ashes in the river.”

I nodded. “We’ll do it tomorrow.”

“If I choose not to perform any rites, will her soul suffer?”

She was asking the wrong person, but this wasn’t the time for rationalistic expositions. “No,” I reassured her. “The soul is gone. It can’t suffer any longer. What you do from here on is for you, for the sake of the living. The dead have passed on. We can’t hurt them anymore.”

Fresh tears drenched her already tired eyes.

“Are there any friends you want to say goodbye to?” I tried to change the subject. “Any boyfriends?”

That got me a slight smile.

“Really? Boyfriend or boyfriends?” I asked. “And aren’t you a little too young for that?”

“Mumma would’ve been so mad if she heard you talking to me about this,” she said, then cried a little.

“So that’s a ‘yes’ to the boyfriend, then?”

She tugged at corner of her cotton top. “Not a boyfriend, exactly. But I like him, sort of.”

“Hmm, does he know?”

“I think he does, but we never talk about it.”

“Do you want to see him before we leave?”

“Yes,” she sobbed.

“You’re barely thirteen, Riya. You’ll meet many people in life who will make you very happy. Friends, family, lovers.”

“Eww,” she said from behind her tears.

“What?”

“How old are you?” She grimaced. “Who says lovers?”

“Hey, that’s a perfectly fine word to describe someone you love.”

“For your generation, maybe,” she scoffed.

“Oh, that’s what you think? You’re going to play the age card with me, are you?” I ribbed. “I’m not that much older than you.”

“You are old.” She ended the argument definitively.

We talked about the friends she wanted to see before we left. We decided to call them the next day and visit them. We also cooked up a plan to have her see her not-boyfriend and give them some alone time together. She suggested I drive them to a coffee shop or a mall.

At dinner that evening, she ate a little more than she had all day. She still broke down in tears every so often. I didn’t want her to be by herself at night, so I had a small extra bed moved into one of the larger guest rooms. After she fell asleep in the large bed, I slept on the extra bed near the door in case she needed me in the night, but she slept through the night without distress.

Early the next morning, we collected Sangita’s ashes from the crematorium and drove north toward the river Ganga. We scattered her ashes in the river, sans rituals, and had a quick lunch at a roadside restaurant before driving back. Then we began calling Riya’s friends to ask if we could stop by. It was rough watching the young girls lose their cherished friendships. I made small talk with the parents while Riya went into their rooms to chat and say goodbye. It was difficult to explain my relationship to her, so I introduced myself as her cousin. Given our resemblance, people bought the lie easily.

Then I accompanied her and her not-boyfriend to a nice, uncrowded coffee shop. I took my coffee and sat out of earshot. I called Tara, but it went to voicemail. I miss you. Coming back in two days. Can’t wait to see you, I texted.

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