Neither spoke for a moment.
"He left," Tanisha said finally. Her voice was stripped clean of its usual confidence.
"I know."
"Did you know he would?"
Nimisha considered the honest answer to this. "I knew something was wrong with him," she said carefully. "I told your brother. He made sure you were protected."
Tanisha's eyes went to the window. "He was using me to get close to you."
"Yes."
"I said terrible things to you." She looked back at Nimisha. "I hit you."
"Yes."
"I'm—" The word cracked. "I don't know how to—" She pressed her lips together, getting herself under control through visible effort. "I'm sorry. For all of it. The things I said about you. The way I treated you. What I did when I—" She stopped. "I'm sorry."
Nimisha looked at her—this girl who was so much her husband's sister, who had the same stubborn pride and the same capacity to be completely wrong about something and the same difficulty admitting it.
"You were in love," Nimisha said. "And you were frightened that someone was trying to take it from you. That doesn't make what you did right. But I understand it."
"That's very generous considering I—"
"I know what I said." Nimisha picked up her tea. "We don't need to list it."
Tanisha was quiet.
"He never loved me," she said after a while. The words were small. Bewildered. "Did he?"
"I don't think he was capable of it."
"How do you live with that? Finding out someone you—" She stopped. "How?"
Nimisha thought about this carefully.
"You let yourself grieve what you thought you had," she said. "And then you remember that what you thought you had was built on his lies, not your love. Your love was real. He was the problem. Not you."
Tanisha looked at her with something exhausted and young in her expression.
"You're kind," she said, like it surprised her. "You're much kinder than I ever gave you credit for."
"You never really looked," Nimisha replied, not unkindly.
A beat of silence.
"Can we start again?" Tanisha asked. "You and me. Properly."
Nimisha thought about it—genuinely considered it, which felt different from the automatic accommodation she'd practiced for a year.
"Yes," she said. "We can try."
Tanisha exhaled. "Bhai loves you, you know."
Nimisha went still.
"He doesn't—"
