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Reeva quickly brushed away the tears that were spilling from her eyes. Her dad had photos of them all. He’d kept them neatly organized inside a folder. He’d cared about them all this time.
“They look so normal,” said Jaya. “Mum doesn’t even have her extensions in.”
“Though she is still wearing a full face of makeup to take us swimming,” pointed out Reeva.
“I think this is the first photo I’ve ever seen of Mum actually being a mum,” said Sita. “I can’t believe they used to take usswimming.”
“Let’s look at the rest,” said Reeva. “Like, the later years. Here, give me a file.” She grabbed a file from the last decade and cried out loud. “He’s got stuff on us as adults! He... he knew who we were.” She pulled out a headshot of herself as a trainee from her firm’s website. One of Sita’s wedding photos. A magazine clipping of an article on influencers that featured Jaya. She paused as she saw a printed-out photograph of her old Facebook profile picture—her and Rakesh laughing together at a friend’sbarbecue—and quickly pushed it back into the folder before anyone noticed.
“Oh my god.” Sita held the wedding photo and looked up at her big sister, her eyes wide. “He kept track of our lives.”
“I can’t believe it,” said Jaya softly. “He knew about my career. He knew who we were.”
Reeva felt the tears coming again, and this time she didn’t bother to hide them; her sisters were just as emotional as she was. She grabbed another file and felt her heart melt as she pulled out its contents. Reeva’s GCSE results. And the “Best Improver” certificate she’d been given for gymnastics. Her dad had it all.
“Oh my god, this is a story I wrote in primary school!” cried Jaya, going through a different section. “Look, it’s about a hedgehog.”
“He’s kept my artwork,” said Sita quietly. “And I was really shit at art. If my girls came home with this”—she held up a drawing of five different-colored blobs—“it would be in the fucking bin.”
“He must have really loved us,” said Jaya. “Mum wouldneverkeep stuff like this. I don’t think she even knows my middle name.”
“You have a middle name?” asked Reeva.
“Oh my god, yes!” cried Jaya. “I swear, no one—”
“Look,” interrupted Sita. “He’s got a file on the girls! Photos of them, ones I posted on Facebook. And...” She sniffed loudly. “He’s labeled the photo. ‘Amisha and Alisha.’ He’s got their names the right way around.”
“Guys, he must have been in touch with Mum,” cried Reeva. “To have all this stuff. Our schoolwork. I know he’s got most of our adult stuff from the internet and social media, but he had to be in touch with her to get my GCSE results!”
“Unless the school just sent them to him,” suggested Sita. “He was still a parent. He could call up and get access to it all.”
“Speaking of Mum,” said Jaya, holding up newspaper clippings featuring Saraswati’s beaming face, “he’s got stuff on her too. And her extensions are back.”
“Guess he never got over her,” said Sita. “If he did have that affair, I reckon he really regretted it.”
Reeva frowned. “We can’t just speculate. And if he did cheat on Mum, wouldn’t there be a photo of her here too? The other woman?”
“Not if it was just casual,” said Jaya.
“Or if he threw it away in his guilt,” said Sita.
“This is pointless,” declared Reeva. “Let’s just... keep looking. We’ve only searched one room and we’ve found so much. By the time we’ve done them all, I bet we’ll be so much closer to finding out the truth.”
—
Five rooms later,the sisters were no closer to finding out the truth. They’d found nothing of relevance—except divorce papers, which proved that Saraswati had not committed bigamy; she and Hemant had divorced in 2005 when the girls were all teenagers.
“Which means they were speaking then.” Sita scowled. “She could have had the decency to tell us.”
“As if Mum would ever tell us anything,” replied Jaya. “Apart from lies. She loved those.”
“I wonder why they waited around a decade after the death-faking before they actually divorced,” said Sita. “What do you think, Reeva? Oi!”
Reeva looked up. She was sitting at the table going through the folder again—ostensibly in case they’d missed any clues, but really because it made her feel close to the dad she’d never known. He’d kept her piano certificates; she didn’t even know she’d been given piano certificates. She’d certainly never seen them before, and yet here they were, carefully filed under “Reeva, 2002–2007.” Even the fact that she had her own subsection made her feel special. Her dad had cared about her. He might have even loved her.
“Uh, what was the question?” she asked.
Sita rolled her eyes. “Whatever; we still know fuck all. We should get back to hunting for clues. Whether it’s a machete or his mistress’s underwear.”
