Page 92 of The Encore’s Crown

Something flickered in his face.

“Then why waste your time and hers? Why, then, are you here?”

“Because I want to understand it. I want to know the answers.”

He went quiet. I could hear voices elsewhere in the house. Laughter in the hall. The faint movement of water from the courtyard fountain. Mr. Malhotra set down his cup.

“My daughter has always been impulsive with her heart.”

I almost laughed. Radhika? Impulsive?

“She hides it well,” I said.

“She believes wanting something badly enough can make it sensible.” He leaned back. “You live on tour and are surrounded by women. I have heard from my friends abroad that your reputation,” he continued, “is not especially discreet.”

“No. It's probably not.”

“And yet you expect me to believe my daughter is different.”

I looked down at my hands. His face remained unreadable.

“When I’m with her, she makes me honest before I have time to come up with something better,” I said. “I don’t know how else to explain it.”

“And what future do you imagine with her?”

The question I had avoided asking myself since she invited me. My mouth went dry.

“I—”

Chapter 37

You Do Not Still

Kiri

“Papa!”

Radhika’s voice cut through the room. Every muscle in my body loosened at once. She stood in the doorway with sunglasses pushed into her hair and exhaustion clinging to her despite the way her face lit up when she saw me. She wore an ivory kurta over loose trousers, gold at her wrists, her dark hair falling over one shoulder. She looked at me first. Only for a moment but it was long enough to make the entire journey worth it. Then she turned to her father.

“Twenty minutes,” she said. “I leave him alone with you for twenty minutes, and you’re already asking about our future?”

“I was asking reasonable questions.”

Mrs. Malhotra reappeared behind her, smiling like she had been waiting for this exact moment. Radhika crossed the room and bent to kiss her father’s cheek. He accepted it with the look of a man betrayed by every woman in his home. Then she came to me. I stood. At first, we only looked at each other. Months of video calls. A flight across the world. Her face reduced to a screen until now, then she smiled. It wasn't the public one she put on for everyone else.

It was mine.

“Hello,” she said.

“About time.”

Her father cleared his throat. One of the aunties entered behind her and announced something rapidly in Hindi. Radhika’s head snapped toward me.

“You learned Hindi?”

“A little.”

“You didn’t tell me.”