“I’m not saying it’s an excuse, but—”
“I live in the house you wanted,” Chiti cut her off again. “I eat the food you like. I treat your family as my own blood. And you humiliate me.”
“I didn’t ask you for this house,” muttered Avery.
Chiti’s attention snapped to her.
“What?”
“You wanted to buy the house I wanted. You insist on making the food I like. You make yourself the martyr so that I become the monster. You need me to be bad so you can be good.”
Chiti shook her head violently.
“Are you seriously trying to argue that you didn’t want my love? That you didn’t benefit from it? Then why did you keep taking it all these years? Why?”
“Of course I wanted it! But you wanted to give it! You benefited from me needing you too.”
Avery fell silent again. Chiti threw her hands onto the back of the sofa and leaned forward as if winded. She spoke to the cushions below her without looking at Avery.
“You’ve always wanted to escape who you are,” she said. “Ever since I first met you. But I never thought you would want to escape—” Her voice broke and Avery winced at the sound of it, the raw, animal pain it contained. “Me,” she managed to choke out.
“That is not what this is,” said Avery softly.
Chiti’s eyes shot up to hers. They were a burning black.
“Then what is it?” shouted Chiti. “Talk to me! Why don’t you talk? Why do you have to destroy our life to say you are unhappy? I know you are unhappy! I am unhappy too! So be an adult and fucking talk to me about it!”
“I…I don’t know where to start,” said Avery.
She was being a coward and she knew it. She was making Chiti voice Avery’s feelings as well as her own, a cruel ventriloquy. Chiti looked at her and snorted with disgust.
“You know how they say the drink is the end of the relapse?” she said. “It always starts months before with the pulling away, the accruing resentments, the setting up of excuses.”
Avery frowned in confusion.
“I didn’t relapse,” said Avery. “I swear.”
“I believe you. But fucking a stranger is the end of the betrayal. You have been slipping away from me for a year. I have been waiting for this for a year.”
“It only happened once,” said Avery, as if that mattered.
Chiti’s hands flew to her temples. She cast around as if frantically looking for something. Her entire body was shaking. Suddenly, she picked up a vase from the side table and launched it at the floor. It was one they had bought on their honeymoon in India, a beautiful glass cylinder blown in swirls of turquoise and pink. It hit the space between the wooden floorboards and the wall, exploding with such force it was as if it had been waiting all its life to shatter. Shards covered the carpet, winking and glistening in the light.
“That is one-tenth of how I feel,” she said shakily.
As if feelings could be divided and delivered like that, thought Avery. If only.
“Stay there,” said Avery. “Don’t move. I’ll get the broom.”
“No,” said Chiti, somewhere between a shriek and a plead. “For once in your life, I want you to stay in the wreckage you have created. Don’t hide it, don’t fix it. Look at what you have done.” She was panting. “Please. For once in your goddamn life, Avery.”
They stared at the shattered glass, glittering like rain. Chiti took a step onto it with her bare feet. Avery let out a yelp of pain as if it were her, not Chiti, whose soles were crunching the glass. She thought she saw blood, but it was only Chiti’s crimson-painted toenails.
“Stop!” Avery cried.
Chiti stood in the center of the broken glass and looked back at Avery, her eyes ablaze.
“Do you think you are the only person in this house who is grieving?” she demanded.
“Chiti, please!”
“Do you?” she insisted.
“No, I don’t,” said Avery.
Chiti took another step, wincing slightly as the glass pierced skin.
“You are not the only person in this house who is having a hard fucking time, Avery.”
Avery made an anguished sound.
“I know you miss her,” said Avery. “But she was my sister.”
From the center of her exploded life, Chiti gave her a look of pure contempt.
“Not only Nicky,” Chiti said. “You. I lost you. For over a year now, I have been waiting for you to come back to me. I could feel it at the funeral when you wouldn’t let me put my arm around you.”
Avery frowned. She didn’t remember that. The prayer book, she realized suddenly. She had stolen the prayer book and didn’t want Chiti to feel it in her waistband.
