She wrote: I don't know yet what I want the next part of my life to look like. But I think I'd forgotten that there was a next part. The class is helping me remember that.
She read it back. She sent it without editing it, which was unusual for her. She had been an English teacher; she edited everything.
Meghna called twenty-two minutes later, which was the fastest she had ever responded to an email.
"Amma. You've been writing to me for a year and this is the first email you've sent that sounds like you."
"What do the others sound like?"
"Like someone performing being fine."
Nirmala was quiet for a moment. "I've been mostly fine."
"I know. But fine and actually fine are different things. This email sounds like actually fine."
Nirmala looked at her reflection again in the wardrobe mirror — the laptop open, the teal yoga pants, the face that was exactly hers and nobody else's. "Tell me about the children," she said. "And then tell me what you've been not telling me to protect me. And then we'll both say everything's fine at the end because that's what we do. But we'll both know the middle part was real."
A pause. Then Meghna laughed — the real laugh, the one that was exactly like Rajan's laugh, which always startled Nirmala slightly.
"Okay, Amma," she said. "Deal."
