Total pages in book: 230
Estimated words: 217798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1089(@200wpm)___ 871(@250wpm)___ 726(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 217798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1089(@200wpm)___ 871(@250wpm)___ 726(@300wpm)
She shook her head. “No, I’m fine. I’m feeling better. I caught a terrible cold. It settled into my chest, but I’m breathing better now.”
And any secondary infection would be made worse by the cancer. She would be weak and unable to fight off something Kash could easily handle.
“What do you see? While you’ve been gone, I’ve been thinking so much about your childhood. I wonder how you see it when you look back. Everyone asks you questions. I try not to bother you with them because I know how often you’re surrounded by reporters and advisors and politicians, but I need to know. I worry we don’t see the same things.”
He glanced back toward the window. What did he see? He saw sand and sun and rolling waves. He saw ghosts. “I see the beach where I played with Shray when I was young. I see the beach where you would take me to play long after Father took Shray under his wing to teach him.”
His mother frowned. “To teach him?”
“To be king. When Shray was a teenager, Father told him he couldn’t play with me at the beach anymore. He had to be better than me because he was going to be king. Father never came to the beach. He never played.”
His mother’s eyes softened, a sheen of tears forming. “Oh, my darling, how can you say that? Your father played with you many times when you were young. Look through the pictures I keep. Go and get them. They’re in a box in the bottom of the dresser.”
He started to argue with her, that she needed rest, but he could see how desperate she was so he strode to her dresser like a dutiful son. He needed to smile and tell her everything was all right because she was sick and his own misery would only bring more to her. He needed to agree that his childhood was beautiful and everything was perfect.
He’d seen the pictures of his childhood. They were mostly taken by state photographers and again, they’d been interested in Shray. Kash hadn’t minded because the thought of sitting still had been mind-numbing at the time. He opened the bottom drawer and found a metal box. He pulled it out and turned back to his mother.
He rushed back because she was struggling to sit up. “Mother, stop.”
She frowned up at him. “I will stop when I am dead, and as that might be soon, you will leave me to make the decisions. There’s a proper queen now. I can become the old bat who says and does whatever she likes. You see, you thought I brought in Dayita for you, but it was really for me. Where is she?”
“She was exhausted. She didn’t sleep at all on the plane. I put her in bed about an hour ago.” Likely because she was worried about everything, because he was giving her hell and causing her to question their marriage because he couldn’t bring himself to bend even a little.
Are you ashamed of how I make you feel?
He could still hear the question, hear the small tremor in her voice. Day was always so steady, so strong, and yet in that moment, she’d sounded small.
He’d made her small.
His mother shifted on the bed, leaving a space for him. “Good, she needs her rest. Now come and let me show you. It’s easy to forget, you know.”
He sat down next to her. “Forget what?”
“That the truth of our lives changes given our perceptions. That time and experience can make things hazy. You weren’t in a good place with your father when he died. I think that colored everything about your relationship with him. I can’t let that go on, Kashmir.”
He huffed, forgetting for a moment that he’d promised to be good. “So you think some photos you kept will change my perception of my childhood?”
“This isn’t my box, love. This was your father’s. This was precious to him.”
Kash looked down at the rather plain metal box. It was the kind of thing people kept important papers in, sturdy and weatherproof. It had a piece of tape on the top with a single word written in neat, masculine script.
Kashmir.
He touched the box. “Why would he have a box with my name on it?”
“Open it and find out,” she urged. “After he died, I found both of your boxes, yours and Shray’s. For a long time it was hard for me to think about Shray’s, but recently, I’ve enjoyed going through it and remembering how close our family was. This is what you’ve forgotten, what you have to remember before you have children of your own. He loved you.”
He hated the fine tremble to his hand as he opened the box.
Inside he found a mass of photos, but not the kind taken by the press. These were personal pictures taken by an amateur hand, pictures of himself and Shray smiling in the surf, their faces splashed with the waves, of himself as a giggling baby held in his mother’s arms, of his toddler self hiding beneath his father’s ornate desk. In that photo he was grinning ear to ear and reaching up to whoever was taking the photo. This wasn’t the picture of a child afraid to interrupt his father’s work. This child knew he was the center of the world.