From the day he was born Yash Raje had his entire life planned out for him and he was wholeheartedly on board with the plan. Sure, there was the prophecy—your life tended to leave the realm of mediocrity when you had a clairvoyant cousin who saw great things in your future—but the real reason was that Yash wasn’t an ungrateful prick.

There were those born under the diamond-studded blanket of privilege who were tortured by it. Then there were others who took it as their due. Both those types of people struck Yash as asinine. Yash looked at his privilege as a test. How worthy could he make himself of all these opportunities, and how much could he change with them? Yash had always been a great test-taker. Perfect scores on the SAT, ACT, and the LSAT, thank you very much.

“Ready to go get them?” Rico Silva, his media strategist, strode into the holding area behind the stage of Santa Clara University’s soccer stadium. His enthusiasm matched the purposeful energy coursing through Yash. Rico was a World Cup–winning soccer player and media darling, and hiring him to handle his press and messaging was one of the smartest things Yash had done for his campaign.

Not only did Rico possess an uncanny sense of what voters needed to see and when, but being a star athlete also made him the perfect person to introduce Yash at rallies with talk of dreams and pushing the limits of human potential. Running for political office was a test of how well you could sell that dream. The dream of hope. Yash had every intention of acing that test as well.

Rico’s introductions always fired up the audience, and a fired-up audience was exactly what Yash needed three months before California’s gubernatorial election. Yash was still doing a back-and-forth two-step with his opponent for a lead in the polls.

“Always ready,” Yash said, adrenaline drowning out everything but his goal: that podium, that audience, and owning them both.

“Ready to go get them?” His sister Nisha echoed Rico’s words. Nisha had managed all of Yash’s campaigns since his very first one as the youngest person running for state senate.

He mock-frowned at her. “Actually, can we cancel? I have a tummy ache.”

She made a face. “Funny.”

As a little girl Nisha had used tummy aches as an excuse to get out of anything she didn’t want to do. Usually this involved activities that might ruin her hair (swimming with her siblings) or her clothes (literally, any physical labor). When it came to Yash’s political campaigns, however, his sister was an unstoppable force. “Where is Abdul?” Her eyes swept the room for Yash’s bodyguard.

“He’s checking the stage one last time. Rico and I were ironing out some tweaks to the speech. Did you check up on Naina?”

“Your girlfriend is just fine.” Nisha started tapping on her iPad with her usual focus. Everyone was in the zone. Yash never left the zone. The zone was his dominion. “She’s seated next to the university chancellor. I’m sure she’s charming the pants off him.”

Of course she was.

With one last tap, Nisha finished what she was doing. “I just texted Naina and she thanks you for checking up on her and wishes you luck even though she knows you don’t need it.” Then, eternal romantic that she was, she sighed and gave Yash a smile that said you-two-are-so-adorable.

Rico threw him a wary glance. As a man newly in love, he wasn’t quite as convinced about Yash and Naina’s romance. And people liked to claim that women were more intuitive than men.

Rico was right to be skeptical. Sometimes Yash wondered how more people didn’t see through his arrangement with Naina. They’d been together—more accurately they’d been pretending to be together—for ten years. It had started off as two friends trying to help each other get their parents off their backs about marriage, and it had worked out perfectly.

Naina was off in all parts of the world studying how to structurally dismantle the gender imbalance caused by centuries of systemic economic dependence of women. Yash was here trying to change the world from the only place where it could actually be done: California.

Which made Yash a thirty-eight-year-old who was hanging on to a deal he had made with his friend when they were twenty-eight, so they could live life on their own terms and circumvent their overbearing families without hurting them. Sure, it sounded a tad bit cowardly, but only if you didn’t know their families.

The added bonus of not needing to expend energy on a relationship had meant undistracted focus on their work for both of them. Sure, it was unromantic, but romance hardly got things done.

Rico pressed his phone to his ear. “They’re ready for us. We’ve got to kill this one, Raje. We’ve got to put some distance between Cruz and you in the polls. I’m going to go get the crowd excited. Try to keep up.” Thumping Yash on the shoulder in his star-athlete way, he jogged out.

Abdullah Khan, Yash’s security guard, entered the holding room. “Rico’s about to pour fuel on them. You ready to throw the match, boss?”

A little morbid, but Yash loved it. He nodded. “Always ready.”

“Hey, Abdul. How’s the baby?” Nisha asked.

The burly giant, who could snap your neck with his bare hands and shoot you dead from five hundred feet, went as soft and fuzzy as the teddy bear Yash had brought Abdul’s newborn daughter yesterday. After seeing him hold the tiny pink bundle, Yash could not for the life of him stop thinking of the man as cuddly.

“She’s amazing. Has quite the lungs, just like her ammi.” Abdul winked.

“Thanks for being here,” Nisha said, hand on heart.

They had tried to get the man to take the week off after the baby was born, but he’d refused to let a new bodyguard take over just months before the election. Abdul had been with Yash since the start of the campaign and knew only too well how hard it was for Yash to trust new people.

“Where else would I be? Let’s go, boss, let’s get you elected.” Abdul hammed up a salute, then pointed with a flourish to the exit.

Nisha gave Yash a quick hug and hurried off to take care of the next thing, her pregnant belly not slowing her down in the least bit. Yash marched out behind Abdul.

This was Yash’s favorite part. This charged moment offstage, able to see the audience when they couldn’t see him, just before he went out into the bright lights. All the things he planned to address today were laid out in a precise grid in his head ready to be retrieved and articulated. Fiscal reform. Social reform. How the two intersected. His plans to tie them together.

A college campus was his crowd. Young people excited at the prospect of not having someone their parents’ age running things. All that raw hope that hadn’t yet been pounded down by cynicism and bills. Right and wrong still meaningful words not blurred by single-minded economic focus. Yash’s talking points about dismantling accumulation of wealth as a systemic norm were an easy sell here. Actually, it was a surprisingly popular opinion in the Bay, with its combination of greed and guilt.

The challenge was communicating the idea outside the bubble of the Bay without coming across as a hypocritical elitist. Being pro-business wasn’t a problem. It couldn’t be, in America. The problem was how businesses reallocated profits to affect economic change in communities where social change was most vital.

Talking points scrolled across his brain. His body vibrated with all that could be. Potential. Power. Purpose. This gave him life. This connecting with people. This knowing that he could change things for them.

Onstage, Rico had the crowd eating out of his hand. A chant of, “Yash is us,” started up and boomed across the arena like drumbeats. Excitement thrummed in the air like an electric force.

Abdul’s shoulders took up the rhythm of the chant even as he scanned the crowd with laser focus. Rico called out Yash’s name with all the aplomb of a sportscaster announcing a reigning champion before a big fight, and the cheering turned deafening.

“You’re a rock star, boss,” Abdul said, his fist bumping against Yash’s as they ran out onto the stage.

“I Love you, Yash Raje!” someone screamed from the crowd as though Yash really were a rock star.

It was the first sound to hit him as he faced the crowd, anticipation rising from it and rolling over him like a wave.

The second sound blew out his eardrums just as fire exploded in his arm.

Two more shots followed the first and Abdul’s body slammed against Yash’s, pushing him out of the way. Yash fell back, his legs flying out from under him as he watched Abdul slam his head on the podium and crumple to the floor across Yash’s legs. Everything inside Yash braced for more shots. When none came, he felt his heart start beating again, but when he tried to move . . . nothing.

Why have I never googled what happens after you get shot?That should not have been Yash’s first thought after the deafening blasts rang through the stadium. But it was.

Scattering footfalls thumped across the ground beneath the stage. An endless ringing, like a suspended beep, was trapped deep inside his ear. Outside, everything was too bright, washed in white light. He felt like he was in a movie. How did filmmakers know how this felt? How many of them had experienced being shot?

His hands twitched for his phone in that internal tug that had become part of the human condition, the need for an immediate answer uncontrollable. The memory of crisp encyclopedia pages slid against his fingertips. As a child, he had found answers in his father’s library. The beloved knowledge-filled tomes had swallowed his questions, fueled them, and now they crammed landfills because of a machine that fit in his hand.

The weight across Yash’s legs twitched, pulling him from the tightly packed thoughts in his brain. This time when he tried to move, his body responded and he pushed himself up on his elbows. Abdul was lying across Yash’s legs, face down.

Abdul? The word left his lips but didn’t reach his ears past the suspended beep. Abdul! Was his bodyguard not responding because he didn’t hear him, or because he couldn’t hear him?

Should I move?God, sometimes questions were the bane of his existence. To stop and think before acting, it was supposed to be his gift. Controlling your emotions was the only way to control anything else. It might be the first thing Yash remembered his father ever saying to him. A lesson so early and strong that it had become twisted into the helixes of Yash’s DNA.

Animals operate on instinct. Humans temper their actions with intellect. A leader reins his emotions better than everyone else. A leader thinks.

His father’s voice crackled in his head. Yash had always known that when death came it would take the form of his father’s lecturing.

A man was lying on top of him, and reining his emotions was doing Yash zero good. “Abdul!” This time the sound had to have left his throat, because Yash heard it at a distance.

Abdul didn’t move.

Why am I not feeling anything?

He could feel Abdul’s weight across him. He could smell the dust and blood. But inside, where there should be terror and panic, nothing—just thoughts crashing against thoughts.

As gently as he could, Yash leaned forward and pressed a hand into Abdul’s shoulder. His body was utterly still. Blood pooled under them, springing from a gash on the side of Abdul’s neck, just above his vest. Damn it.

Bending forward, Yash reached for the wound but his hand hovered over it. Pressure seemed the most logical way to stop the blood, but what if touching it made something worse.

“Abdul,” Yash shouted into his friend’s body. The wetness under him made a squelching sound. Abdul was losing too much blood.

Pulling off his jacket, Yash bunched it up and pressed it into the wound as lightly as he could. Almost instantly red soaked through the pale gray linen.

Déjà vu soaked through Yash’s brain. It had been a full twenty-three years since his accident. He’d been all of fifteen when a driver had jumped a stop sign and hit Yash. He felt his belly bounce as he was thrown off his bicycle into the air. The sight of blood always made the collision come alive inside him, so he avoided it. Now every cell in his being felt like it was soaked in the memory.

Beneath his hands Abdul convulsed once. A sign of life. Yash increased the pressure just a little bit. Abdul had brought him a box of burfi this morning to celebrate his daughter’s birth. Naaz, they had called her. It meant pride. A beautiful, beautiful name. A name Yash had tucked away in the vault where he kept things that belonged just to him. Just in case a day came when he might have children. Oh God, Abdul’s wife hadn’t even gone home from the hospital.

“Come on, wake up.” Yash wanted to shake him, do something, but he was too afraid to take his hands off the gash in Abdul’s neck.

“Sir, are you all right?” A man ran up the stage and suddenly Yash was aware of the chaos around him. Screams and scrambling footsteps.

The man tried to pull Yash’s hands off Abdul, but Yash couldn’t let the spring of blood start up again. “You have to let go. We have to get him off you and get you looked at. The paramedics are almost here.” The man was another guard from the security company. Yash couldn’t remember his name.

“Don’t touch him.” Finally, Yash’s voice reached his own ears, loud and forceful. He should have felt relief. He needed to feel something. “Where’s the ambulance? Do you know what the golden hour is? If we don’t get him to a hospital right now, his chances of survival will fall by seventy percent. Do you realize what seventy percent is? Where’s Rico? Rico!” He looked past the guard who was crowding him.

A crush of bodies moved in a wave toward the back of the stadium, leaving overturned chairs in their wake. Twenty thousand. Twenty thousand young people with their lives ahead of them. At the mercy of a shooter. Because of him.

Where was Rico? Had he made it off the stage when the shots went off? Yash’s hands trembled on Abdul’s wound. What if Rico was bleeding somewhere too? Rico wasn’t just a friend, wasn’t just Yash’s media wiz. He was dating Yash’s sister. Technically Ashna was his cousin but Yash only ever thought of her as his sister. Rico was family. Ashna was happy. It had been years since Yash had seen her happy. Just this morning Yash had teased Rico about his intentions toward his sister.

I intend to let Ash use my body for her shagging pleasure for the rest of my life, mate.

Had Ashna been at the rally? Why couldn’t he remember who else was here?

He turned to the guard. “I need you to find Rico Silva for me. Right now.”

“I’m here, mate.” Rico’s face came up behind the guard whose name Yash couldn’t remember.

Yash never forgot names. Ever.

He was also never this cold. Rico was alive and Yash could feel absolutely nothing. I should be feeling something. Something!

“Abdul needs to be in an ambulance,” Yash said as Rico squatted next to him.

He looked unhurt. The only sign that this wasn’t just another day at just another rally was that the giant YASH RAJE FOR GOVERNOR button on Rico’s jacket had come askew and was hanging lopsided.

“You need to let Abdul go,” Rico said, face tight with so many emotions that the emptiness inside Yash doubled down. “The ambulance is here. They need to look at you.” Rico looked over his shoulder as paramedics rushed at them with gurneys.

“This way,” Yash shouted, but they were already tugging his hands off Abdul and lifting him off Yash to a stretcher.

A paramedic helped Yash up and onto a gurney. “You need to let us look at you.” He tried to get Yash to lay down but Yash wouldn’t let him.

“I’m fine. He was hit.” Yash didn’t recognize his own voice, but something about his tone was familiar. “Why did it take you so long to get here?” Just like that Yash knew why it sounded familiar. He sounded exactly like his father. Yash had spent his life trying not to sound like his father.

He tried to soften it, tried to sound more like himself. “He’s within the golden hour. That means he’s going to be okay, right?”

The paramedic gave Rico a look and Rico pushed Yash back with a “Please, Yash.”

Yash resisted but suddenly pain shot through his arm making him lightheaded and he lay back.

He didn’t want to be on a gurney. The last time he’d been on one he’d ended up in a wheelchair for a year. His blood-soaked clothes, the pain throbbing in his body, all these paramedics. The numbness in his legs. He wasn’t fifteen, this wasn’t that day. He didn’t even have real memories from that day. Just these splashes of sensation.

It took some effort to stop himself from searching his surroundings for his bike. The one that had become as twisted and mangled as his broken spine.

“They’re taking care of him.” Rico pressed a hand into Yash’s chest to keep him on the gurney.

Before Yash could respond a woman screamed his name and ran at him.

Yash knew the woman.

He couldn’t for the life of him remember her name.

“Yash, honey. Oh no.” She was sobbing. Mascara ran down her face. She looked like she’d lost someone she loved.

That’s how I should look. That’s how I should be feeling. But nothing. He felt nothing.

“Naina, he’s going to be okay,” Rico said.

Naina. Of course.

Naina and Yash. Spoken for. The words made him laugh. They made him think of his parents. How would Ma survive it if he died?

Spoken for. Ma had come up with that label when Yash and Naina had said they wouldn’t get engaged. Ma, who always found a way to make things okay.

Spoken for. And he’d forgotten her name.

Nainakept stroking his arm. Then she leaned over and kissed his forehead. Mascara-tinted teardrops splashed onto Yash’s face. A light flashed with a sound Yash knew so well it could wake him from the dead. A camera.

“Honey, please let them do their job.” Spoken-for Naina sobbed as more cameras clicked.

“Their job is to make sure Abdul doesn’t die.” He tried to catch Rico’s eye, but Naina had wrapped herself around Yash and he couldn’t see. The smell of her perfume was so strong he couldn’t breathe.

Twisting in her embrace, he spoke to the paramedic who was clamping a monitor to his finger. “What’s taking so long? That man needs to be in a hospital. Don’t you understand? He has a bullet inside him.” His father was back in his voice.

“Actually, sir, he doesn’t,” the paramedic said, pressing something into Yash’s shoulder, making it feel like he’d taken an ax to it. “The bullet went through him. You’re the one with the bullet inside you.”

India Dashwood loved her life. She lived for the joy she experienced every time she led a yoga practice and watched her students connect with parts of themselves they had never accessed before.

“Namaste,” she said to the room filled with twenty glowing faces.

They had just completed the final session of the two-week long Namaste Yogi camp she’d come to Costa Rica to teach.

That name always made India cringe, but it wasn’t something she had any control over. Calling yoga students “yogis” was quite a stretch. A yogi was someone who had harnessed their mind and body, so it was never regulated by desire. India had spent her entire life aspiring to this. Growing up in a yoga studio and being raised by a mother and grandmother who were yoga gurus meant India had lived the yogic practice since before she could walk, and she still couldn’t claim the title of yogi.

“Namaste,” her class chorused back in one harmonious voice. Fifteen days, and the texture of their namastes had changed. India had worked them hard. Relentless breath work, meditation that dug deep, poses that reset bones held long enough to bring out the strength of the very soul. Yoga brought together the entirety of a person’s experience being them. The body, the mind, the consciousness, all brought into awareness and experienced at once. If you gave it time, it gave you a glimpse of your whole self, your very humanness.

The enthusiasm of their first few days was sweet. The exhaustion of the middle slog that they hit on day seven and struggled through until day thirteen was heartbreaking but hopeful because India knew the outcome. It was this deeply relaxed and rooted “Namaste” that India waited for as she led them through their camp. Her grandmother would be proud.

They each stopped by to thank her and she pressed her hands together as she thanked them in return. Some of them just wanted her praise, others wanted her reassurance that they could hold on to what they had learned here. She gave each one of them what they needed, what the voice inside her told her would help them best.

There was very little you had control over in the world. But your own actions, those you could make exactly what you chose to make them. Staying connected to her inner voice was the only way India knew to make sure she kept her actions what they should be.

After the last of the students had left, India made her way to her suite wrapped in the kind of peace that came with giving a job your all. The resort was located at the edge of a cliff in Punta Quepos overlooking the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. She walked past the infinity pool that dropped into the ocean. Of all the resorts in the Manuel Antonio region this was the only one without a bar.

Most of her students would be headed to one of the other resorts today, to the places with multiple bars. India didn’t begrudge them their enjoyment. During her retreats, however, she preferred that her students not imbibe, and try to stay vegetarian. The body stayed better focused on itself with food that was easier to digest, and the mind stayed better focused on itself without alcohol messing with the nervous system. You emerged more refreshed and energized after a meditative retreat if you didn’t drink or eat meat; and India had never had a student who didn’t wholeheartedly agree, even if they’d started out trying to prove her wrong.

Inside her suite, she pulled off the turquoise shrug she’d worn over her white yoga pants and tank and put the kettle on in the kitchenette. Then, she retrieved her phone from her nightstand and let herself out onto the balcony. The coolness of the slate floor soaked into her bare feet. The resort was built on terraces tucked into a hill slope rising from the ocean and the briny sea breeze caught speed at this height and pummeled harder. Her hair caught every bit of salt in the air, making the short cropped strands stiff and heavy against her fingers as she tried to push them back in place.

Her thick, straight, jet-black hair was a gift of her Thai genes, and she was grateful to her birth parents for it, whoever they were. When India was younger she would search her own facial features in the mirror to piece together what they looked like, and wondered where they lived, and if they ever missed her. She did it only rarely. Not often enough to feel like she was betraying her mother, but just enough to bring awareness to the people who’d brought her into the world.

At sixteen India had finally asked her mother if she had any records that told India something, anything. But keeping true to her nature, Tara Dashwood had saved none of the paperwork. It didn’t matter. India loved her mother more than words could describe. A mother who drowned her children in love, who drowned anyone and anything that crossed her path in love, was hard to not love. Growing up, India remembered not a word of criticism, nor a harsh experience of any sort. Her childhood had been suffused with the sweet scent of incense, the soothing sounds of chanting, and the warmth of being wrapped up in hugs and unconditional acceptance.

If a serious illness ever befell India or her two siblings (an eventuality Tara never foresaw, because: yoga!), they’d have no idea if it was genetic predisposition. Because Tara had adopted children from three countries with an equal disregard for parental history for all three.

The kettle whistled and India poured herself a cup of hot water and took it back to the balcony, and finally checked her cell phone. Her mother used technology as little as possible, but as expected, there were missed calls and a string of texts from India’s sister, China. Their brother, Siddhartha, hadn’t checked in, but that wasn’t surprising either. He was off photographing birds-of-paradise in Papua New Guinea, and as Sid loved to say, a cell signal and birds worth photographing didn’t go together.

Instead of reading through her texts, India called China. Wi-Fi calling meant international calls wouldn’t bankrupt her. These retreats did make more money in a week than a month’s worth of classes at their studio in Palo Alto, but she needed every cent to pay the mountainous debt from recent renovations to her family’s studio.

“India!” China always answered calls with your name, as though you had to be reminded that caller ID existed.

“China!” India said, mirroring her tone, and couldn’t hold back the smile that split her face. “All well? Is the studio still standing?”

China was the one who had goaded India into doing the retreats, because India had never shown any interest in leaving the studio. She loved Palo Alto, loved the studio and their apartment above it that she shared with Tara and China. What was the reason to ever leave? But they’d recently had to renovate the studio because parts of the structure had become hazardous, and renovations in Palo Alto basically cost more than a small Greek island. The reason India knew this was because Sid had checked the prices and suggested they buy the island instead of renovating.

“Actually, the studio’s crumbled to the ground. It refused to stay standing without you holding it up on your tiny but mighty shoulders.” China enjoyed teasing India, but between how little China cared about anything but her work (which was not teaching yoga or taking care of the family incense business, thank you very much) and the fact that their mother hadn’t been her usual energetic self recently and had been forgetting little things like turning off the stove and locking up, India’s fear was not entirely unjustified.

“And the classes are going well?” India asked. She couldn’t wait to get back to her students. Their mother’s style of instruction catered to students who were more interested in loving themselves than pushing themselves. This was the point of yoga, obviously, but the point was also growth. Every mind and body was stronger than it believed. And, in Palo Alto—the chosen home of so many tech billionaires—India had learned to braid together self-love with growth so it best benefitted her clients.

“No, Mom and Tomas suddenly forgot how to teach with you gone,” China said, sounding cheeky enough, but something was off in her tone. India could tell that China’s brain had already moved on to the next thing. “I do miss you, though,” she added, voice suddenly wobbly.

“Something wrong, Cee?” India was instantly in big-sister mode. Even though China was almost thirty, India would always be three years older. Every time China sounded like something was bothering her, it would always take India instantly back to when China was a toddler who woke up in the middle of the night needing to be held.

Instead of answering, her sister let out a sob.

Worry rolled through India, even as she listened carefully to determine if there was any real cause for alarm. “It’s going to be okay. Are you alone? Is it work? Is it Song?” China was equally passionate about her family, her work, the weather, their pug, her new girlfriend.

“Do you believe it’s possible to burst with love?”

India relaxed and took a sip of her hot water, a relieved smile nudging at her lips. “You mean physically, like a balloon popping? I’ve never actually heard of a case where that happened.”

“Funny. But I don’t expect you to understand. It’s just . . . it’s just . . . I’m just filled all the way up, you know? Like my feelings for her are pushing against my skin in every part of me. Even the tips of my fingers tingle with it, India!”

India dropped into the circular chair bed overlooking the ocean and crossed her legs. “You’re adorable, Cee.”

“I am, right? So, it’s not strange that someone as perfect as Song likes me?”

“You’re the one who’s perfect here,” India said, making sure China knew she meant it. If they had to play the who’s-luckier game, anyone who earned her sister’s love was the lucky one. “Has Song decided to stay back?” India tried not to sound worried but she wasn’t sure she succeeded.

China had recently started seeing Song Ji Woo, who was a famous Korean actor. China was a producer at the Food Network and Song had been a contestant on China’s TV show last season. Problem was, Song had moved to the U.S. only for the show. Just like her choice to be addressed by her last name instead of her first name, being here was a temporary thing she was escaping into. Her life and work were back in South Korea. To say nothing of the fact that Song was quite firmly in the closet and China had been out and proud her whole life.

“Why does that matter?” China tried not to snap, India knew that, but keeping her emotions tempered had never been her sister’s strong suit.

How could it not matter? If the person you were giving your love and trust to wasn’t interested in giving you theirs, how could that not matter? There was no way to ask China that without sounding disapproving of this great love she was experiencing. So, instead, India said, “It only matters if it matters to you.”

“I knew you’d do this. How can you of all people not understand that if you love someone, you love someone. It can’t be conditional on what they can give you in return. It’s the journey, not a destination. Isn’t that what you spend your days teaching people?”

Sure, life, like yoga, was a practice. You stayed in the moment. Lived it with mindful actions. That was the only way to experience it fully and do it justice. That didn’t mean you jumped off a cliff onto rocks just to know how that felt.

“I’m not saying you can’t have the feelings or that you shouldn’t take joy from them. I just don’t want you to get hurt,” India said gently. The expectations, the hopes, the dreams, all the things China wanted from Song were clear in her voice, in the way she breathed when she talked about her. “You can only live in the moment with yourself. But that’s not what you want. You want those feelings returned.”

“She returns my feelings.”

“I know she does. But, sweetheart, she’s not planning to stay.”

“This isn’t the nineteenth century. Every relationship does not have to end in marriage.”

“Okay.” Strong as the urge to fix this for her sister was, India knew it wasn’t in her hands.

“Did you have to ruin it?”

“No. I’m sorry. I do think you’re great together. And you’re so much more fun when you’re getting some,” she added, needing to diffuse the tension between them.

That made China laugh. Her sister was quicksilver, her temper burning hot but her need to return to joy even more stubborn. “Hah! Yes, speaking of getting some. The girl is insatiable.” China’s laugh got all husky and India knew her anger was forgotten. “I think I might have set a record. And you know that I’m already somewhat of a legend.”

“Also somewhat lacking in humility?”

“I came seven times in one night, India! And I wasn’t the one who came the most number of times.”

“TMI, Cee!”

China didn’t care, she filled India in on the details. Which were undoubtedly impressive. India had to admit that she’d never seen her sister this happy. China’s naturally high capacity for joy stretched beautifully at the seams.

Maybe India didn’t need to worry about Song breaking China’s heart. Only the most foolish person would let feelings so precious slip from their hands. Maybe Song would realize how fortunate she was and the two of them would find a way to be together.

Once China had caught India up on every single detail of every single thing Song and she had said and done over the past few days, India gently turned the conversation toward their family.

True to form, Sid hadn’t been in touch with China either. As soon as their brother had access to a network he’d call.

“Mom canceled her classes yesterday,” China said absently. “Nothing to worry about, though, Tomas picked them up.”

“Is it her back?” Tara’s upper back had been bothering her for weeks. No matter how much Mom insisted she was okay, recognizing signs of pain was India’s job. She should never have left without making sure that her mother saw the doctor.

“I think it is. But you know how she is, she will neither confirm nor deny, but her heated buckwheat pad has been going nonstop. She won’t go to the doctor. I tried.”

Obviously China hadn’t tried hard enough. “I’m canceling next week’s session and coming home.”

“I hate when you do that.” India knew what China would say next. “Act like you’re the only one who can fix things. Act like you’re the only one who wants to fix things.”

“That’s not what I’m doing. But Mom has to see the doctor. It’s not a choice.”

China made an infuriated sound. “I will drag her there if I have to. You don’t have to come home.”

“You sure?”

Another infuriated sound. “Of course I’m sure. I get that you run the family business, that you’ve taken it all on because Sid and I weren’t interested, but you do it because you love it, right?”

“Yes.” The family and the studio were what made her her. It was just that she found it easier to take care of things herself instead of relying on someone else, even her siblings.

“You know I would help you with the studio if I could bear to,” China said, her distaste at having to do such a thing palpable in her voice.

India didn’t need another rundown of all the reasons why her life was boring, why she was passionless for toeing the family line. “Mom and I don’t need your help with the studio, we’re fine. It’s just not like Mom to miss classes. She needs to see a doctor. In fact can you call Trisha and run this by her?”

Trisha Raje was a neurosurgeon, so not quite an internist, but Trisha was one of China’s closest friends. Trisha’s cousin Ashna lived next door to the Dashwoods. The Raje cousins and the Dashwood sisters had been friends for years, their friendships solidifying in adulthood because both families tended to be private and slow to trust strangers.

“I’ll call Trisha and Mom’s doctor as soon as I get off the phone with you. You stay right where you are and don’t worry about it. You know I can be an adult when I focus really, really hard.”

India had another week-long corporate gig coming up with a week’s break before it. It was much less work than a full retreat because she just needed to lead morning yoga sessions and then give a couple lectures about stress management and she’d get paid several times as much as the retreat paid. “Thanks. It would be unwise to give up that kind of money.” But something about not taking care of Tara herself didn’t sit right inside her.

“Yeah, no need to . . . Hold on . . . Oh God . . .” There was a scrambling sound and India heard the television volume turning up at China’s end.

“China, what’s wrong?”

“Oh my God.” That was not China’s emotional drama voice. It was real horror.

“Cee! Will you please stop saying that? You’re scaring me. What’s wrong?”

“Oh my God,” China said again. “Oh no. It’s Yash Raje. Something is wrong.”

A sharp and dark feeling twisted in India’s heart.

“What are you talking about?” It had been a decade since India had seen Yash. In person. You couldn’t avoid him on TV no matter how hard you tried. She was friends with his sisters and his cousin and they thought the sun shone out of his . . . well, out of one of his orifices.

She had thought so too. For precisely one day.

She hated the panic that gathered in her body. By all accounts, her experience with Yash Raje had been some sort of aberration. With everyone else he seemed like a perfectly stand-up guy. Not that any of it had mattered in a very long time. No matter how angry she’d been with him, she most certainly did not want anything to be wrong with him.

Please let nothing be wrong with him.

“Is it the polls? Has he dropped in the polls?” India tried not to follow politics, and she’d avoided it even more since Yash announced his candidacy, but she wasn’t an ostrich either.

Over the phone, China let out a gasp. “It’s not the polls.” Her voice was shrill with tension. This was bad. Really bad. “Oh God. Oh no. I think Yash has been shot.”

The last time Yash had emerged from general anesthesia he’d been fifteen years old and surrounded by a roomful of family. Every one of them with swollen yet dry eyes. No doubt because his parents had warned his siblings to make sure they did not cry in Yash’s presence because he needed them to be strong.

This time when Yash regained consciousness he was all by himself. Disorienting as this was, it was also a relief, considering how on that day twenty-three years ago he’d been told he would never walk again. He wiggled his toes and moved his legs just to make sure he could.

“You’re up!” Someone ran into his room. Hands were thrown around him with no regard for the shoulder that felt a bit like a boulder was balanced on it.

“It’s you,” he said, poking at his brain for her name. It was gone again.

Fortunately, his sister Trisha followed close on her heels. So he hadn’t forgotten everyone’s names, just the name of the woman who was supposed to be his girlfriend. Fabulous.

“Hey, Yash.” His sister tapped the woman’s arm, obviously trying not to show her impatience, which was usually not something Trisha bothered with.

His girlfriend squeezed Yash’s hand and left the room with an “I’ll be right back.”

Trisha pushed his hair off his forehead. “You’re awake.”

“Was that not what you were expecting?” He tried to remember the details of what had happened, but the fog blanketing his brain was too thick.

She smiled her amused-doctor smile. “No, drama queen, we were fully expecting to not be rid of you just yet. Then again, we were also not expecting you to go and get yourself shot.” She looked like she wanted to smack him upside the head.

Right. He’d been shot. “Abdul. How . . .” Yash tried to sit up.

Trisha pressed him back down. “He’s in the hospital too. We’re treating him.”

Yash waited, but she said nothing more and just kept petting his hair like he was a puppy she’d found on the street. All this out-of-character coddling was more than a little disconcerting. Trisha was his least warm-and-fuzzy sister.

“And . . .” Yash prompted, not bothering to hide his impatience.

“And you need to worry about your own healing right now. How’s your shoulder feeling?”

Yash was the most bullheaded of the siblings. Trisha ought to know that. “But he’s okay? He’s conscious?”

Her hesitation made it clear that they’d had a family meeting while Yash was out and strategized how much to tell him and when.

“He’s out of surgery.”

Usually Yash could outmaneuver his family’s strategizing in his sleep, but he was so not in the mood for that. “How bad is it?”

Before Trisha could answer, his girlfriend came back into the room. Behind her his entire family followed. Could someone please tell him her name?

“You’re awake.” Mina Raje was not given to crying, but her swollen eyes meant she had been.

“Ma, I’m fine.”

Their father squeezed his foot. Other than the squeeze, Dr. Shree Raje was as regally stoic as ever. Yash’s father had been born a prince, and the staff at the Sripore Palace, the Raje’s ancestral home in India, still referred to him as His Royal Highness. It was so fitting that Yash and his siblings had always called him HRH behind his back. The shadows under HRH’s eyes were the only tell of his worry.

Now that they were adults, at least he wasn’t glaring at Nisha and Ashna for crying. And, man, those two were making up for the rest of them. As soon as she saw them, even Trisha’s eyes filled up.

Yash could bet his life having a bullet enter you after hitting someone else made it much less serious. For you, not for the person who’d saved your life.

“Will someone please tell me how Abdul is doing?”

His sisters all looked at one another and refused to meet his eyes. He turned to their significant others: DJ, Trisha’s boyfriend, looked at Trisha, and something passed between them. Something that kept DJ from answering Yash.

Next he looked at Neel, who was married to Nisha, the sister who was also Yash’s campaign manager, therefore also an employee (not that Yash was brave enough to remind her of that). Neel had been one of Yash’s closest friends since they were in diapers, but the traitor did the same thing DJ had done, he looked at his wife and then studied the walls.

Were his sisters puppet masters? Looking at Rico yielded the same results. Rico looked at Ashna, who gave him a wide-eye, and the man promptly turned to studying the many monitors in the room.

“For shit’s sake! . . . Sorry, Ma. Will someone tell me what is going on with the man who took a bullet for me?” Yes, he yelled, and it made him break into a cough, and that made the worried faces multiply their worry twenty times over.

“They don’t think Abdullah Khan is going to make it,” his girlfriend said, impervious to the glares that went flying around the room.

“What Naina means,” Nisha said in her intimidating-mom voice, “is that his condition is critical right now but the doctors are trying their best to save him.”

Naina. Of course.

This memory-lapse thing was annoying as hell. Yash fought to reach for the rush of relief knowing her name should have brought, the hope Nisha’s reassurance about Abdul should have brought, but all he felt was parched emptiness in place of all the emotions he should be feeling.

All around his bed were faces he loved, looking at him with absolute adoration and gratitude that he was alive. A tightly squeezed circle of all the reasons his life was far richer than anyone deserved. He knew this. Logically. Intellectually. Up in his head. In his heart there was nothing.

“I want to see Abdul,” he said, and the circle of faces turned all shades of indignant.

“Let’s have your doctor look at you first,” Trisha said. Then she turned to the rest of them. “Can everyone clear out? We’re not all supposed to be here. He’s fine. Seriously. We’re overwhelming him.”

He was not overwhelmed. He should be. He was not.

That didn’t change the fact that this was a hospital. It was Trisha’s domain and DJ squeezed her hand and headed out. Rico and Neel followed him. It was also their father’s domain, but Ma took his hand and tugged him out. Which meant there was a strategic plan at play. Yash studied the people left in the room and tried to calculate who’d been assigned to manage him.

“Naina, beta, let’s wait outside,” Ma said to Naina in a far kinder tone than the one she used on her own children. It was her children-in-law voice and it was always extra-kind toward Naina.

“Yes, Mina Auntie.” Naina dropped a kiss on Yash’s lips and smiled sadly.

Did he and Naina kiss? Was that part of the deal? Then why did it feel so strange? Did their kissing always feel so . . . so . . . dry?

He smiled back, managing only to highlight the fact that there was nothing where his feelings should have been. Nothing where her kiss had landed.

Once they were all gone, it was just him and his three sisters. Strategically speaking, he had to admit it was a smart choice.

“I’m not overwhelmed.” Honestly, any degree of whelmed would be great. “I just need to see Abdul.”

“I think they’re only letting family see him right now.” This from Nisha. Other than Yash, she was the one who had spent the most time with Abdul. She knew him. And Yash knew her. There was no way she hadn’t gone to see him.

Nisha studied his face. “His wife, his parents, and his in-laws are with him. They’re hopeful.”

“And Naaz?” Yash asked.

Nisha went just a little bit green. Her hand went to her pregnant belly. A baby having her father shot two days after she was born was a dose of reality no expectant mother should be exposed to. “His little girl is healthy. So is Arzu.”

“Good. Then I’d like to go see them.” Yash moved to stand, and for the second time today Trisha held his shoulder—the good one—keeping him in place.

“It wasn’t your fault. You weren’t the one who shot him,” Ashna said.

“I’m aware,” Yash snapped. “But Rico was there with me. If he’d been standing closer. If he’d been hit, would you still think it wasn’t my fault?”

Her fingers twisted together. “Yes,” she said after a long pause. “I would still blame the person with the gun, not you. You’re a victim here too. There’s a hole in your shoulder too. And a rip in your arm.”

That, too, he was aware of. As if on cue, the wounds in his shoulder and arm gave a throb. Good thing the bullets had struck his left side. Since there was no more space for scars on his right side. The accident had already taken care of that. Automatically his hand went to his chest; the hospital gown covered his torso and shoulders, but he still pulled his blanket up to his neck.

Nisha picked up a bag from a sideboard. “Ma brought you your pajamas.” Obviously, Ma knew he’d need his clothes as soon as he woke up.

For a moment the discomfort of unspoken things, unspeakable things, silenced them all.

This wasn’t a time to wallow in old wounds. He turned to Trisha. She was his only hope. “I need to see Abdul. You know you can make it happen.”

Trisha looked at Nisha.

“Fine. I’ll talk to the family,” Nisha said. Then the three of them exchanged another one of their loaded looks.

“What now?” he said. “I’m fine. Just spit it out.”

“You haven’t asked about the polls.” Ashna was the one who spoke.

Right. The election. Another thing that felt several lifetimes away. He wondered if he should tell someone about the numbness. What would he say? I’m not feeling anything? I can barely remember the election.

His family would only argue that not feeling anything was a feeling in itself. Then they would freak the fuck out.

“Yash?” One of them prodded him. He wasn’t sure who. All of a sudden he couldn’t bring himself to focus. The fog in his brain had thickened to sludge.

They stood there, his wall of sisters, watching him so intently that he had to respond. He pushed through the sludge and racked his brains for what they wanted to hear and came up with, “What are the polls looking like?”

Last he remembered Joshua Cruz, his opponent, had been leading by a narrow margin. Cruz sold himself as the blue eyed and blue collared, father of four, “all-American” candidate. If Yash had a penny for every time the man used the term “middle class family values” Yash may never need to do another fundraiser again. Cruz had played in the NFL, so middle class was pushing it.

“What?” he asked when no one answered.

All three of them looked at him like they were going to explode.

Finally Trisha squealed, like a child who’d just received a long coveted present. “You’re leading in the polls! By ten points!”

What?“Leading Cruz?”

“That is who you’re running against. So, yes.” Nisha retrieved her cell phone and navigated to a video, bouncing on her heels. “The entire state is in an uproar over the shooting. Vigils everywhere. For you. For Abdul. For Naina.”

“For Naina?”

“Yes, she’s a damn hero!” Ashna said.

At the cost of repeating himself: What?

“The footage of Naina leaning over your gurney and sobbing as you bled all over her has hit the public hard. It’s everywhere. She’s Jackie Kennedy.”

“Except. She isn’t. I’m not dead in her lap.” Neither was he her husband or the father of her children. He was, in fact, no more than her friend. A partner in crime. Someone who had conspired with her to cheat their families so they didn’t have to deal with their pressuring tactics.

On the phone Nisha handed him, Naina was crying mascara-stained tears into Yash’s face. She looked devastated, and he looked quite near death. Were they more than friends? Had he forgotten more than just her name?

“The video has been playing on the news cycle nonstop,” Ashna said.

“Is Rico responsible for this?” His tone must have been harsh, because the wall of sisters turned their joint frowns on him.

“You got shot. What exactly is that question supposed to mean? Are you suggesting Rico made that happen?” Ashna, who was the least mean person on earth, snapped in a tone that sounded pretty darn mean. “You’re acting very strange,” she said more gently. “Are you feeling okay?”

Not at all. I feel like a block of ice encased in paper.“Of course I’m okay. I’m great. I can’t feel my shoulder. A man might be dying because of me and no one will let me see him. But I’m just peachy, thank you very much. You’re right, we should all be celebrating the polls!”

“Yash,” Nisha said with all the gravitas of someone who had dedicated her entire adult life to his career. “We are all heartbroken about Abdul, every one of us. We’re praying that he wakes up. He believed in you. He was obsessed with you winning this election, just like the rest of us. We will do everything we can to make sure he and his family are okay. But did you not hear us? With these numbers and the outcry so close to the election, only an act of God can stop you from winning in November. The election just became ours to lose. Everything you’ve worked for—we’ve worked for—it’s going to happen.”

TRISHA WHEELED YASH down the eerily quiet hospital corridor. Nisha and Rico had done a great job working with the hospital to keep the press out.

“Stop here,” he said to Trisha, when they got to the door of the private lounge where Abdul’s family was waiting for him, and stood. He didn’t need a wheelchair, but Trisha had refused to let him leave his room if he didn’t use one. God save us all from bossy sisters.

This one was looking at him as though he were breaking her heart. “I’m fine. I’m not going to do anything irresponsible. Don’t worry.”

“I know that. You’re Yash. Do you even know how to do something irresponsible?” She smiled at him kindly enough that he knew she was hurting for him. “I know how hard this is on you. But it’s not your fault. Abdul was doing his job.”

“His job was to keep people from getting too close and familiar. Taking a bullet was never in the job description.”

“Taking a bullet is always in the job description. You just wish it wasn’t.”

They had arrested the shooter. Your garden-variety white supremacist who didn’t want his state handed over to a foreigner. Yash should have been angry, but he was still having that little problem of not being able to feel anything. Plus, dealing with bigots was half his job. It was half the job of anyone not born white in this country. He could do it in his sleep.

The good news was that the man was going away for a very long time. The bad, but not surprising news was that for all the outrage and sympathy that had landed Yash at the top of the polls, there was no shortage of people on social media turning the bastard into a martyr and supporting his “cause” and wishing death upon “browns who conspire to steal America.”

“You have five minutes. Then you need to be back in your room,” Trisha said. “I’ll be back to get you.”

“Doesn’t a fancy surgeon have anything better to do than wheel patients around?”

“She does. But there’s this dumb kid sister getting in her way because her brother won’t stop being a stubborn ass.” With that she kissed his cheek and hurried off, leaving him to enter the waiting room.

Arzu, Abdul’s wife, sat flanked by an older couple.

The man stood and shook Yash’s hand. “I’m Hafiz Khan, Abdullah’s father.”

Yash took the man’s hands in both of his. “Thank you for seeing me,” he said, looking at Arzu, whose eyes were so dry and stoic they should have been a sledgehammer to Yash’s numbness.

Next to her, in a baby carrier hooked to a stroller, Naaz was rolled up in a pink blanket and fast asleep. Her head was covered in a cap, leaving open nothing more than cheeks, a button nose, and tightly closed eyes.

“How are you?” Hafiz said, and the ice inside Yash went even colder. He was here, standing on his own two feet, the wounds in his shoulder and arm nothing more than a few stitches. While Abdul was hooked up to a ventilator, a head injury and major blood vessels and tendons in his neck torn and sewn up. His brain unable to process that his body was alive.

Yash bent over Naaz. She’s so beautiful, he wanted to say, but nothing came out, so he simply stroked a crooked finger along her baby carrier, too afraid to touch something so fragile.

“They’re not sure if he’ll wake up,” Arzu said, her strong voice at odds with the words she was saying.

“He’ll wake up. He has to.” Yash turned to her.

Nisha had warned him to be careful about what he said. To not give her hope when the doctors were being so cagey. But doctors didn’t know everything. Who knew that better than Yash?

“They aren’t sure they can keep him on the ventilator much longer.” Every time they’d met, Yash had noticed the spine of steel under her easy banter with Abdul. They were a powerhouse together. Now she had to be fierce enough for the both of them.

“We’ll keep him on the ventilator for as long as it takes him to wake up. You don’t have to give in to pressure. I will make sure no one makes that call but you. If there is anything in this world that can be done to get him to wake up, I’m going to do it. I promise you that.”

That did it, that made her shoulders slump. Just for a moment. Then she straightened again, eyes still dry.

For a moment he thought she would tell him to stuff his promises. For a moment he thought she’d thank him. She did open her mouth to say something. In the end she just nodded, then she bent over her baby and stroked her cheek as Yash let himself out of the room.