Nothing Like Love by Sabrina Ramnanan Read Free Book Online Page B

now. No explanation, no apology, could undo the fact that he’d covertly pursued a romance and blackened the Govind name.
    “Maaa-yaaaa! Oh gosh, Maya!”
    Krishna sat up straight. “What the—?”
    “Maya Govind! I sorry, gyul. I so sorry!”
    Krishna and Maya leaped to their feet and peered over the veranda. There was Gloria Ramnath lumbering toward them, wheezing audibly and waving her arms in the air.
    Maya flapped her handkerchief at Gloria from above. “Shh! What you carrying on so for, Glory?” She nudged Krishna toward the stairs. “Go and open the gates for that silly woman before she wake up the neighbours.”
    When Krishna let her in, Gloria threw herself against his chest so that he stumbled backward. “This go fall on your head, son!” she wailed. “But I know you is not to blame. Is that hot-mouth Vimla who cause all of we grief.”
    Maya’s hand flew to her mouth; she was appalled. Gloria was a sopping mess. Her dress was plastered to her body with sweat, tears streamed down her cheeks and snot pooled in the hollow above her upper lip. “Gloria.” Maya stuffed her damp handkerchief into Gloria’s hand. “Hush your mouth, nuh, gyul!” Maya’s eyes, red from crying, flashed angrily. “You must not have any shame yourself, coming to my house at this ungodly hour to meddle in we business!”
    Even now, Krishna thought, Maya was determined to salvage her status in the district. She would not allow the likes of Gloria Ramnath to trumpet her downfall in a show of put-on grief.
    Gloria gasped like she’d been slapped and peeled herself off Krishna’s chest. “Pundit Anand Govind collapse in the mandir,” she sobbed. Gloria brushed the soup of bodily fluid from her face with a pudgy, ringed hand and stared back at them like achild, chastised and heartbroken. For a moment Maya and Krishna stood dumbfounded.
    “He look dead. I think he gone and dead,” Gloria said. And then she burst into fresh tears.
    Krishna’s heart was in his throat. It beat so intensely his whole body seemed to judder, or maybe that was the car flying down Kiskadee Trace, endlessly uneven and pockmarked. Gloria blubbered on about her morning puja, how she had discovered Pundit Anand sprawled pitifully across the mandir floor; her son in Port of Spain, although a jeweller, could revive Pundit Anand if only he lived in Chance. Maya listened to all this with the fingertips of one hand pressed firmly into her lips and the other hand gripping the door handle until her fist turned white.
    The district went by in a whir of houses painted in pinks, yellows and blues. Brushwood and flowers stirred sleepily in the mid-morning breeze. Cows and goats grazed their way through fields, lifting their heads just briefly as the car rattled by. Laundry snapped on makeshift clotheslines. Palm fronds splayed like fingers against the sky and filtered the blazing sun. Krishna flew past Vimla’s house and the cane field that was their meeting place, past Minty’s house—Minty, their faithful lookout until the very end—and over the bridge that once sheltered all three from an afternoon of rain. The mandir stood in the distance. Krishna recalled watching Vimla walk through the door at her mother’s side Sunday after Sunday on the pretense of devotion. These memories, once full of perilous joy, now choked him with guilt. He couldn’t help butthink every meeting, every small betrayal, had led him closer to this fatal moment.
    “Krishna!”
    Krishna glanced sideways at his mother, who leaned on the dashboard, squinting against the sun’s glare.
    “Slow the car down before you kill your father!” she exclaimed.
    Krishna was about to ask her if she was crazy, when he made out Anand standing in the middle of the road, looking as menacing as ever. Krishna hit the brakes and the car swerved before screeching to a halt. The smell of burned rubber floated on the sultry air.
    Pundit Anand marched around the car and slammed his fist on the roof. “Who