Chapter 5: Ashok
“Is my mom home?” Ashok asked as he tiptoed through the back gate. Ammaji was perched in her favorite sunbathing spot beside the birdbath, hiding the smutty romance novel of the day behind the same dollar store Jumbo Print! word search book that she’d ostensibly been working her way through since she’d come to live with them.
“They must hide those words pretty good,” Monica frequently observed to Parvinder via Face Time. “She’s been carrying that book around—with no pen, I might add—for three years. Meanwhile, I was in that used romance book store the other day on my lunch break, and the girls behind the counter were all, ‘Oh, you must be Ammaji’s daughter!’ I was like, that’s daughter-in-law to you, first of all, and by the way, What?!”
“Leave her be,” Parvinder had su
