"I never was one for long. But I remember worrying just the same after my little brother."

It's easier with time, she wants to tell her, to talk about them as removed. To talk about them like they were, to turn them into snippets to make the remembering easier. Because they deserve to be remembered. To remember her half-brother as a boy in her step-mother's arms. Cradled in close, pressing the jewelry that she could spare into Chimabai's hands and begging her to flee to her family's house. That they might live, even if Lakshmi did not.

"Well, in her absence, you will have to make do. Now eat or I will hold your nose and make you."