Heal Me Anyway

The first thing Aya learned after the funeral was that a town can stop loving you without saying a single word.

Six years had gone by since then. Brindle Cove still woke up the same way. The fish carts rattled down Mill Road at six, the temple bell rang twice, and by seven the shop shutters were going up one after another.

Aya Mensah was already at the pharmacy by then. Mr. Gopal had given her the keys last winter, after his knees got too bad for the morning steps, and she had never once been late. She rolled up the shutter, switched on the tube light that blinked three times before it agreed to stay lit, and breathed in the smell of cardboard and cough syrup.

She wiped the counter. She lined the medicine strips up by expiry date. She tied her hair back with the black band she kept around her wrist. Every morning went in that order, and she liked it that way. A mind busy with small things has no room for bigger ones.

At ten past eight, Mrs. Pillai came in.

She lived three houses down from Aya and always had. When Aya was small, Mrs. Pillai used to hand her a fistful of roasted peanuts every Sunday. Today she held her purse against her chest as if someone might snatch it.

"Good morning, aunty," Aya said. "Is it the same tablets as last month?"

"Where is Gopal?"

"At the back, checking the new stock. I can get them for you right now."

Mrs. Pillai looked at the slip in her hand. Then she looked at the shelf. Then she looked at Aya's hands, resting flat on the counter, and her face tightened.

"I'll wait for him," she said.

Heat climbed up Aya's neck. She did not argue. Arguing had never worked, and the one time she tried, it turned into gossip in three streets by evening.

"Of course," she said. She turned her head and called, "Uncle? Mrs. Pillai is here."

Mr. Gopal came out wiping his glasses on his shirt. He took the slip, found the tablets in the exact spot Aya would have, and counted them into a paper cover. Mrs. Pillai paid him in coins, one at a time. She did not say goodbye to Aya. She walked out without looking back.

Mr. Gopal dropped the money in the drawer and sighed. "She will come around, beta."

"It has been six years, uncle."

"Then she will come around late." He gave her a small, tired smile that said sorry, and went back to his stock.

Aya picked up a rag and wiped a counter that was already clean.

Everyone in Brindle Cove knew the story, or thought they did. Meera Rao had walked into Dr. Nalini Mensah's clinic to have her baby, and she had not walked out. The police had cleared Aya's mother. So had the medical board. But a town does not read a verdict. It remembers who cried the loudest.

By nine, the wholesaler's van had pulled up across the road at Rao Provisions. Aya did not need to look. She knew the sound of that engine, and the way the driver honked twice, and she knew exactly who would come out to unload.

She looked anyway. Just a quick glance, over the top of a shelf.

Shubham Rao dragged a rice sack off the tailgate and swung it onto his shoulder as if it weighed nothing. His sleeves were rolled to the elbow. He looked taller than last year, or maybe she had only remembered him smaller because it was easier. His jaw was tight. He wore the same expression he always wore now, like the world owed him an apology and had not paid it yet.

He crossed the road with the sack, heading for the lane behind the pharmacy where his family kept their extra stock. That meant walking right past her door.

Aya turned to the shelf and pretended to read a label. His footsteps came closer. They did not slow down. They did not stop. A shadow slid across the floor tiles and was gone.

He had not looked at her. Not once.

Good, she told herself. That is exactly what I want.

She read the same label three times and could not have said what it was.

At noon, Mr. Gopal pushed a cardboard carton across the counter. "Your mother's order is ready. Take it over, and eat something while you are there."

The Mensah Clinic stood at the far end of Mill Road, a low white building with a green door and a tin roof that rang like a drum in the rain. There used to be a line outside every morning, people sitting on the steps with their elbows on their knees. Now there were six plastic chairs in the waiting room, and only one was taken. An old fisherman with a rattling cough sat in it, because he could not afford the bus fare to the next town.

"Good afternoon, Aya," he said, and coughed into his fist. He was one of the few who still greeted her without being asked.

"Good afternoon, Raghu uncle. Has Amma seen you yet?"

"Not yet. I can wait."

She went through to the back with the carton on her hip and pushed open her mother's door without knocking. She had never needed to knock.

Dr. Nalini Mensah sat at her desk with a thick brown file open in front of her. When the door moved, she went completely still. Then, faster than Aya had ever seen her move, she shut the file, slid it into the bottom drawer, and turned the small brass key.

The click was loud in the quiet room.

"You didn't knock," her mother said.

"Since when do I knock?" Aya set the carton on the table. "What was that?"

"Old accounts."

"You have never locked your accounts. They are on the shelf. Anyone can read them."

"Aya." Dr. Nalini stood and smoothed down her white coat. Her voice was calm, and that was what scared Aya, because her mother was only calm like that when she was hiding something. "Did Gopal send the full order?"

"Amma, what is in that drawer?"

"I said accounts."

The key went into the pocket of her coat. Her hand was shaking, only a little, but Aya saw it. She looked down, and that was when she noticed what her mother had missed. A corner of paper had caught in the edge of the drawer as it closed. It was a patient tag, yellow and bent, with a name printed on it in blue ink.

Meera Rao.

Aya had not seen that name written down since she was sixteen.

"Eat something," her mother said, without looking at her. "Then go back to the shop."

Aya picked up the empty carton and walked out. She did not say a word. But all the way down Mill Road, with the sun hot on her neck, one thought kept turning over in her head.

The police had closed that case six years ago. So why was her mother still guarding it?