Free One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Page A

again, the palace bedroom, its plush pillows fit for the gods. It gave her new strength, though she did not particularly wish to visit a palace once she reached India. She had other plans. Still, the image reminded her that all she had to do was remain happy and calm, and rescue would arrive.
    She made her way to the counter, where water twinkled on and off in a hundred bon voyage! bowls, depending on the direction in which Cameron’s flashlight was pointing. She chose a bowl and walked to a chair located as far from the others as possible. Even so, she could feel the desolation they emitted as they milled around Cameron, demanding to know what would happen next. So much agitation. And for what? All that negative energy only attracted bad luck into your life. But she knew better than to try to explain. They would learn when they’d been through the fire themselves.
    She placed the bowl on the ground, arranged the pleats of her skirt daintily from old habit, and shook out a couple of Xanax tablets from the bottle in her pocket. Three fell out on her palm. Four. She didn’t put them back. The universe wanted her to have them. The pills would allow her to be hopeful. And the power of that hope would draw the rescuers to them.
    She tucked the bottle into her pocket and took a sip of water. And then, just as she was about to release the pills into her mouth, a hand clamped itself around her wrist and jerked them away.
    “What are you doing?” said Mr. Pritchett’s low, furious voice.
    “Let go of me,” she said, equally furious. He was spoiling everything.
    “Why? Don’t we have enough trouble here already, without trying to take care of you on top of that?”
    She peered at him through the gloom. People you had once loved knew the best ways to hurt you. “You don’t have to take care of me. I’ve been managing on my own.”
    He stared, astonished at her ingratitude. He considered all those precious hours of work he had given up, waiting in her hospital room while she lay in a daze. And later, moping around the house with her, asking which TV show she wanted to watch, fixing lunches that she abandoned half-eaten, offering to pick up books from the library. The time and money he had spent planning this trip to India, the tickets he had booked. Just because her eyes had shone for a moment when she saw that cursed picture. The words were in his mouth: If it weren’t for trying to take care of you, I wouldn’t be stuck down here, about to die. Everything I worked so hard for brought to zero. With an effort that could only be described as heroic (though no one else would know), he held the retort back. If she did something to herself, he didn’t want it on his conscience.
    Instead he said, “Haven’t I worked hard all my life to give you everything you wanted, everything—”
    “You don’t know the first thing about caring,” she said. “Relationships aren’t businesses that can be made healthy by pouring money into them. As for things—okay, I enjoyed them. But I never wanted them that much. What I wanted—” She shook her head as though he were some kind of moron, incapable of understanding what she was trying to explain. “It doesn’t matter what I wanted,” she said. “All I want now is for you to leave me alone.”
    A trembling had started deep in his body. If only he could have a cigarette, he could handle this better. He tried to twist the pills out of her hand, but she made a stubborn fist. “Stop it!” she shouted. Like they were in a scene in a bad movie. “Stop trying to control my life!”
    He could see people looking up, distracted from their own troubles by this little marital drama. He hated her for making them stare. He had always disliked attention, and she knew it. Then he saw something that gave him a brilliant idea. He let go of her hand and lunged for the bulge in her sweater pocket. Sure enough, it was her bottle of pills. He held it up like a trophy.
    “Give it back!” she