Free The Rearranged Life by Annika Sharma Page A

with that?”
    “I couldn’t decide between medical school or law school until this summer when I interned with my dad’s firm and decided on law… And now I’ll have an engineering degree if I get fired and need a backup.” He chuckles.
    “You won’t,” I reassure him. “You guys sound adventurous.”
    “I don’t know if I believe in birth order theories, but they’re pretty accurate in our family,” he tells me, nursing his drink.
    “Your mom must have been a champ dealing with all that testosterone in the house.” My own father has dealt with monthly hormones, drama, and more love than he probably knew what to do with, with three women living together.
    “She knew when to kick our ass. We deserved it, too. She’s something else, though. We’re all close.”
    They have to be. He talks about them the way I talk about my family… protectively. Affectionately. Like they’re the center of his world. The St. Clairs make their way into our conversation constantly.
My brother does that
, or
My mom was telling me this,
keep popping up. It is clear they influence his decisions and have molded him into who he is. The driven, intelligent, kind boy I see in front of me is 100% the product of his parents and brothers.
    “What is your family like?”
    “Hardworking, like yours. My dad is an engineer, and my mom was a part-time secretary until we were financially stable enough so she could stop.” I smile fondly.
    “Your parents had to establish themselves first.” He recognizes the effort and acts as though he knows firsthand what it’s like.
    “We didn’t own a house until I was seven or eight. We used to live in an apartment near Philadelphia, and there was this
dankness
in the building’s laundry room. My mom would bring puzzles for me to play with while she would do laundry and entertain Anisha, who was still a baby. The kitchen was tiny, the entire place smelled like eggplant curry, and Anisha used to make drum sets out of pots and pans because we couldn’t afford lots of toys. I don’t remember having no money, though. It was always just home, even when my parents were saving up every penny to buy the house we live in now.”
    “I can relate. We lived in a crappy apartment outside of Boston when my dad was an associate. Amazing how much things change,” he observes.
    “You’re right. And it’s amazing how some things don’t… My mom still uses coupons to buy groceries. My dad still tries to fix everything himself before he calls a mechanic.”
    “My parents still insist on having dinner together every night when we’re home.”
    “Hey, mine too!” I exclaim, and we toast this with our paper cups in lieu of crystal.
    James and I reveal other commonalities, too. His father went to an Ivy League and mine attended IIT, a school that breeds engineering superstars. They both built themselves from the ground up, graduating at the top of their respective classes despite having wives and young children. Our mothers both worked while we grew up, but didn’t start until we went to kindergarten, believing their presence in our early childhood would shape us despite the financial burden of having one breadwinner. They were right.
    “You sound like a solid family,” he announces once we’ve compared notes.
    “I like to think so. So does yours.”
    “When your family sacrifices for you and works like hell to make sure you succeed, they deserve the best from you, you know?”
    I nod. “We were raised 7,000 miles from our parents’ families so we could have a better life. That’s the biggest motivator for me,” I confess.
    “I can’t even imagine being so far away. It must have been hard.”
    “I think it was. They never mention it, but I can remember a little bit growing up. They’d look forward to letters and the occasional phone call every few months.” I fill James in on the memories and the heart-stopping terror of an unscheduled call from India, which could only mean there was an