rich, so why insist on doing the dirty work herself? “Must be nice not to have to worry about money.”
“I guess I’m lucky. My father has a very successful medical practice. He’s never let me worry about money—it’s one of the many things I owe my parents.”
That’s a strange sentiment. “Owe your parents? Why would you owe your parents?”
Meera smiled wistfully. “They’re not my biological parents. They adopted me from an orphanage in India when I was ten.” She looked out at the field, suddenly seeming a million miles away.
He stopped the forklift. He didn’t know a lot about India, but no child belonged in an orphanage. He remembered what it had been like when his mother left, but he’d had his father and the townspeople to take care of him.
“Do you remember your biological parents?”
“I was three years old, or so the matron at the orphanage told me, when they left me at the doorstep. I don’t remember them, the parents that gave birth to me.” She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was soft and so raw that pain seared through him. “I was living in squalor and poverty, conditions you can’t even imagine until Mum and Pitaji—my father—adopted me.” He could hear the voice of the little girl inside her, the one who was afraid and alone. He put his hand on hers, wishing he could take her pain away.
“They gave me a beautiful, perfect life. In the orphanage, all I could think about was getting my hands on a few rupees to bribe the cook to give me food. They did the bare minimum to keep us alive. Since my parents adopted me, they’ve given me everything any person could ever want.”
That explained so much about her, especially the contradictions. Meera wincing at his dirty hands but then washing dishes in his kitchen and slinging mud to clean his field. He squeezed her hand, wanting her to know she wasn’t alone.
“I can’t begin to tell you how much I owe my parents.”
Now he understood why she insisted on paying him back for everything. She had grown up feeling indebted.
“Have you spent your entire life trying to pay them back?”
Tears filled her eyes. “I don’t think I could pay them back in this life, or my next several lives. I still remember the orphanage. The filth.” He noticed goose bumps on her arms. “There was always dirt everywhere—in our beds, on the tables we ate at. And bugs. Sometimes when I close my eyes, I can still feel the mosquito bites, the cockroaches crawling over my feet as I tried to sleep. The grit between my teeth, like the food had fallen on the floor before they put it on my plate.” She shuddered.
Jake put an arm around her and pulled her close. He wished he could ease her anguish, somehow erase the memories that still haunted her. She was a remarkable woman, more so because of what she had endured and overcome. He had nearly fallen to pieces when his mother left. Had it not been for his father, he wouldn’t have finished high school. That Meera had spent so much time alone made his heart hurt.
She gently pushed away from him. “I had lost all hope. It was always the younger kids who got adopted. With their wealth and stature, my parents could’ve easily taken home a newborn baby. But they chose me, and in doing so, they saved my life. If I’d grown up in that orphanage, I would’ve ended up on the streets, or someone’s mistress.”
It sounded like a well-rehearsed statement, something rote. He wondered if it was how her parents relayed the story, and if that was what she had listened to growing up.
She fixed him with a look. “Instead, I have a life of luxury. My father gives me a generous monthly allowance that I barely spend in one year. I’m a respected doctor, and I have a wonderful future planned for me. I owe my parents everything. I owe them my soul.”
Now he could see why it was so important to her to get Hell’s Bells to like her. She’d spent her childhood wanting to be accepted.
“Your parents got something in return, you know,” he said softly. “They got you.”
She shook her head and inched away from him, as far as she could in the confined space. She was shutting herself off, retreating somewhere inside herself, and she wasn’t going to let him in. She rubbed her temples.
“I got a lot more than they did, and I’m going to spend the rest of my life making sure they never once regret their decision.”
He thought about this own father, and the hopes and dreams he had placed on Jake, the expectations that Jake had never quite lived up to. “A child is not an investment, Meera.” His voice was soft but she tensed up.
“And my parents have never treated me as such,” she said stiffly.
She stood and stepped down from the cab. She stalked to the garbage bag and resolutely went back to picking up debris, keeping her back to him.
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