Preeta samarasan biography of christopher

Excerpt from Chapter 8: What Aasha Saw

On the day Paati dies, a black butterfly finds its way into the Big House.  It's the biggest butterfly Aasha has ever seen: each wing is the size of Amma's palm, with trailing teardrop tails.  Around the edges of its wings are tiny flashes of cobalt blue, easy to miss because the butterfly moves so haphazardly, alighting for half a second on a bookshelf and two seconds on the coffee table, but Aasha nevertheless notices the blue and thinks of a certain sapphire pendant once belonging to Amma, and of how that, too, turned and twirled and trapped the morning light.  As she ponders this memory, the butterfly's panic drips blackly from its teardrop tails into her wide eyes and open mouth, so that all of a sudden the spectacle of Suresh trying to shoo the butterfly out the window with one of Paati's coconut-frond fans makes her heart pound.  She breathes so fast and hard that each breath sweeps hurricane-like throug