Winners Don't Have Bad Days (Watty 2020 Winner, Romance)

3. #TakeCare, October 2017

"Daya?"

The voice was thick from the flu, but it was Shanti's. Crying in the background testified to more victims of the disease in the household.

"Are you sick? How's the twins? Did I wake them up? I am sorry, I should have texted," Daya stuttered over Shanti's thunderous ahchoo.

Influenza laid the family low; it did not dull Shanti's big-sister radar. "Why are you moving? Are you in trouble?"

Yes, Daya, you should have texted. Daya caught her up on Corolla's dead transmission, the roommate situation and braced for the brewing storm. Shanti would not let her off the hook with a simple take care.

A click of the tongue started Shanti's classic hit, You Must Be More Careful with Money.

Daya took her turn after a discreet sigh. She was careful, more careful than she had ever been. It's just after you cut out all the niceties, it is shocking how much the bare necessities are... and if you thought about the current economy, wasn't it more careless to not have a roommate?

She marched up and down the sidewalk to keep warm, while Shanti's voice poured into her ear.

Who's That Man You're Moving in With?

Daya mentally substituted her sister for Annie Lennox. If she had texted, it would have only delayed the inevitable, and she needed someone to know that she was moving and where, in case they had to find her body later—not a sentiment to share with Shanti.

She boiled Mike down to a librarian with a broken foot who needed a caretaker. Her innards rebelled against this summation, in vain. If she told Shanti that he had cool hair and that she had a good feeling about the way he chuckled deep in his throat, Shanti would hop on a plane. Or worse, she'd tell Mom and Dad, and then they would hop on a plane.

Daya's appeal to the instinctual need to care for the sick and the men didn't fool Shanti.

Come Back to Ontario, I'll Buy You a Ticket. Stay with Me. Stay... Composed by Shanti, performed by Beyonce. Daya was so caught up in putting her sister's words to music that she'd nearly missed a bombshell.

"And I have plenty of room, Daya. Sameer moved out last month."

"Wait, what? Why didn't you tell me anything? What happened with you two? Had you been fighting?" Daya's mind span fruitlessly like her Corolla's tires in the snowbanks last winter.

There was a pause on Shanti's end. "It's not a phone conversation," she said tightly. "Let me know if you need help and take care."

"Give my love to Mom and Dad," Daya piped in just before Shanti dropped the call.

The kids... she can't talk in front of them about her problems with their dad.

Daya frowned at the gladiolus flower she used as her background pic. It didn't please her in the slightest that she had found a magic way to plug the fountain of Shanti's worries. The well in her own chest was now overflowing. Sameer and Shanti, their marriage seemed as eternal as the Universe... and she would not figure it out by standing on the sidewalk.

Mike, I'll be there in a few, she texted, and started the car.

***

He waited for her outside the condo's entrance, basking his freckled face in the sunshine. Next to him purple petunias, speckled with white dots, did exactly the same thing. Everything was rallying after the snowfall. 

"Quite a change from yesterday, eh?" he called out to her.

"That's Calgary for you: Don't like the weather? Wait ten minutes," she replied by rote. A year here made her a pro in wearing layers and packing an umbrella, a sun hat and gloves each day, every day, no matter what the calendar said.