Chapter 13
Chapter 13
They said goodbye to Mr. and Mrs. Dhawan and the little Anila, amid a burst of crying when she saw her mother and "Uncle Jack" leave. Lakshmi used to go to Queens to visit her parents and daughter every weekend and holiday, but their encounters always seemed too short. As for Jack, it had been almost a year since he had visited them. That Saturday marked a kind of long-awaited reunion.
Lakshmi's mother Indira had a particular fondness for Jack Berglund, in whom she recognized an honest man who had a special affection for his daughter, and had always expected to see them married and with grandchildren, but circumstances had been elusive to that expectation. As for her father, he accepted Jack discreetly and without exteriorizations. Little Anila adored the big, Viking-looking man, much like what she remembered from her own father Ingo Ragnarsson,