For the Love of Pete Read Online Free

with gray, and she’d had it cut in a bob within a week of their arriving in the USA. Pratima still wore her own long hair pinned up at the back of her head—the same style she had worn since the age of twelve. Savita-di had on a long, puffy, silver down coat, a twin of Pratima’s own coat. Although, of course, Pratima’s coat was several sizes larger, as she was nearly half a head taller than her sister-in-law. Underneath the coat, Savita-di wore a green and mustard-yellow sari, and on her feet were heavy black boots—Savita-di had a fear of slipping and falling on the icy Chicago sidewalks.
    Pratima Gupta and Savita Gupta had known each other for all of their lives. Or at least all of Savita-di’s life, for she was the older of the two ladies by one year and nine months. They had grown up in the same middling-sized town in the Marwar region of India, their houses only a stone’s throw apart. Naturally they had played together as little children. As young girls they had shared a mutual interest in the English language, which they learned from a battered collection of Victorian romance novels. And eventually, when they had come of age, they had married the brothers Gupta. Savita-di had married the elder, more handsome brother, Pratima the younger but more business-wise brother.
    Now, nearly fifty years later, their husbands were dead and their children grown, with families of their own. When Savita-di’s youngest daughter, Vinati, had implored her to come to America, naturally Savita-di had asked Pratima to come, as well. They might be only sisters-in-law, but by this time they might as well be sisters in truth.
    And if they were sisters in truth, then that would make Savita-di the bossy older sister. “Do you wish us to be arrested by the police?”
    Pratima lifted her foot from the gas pedal, because truth be told she did not want to be pulled over by the police. There were two reasons for this. One, that she and Savita-di had just stolen back their precious supply of Grade 1A Very, Very Fine Mongra Kesar. And two, because while Pratima was a very good driver indeed, she did not actually own a driver’s license.
    “You must look into the box to see if our Grade 1A Very, Very Fine Mongra Kesar is intact,” Pratima said in order that her so-bossy sister-in-law would stop complaining about her driving.
    They were on Skokie Boulevard now, traveling very fast, but of course
not
speeding. Pratima drove in the direction of their wonderful restaurant. For that was the dream that both women had held in their hearts for many years: a restaurant of their own where they could serve the secret recipes of their youth. Now that dream was so very close to being realized.
    “Yes, yes, I am already doing so, Pratima,” Savita-di replied rather crossly. She reached to the box sitting on the floor between her feet.
    Pratima did not reply, for the other woman’s hands were shaking as she pried open the lid of the box. It was a plain wooden box, a little smaller than a shoebox, and not marked at all. One would never know, looking at it, what treasure it hid inside.
    “Ahhh,” Savita-di breathed as she lifted the lid. “Everything is most wonderful. Our Grade 1A Very, Very Fine Mongra Kesar is intact.”
    She moved aside the bunched plastic tail of the bag inside the box. Revealed were the dark maroon threads that lay inside the plastic. It was a full kilo of the very finest kesar—
saffron
in English—from Kashmir, India. Mongra kesar was fantastically expensive, legendarily flavorsome, and very, very illegal indeed. It was also the essential ingredient to Mrs. Savita Gupta and Mrs. Pratima Gupta’s top-secret Very Special Kesar Kheer recipe. Their kesar kheer was going to be the crowning dish in the wonderful Indian restaurant the sisters-in-law would open in Albany Park. It would make them famous and ensure their restaurant’s success, thus making them very, very rich indeed. Pratima had seen grown men weep when the first