Dinner With Ghosts

Rai's mother still plated fruit as if guests were coming even when no one was.

That was the first thing he noticed when he stepped into the flat that Saturday evening and caught the familiar scent of sesame oil, steamed rice, and pandan drifting out from the kitchen. On the dining table, beside the covered dishes and neatly laid bowls, sat a round white plate arranged with slices of orange, green grapes rinsed to a shine, and apple wedges that had already been soaked in salt water so they would not brown before anyone reached for them. It was a small thing. Ordinary. The sort of detail another son might not even register.

Rai noticed because he had grown up in the grammar of his mother's hospitality. Fruit meant someone mattered enough to be prepared for. Fruit meant the house had to look easy, even if effort had gone into every corner of that ease. Fruit meant his mother had been thinking ahead all afternoon, deciding how much welcome to offer without making it obvious that she was deciding at all.

He stood in the doorway a second longer than necessary, keys still in hand, and listened.

His father's voice came from the living room, low and steady, speaking to the television as if the news could hear him and improve itself. From the kitchen came the rhythmic sound of a ladle touching the side of a pot. Plates. Running water. Cabinet doors opening and closing with restrained efficiency.

The flat had not changed much.

Same shoe rack by the entrance with the slightly warped drawer his mother always promised to fix and never did. Same framed calligraphy print above the sideboard. Same ceiling fan in the dining area making a faint clicking sound every third rotation because his father believed all mechanical noises were either harmless or character-building.

Nothing had changed, and because of that, everything in Rai felt slightly misplaced.

He slipped off his shoes and called out, "Ma?"

"In the kitchen," she answered.

He followed the voice.

His mother stood at the stove in a dark floral blouse and house pants, her reading glasses pushed up into her hair despite the fact that she was not reading anything. Steam lifted around her face in soft bursts as she stirred a pot of soup. When she turned and saw him, the smile she gave him was real, but not careless. There was checking in it. Measuring.

"You're early," she said.

"So is Nadia."

The sentence left his mouth before he had time to decide whether he liked how it sounded.

His mother's eyes flickered once, quick and unreadable. "She's downstairs?"

"In a cab. Should be here in a minute."

His mother nodded and reached automatically for the plate of spring onion omelette cooling on the counter, as if its position suddenly required correction. "Help me take the dishes out."

Rai obeyed.

That, too, was familiar. His mother did not ask for help only when she needed help. Sometimes she asked because it gave everyone something to do with their hands while more fragile things arranged themselves in the air.

He carried out the stir-fried kailan first, glossy with garlic, then the fish his mother had steamed with ginger and soy because his father preferred food that looked uncomplicated on the plate even if it had taken time to make. By the time he returned for the soup, the bell rang.

Everything in his body went alert in a way he disliked on principle.

Not panic. Not dread.

Just that instant, stupid tightening--the old reflex of feeling a threshold become important.

He wiped his hands on the dish towel and went to the door.

Nadia stood outside with a paper bag in one hand and that careful expression he had come to recognise over the past few weeks--the one that made her look composed to anyone who did not know how much effort composure cost her.

She wore a soft rust-coloured blouse tucked into a dark skirt that fell below her knees. Simple. Thoughtful. Not dressy enough to make the dinner look ceremonial, but respectful enough to acknowledge that this was not just another evening. Her hair was clipped back at the sides, leaving the rest loose over her shoulders, and she had brought something from the bakery near her office because of course she had. Nadia never arrived at someone's home empty-handed unless physically prevented.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi."

He stepped aside.

There was a heartbeat's pause before she crossed the threshold.

He felt it. He wondered if she knew he felt it.

"Uncle, Aunty," she called softly as she came in. "Sorry to disturb."

His mother emerged from the kitchen at once, wiping her hands on a towel. "Aiyo, why say sorry? Come in, come in."

The warmth in her voice was real.

So was the caution under it.

Nadia offered the paper bag with both hands. "I bought some pastries. I wasn't sure what you'd like, so I just got a mix."

"You didn't have to bring anything."

"I know." Nadia smiled, and it was polite enough to look effortless from a distance. Up close, Rai could see the strain in the corners of it. "But I wanted to."

His mother accepted the bag. "Thank you. You always remember these things."

The sentence should have been kind.

It was kind.

But its gentleness carried history inside it. You always remember these things. As if saying: even then, even before, you were attentive. Even before, you knew how to fit into a home. Even before, other things still happened.

His father appeared behind them a moment later, remote control still in one hand. "Nadia."

"Uncle."

He nodded once in greeting. His father had never been a man of unnecessary flourishes. He did not dislike people noisily, but neither did he welcome them with the kind of easy affection that removed all tension from a room. You had to learn his warmth by studying the things he did not say.

"It's been some time," he said.

"Yes," Nadia replied. "It has."

A silence followed--not long, just long enough for the flat to become aware of itself.

Then Rai's mother clapped her hands lightly together. "Enough standing there. Sit first. Dinner almost ready."

Nadia slipped off her shoes and followed them in.

The dining table had been extended, though there were only four of them.

That was another thing his mother did when guests came: she made more room than necessary, as if space itself could prevent awkwardness. The tablecloth was the good one, cream with a subtle embroidered border. The small vase in the middle held fresh jasmine, which meant his mother had gone downstairs earlier to cut them from the plant outside the corridor railing. The air from the fan moved the scent in faint, clean breaths over the food.

Rai pulled out Nadia's chair before she could do it herself.

She looked at him for half a second--surprised, grateful, uncertain what gratitude was safe to show here--then sat.

He took the seat beside her.

Across from them sat his parents.

The geometry of it was immediately obvious.

Questions on one side.

Answers on the other.

He hated himself a little for thinking that way.

Dinner began, as difficult dinners often did, with food.

His mother asked Nadia whether the traffic had been bad. Nadia asked if the fish was seabass because it looked beautifully done. His father told a story about someone at the market overpaying for prawns that morning. Rai passed the soup. Nadia complimented the kailan. His mother insisted she take more fish. Nadia said no once, then accepted the second offer because his mother's hospitality had always operated on the assumption that the first refusal was merely ritual.

From the outside, it might have looked almost comfortable.

That was what made it exhausting.

Every sentence had to travel through memory before it became sound.

Nadia held herself carefully--not stiff, not timid, but too precise in small ways. She thanked his mother for every dish as it was passed. She noticed when his father's bowl emptied and nudged the soup closer before he had to ask. She complimented the sambal even though Rai knew she probably found it slightly too spicy and was pretending otherwise. She laughed in the right places. She listened with full attention whenever his parents spoke, nodding with the same genuine courtesy that had once made his mother adore her for reasons she never thought she needed to say aloud.

Rai watched all of it with a discomfort that kept changing shape.

At first it felt like tenderness. Then admiration. Then something more troubled.

She was trying too hard.

Not in a way anyone else at the table would necessarily detect. His mother likely interpreted it as thoughtfulness. His father, if he noticed at all, probably filed it under good manners.

But Rai could see the tiny delay before Nadia lifted her glass, as if even that movement had been checked for appropriateness. He could see how carefully she chose where to place her chopsticks after each bite. He could hear the effort in her tone when she answered simple questions with just enough detail to seem open and not enough to risk taking up too much room.

It made something hot and tired gather in his chest.

Because yes, she was trying.

But she looked like someone trying to earn the right to be tolerated.

And he had brought her here.

His mother asked about work, and for a while the conversation settled into safer territory.

Nadia spoke about a client presentation gone wrong and how the meeting had somehow ended with four versions of the same slide deck because no one in upper management knew how to stop making "small changes" that contradicted one another. His father nodded with grave sympathy and said this was why too many educated people still failed at basic decisions. His mother laughed and told Nadia that Rai had once reorganised the whole household filing cabinet at fourteen because he thought the insurance papers were in the wrong folder.

"That sounds exactly like him," Nadia said.

Rai looked up.

Her smile, this time, reached her eyes before she seemed to remember herself.

The old familiarity in that moment moved around the table like a ghost looking for its old seat.

His mother noticed. Of course she noticed.

She looked at Rai, then at Nadia, and something softened in her face before caution drew over it again like a curtain.

"So you two have been meeting often?" she asked lightly.

There it was.

Not a trap.

Not yet.

Just a question placed gently in the centre of the table to see who would touch it first.

Nadia lowered her gaze to her bowl for one second. Rai felt her body go still beside him.

He should answer, he thought.

He should make this easier.

But the old family instinct in him--to wait, to observe, to let the conversation reveal its actual intention before stepping into it--rose too fast.

Nadia answered first.

"A few times," she said. "We've been talking."

His mother nodded. "Talking is good."

His father, without looking up from deboning a piece of fish, said, "Depends what kind of talking."

His mother shot him a look.

"What?" his father said. "It's true."

"It is true," Nadia said quietly.

Rai turned to look at her.

She kept her eyes on the food in front of her, but there was no defensiveness in her tone. No protest. Just agreement. As though she was willing to accept every sharp edge in the room if it meant the evening could remain civil.

That made him dislike the sentence more than if she had argued.

His mother cleared her throat. "Your parents are well?"

Nadia nodded. "My mum's better. Her blood pressure is under control now, mostly because she behaves for three days after every doctor's appointment and then starts negotiating with dessert again."

His mother smiled despite herself. "That sounds familiar."

"My dad still pretends all health advice is a suggestion."

"Aiyo," his mother said, laughing softly. "All men are like that."

His father made a small offended sound but did not disagree.

The conversation loosened again for a few minutes. Festivals. Work schedules. An auntie's wedding that had gone on too long because someone had insisted on three separate karaoke sets. The old neighbour who still overwatered her corridor plants until the whole floor smelled permanently damp.

It might even have become pleasant, Rai thought later, if families did not always know exactly where the unsaid things were sitting.

His mother put down her chopsticks and dabbed lightly at the corner of her mouth with a tissue.

Then, in the tone people used when trying to make weight seem harmless, she asked, "So. Serious this time?"

No one moved.

The ceiling fan clicked once overhead.

From outside the flat, faint through the corridor grille, came the distant sound of children shouting somewhere near the void deck.

Rai felt Nadia's fingers tighten around her spoon.

His father did not look up, but Rai knew from long experience that this meant he was listening more closely than if he had.

His mother's face remained composed. Not hard. Not accusing. Just watchful in that particular maternal way that managed to carry concern, memory, and practical fear inside the same expression.

Nadia answered before Rai could.

"We're trying to be," she said.

The sentence was measured, respectful, and honest in the narrow way honesty sometimes had to be when given an audience.

Rai heard the tremor under it anyway.

He should say something now.

He knew that with humiliating clarity.

He should say they were taking things slowly. He should say that what had happened before was not going to be performed for the table like a cautionary tale. He should say that Nadia did not deserve to be cornered politely in his parents' home while he sat beside her pretending his silence was neutral.

He should.

Instead, he reached for his glass.

It was the smallest gesture. Meaningless on the surface. A hand lifting water. A son taking a sip before answering.

But the delay was enough.

Enough for Nadia to feel it.

Enough for his mother to feel it.

Enough for him to feel it while it was happening and hate himself for not moving faster.

"We know it takes time," Nadia added, still with that composed voice. "We're not rushing."

His mother nodded slowly. "Time is good. Rushing is not always wise."

His father finally looked up. "What matters is whether people have changed."

Rai set his glass down too carefully.

"Nobody said they haven't," his mother murmured.

"I didn't say they haven't either." His father glanced at Rai now. "I said that's what matters."

The air at the table tightened.

Nadia smiled, but it had become the smile of a person trying to keep plates from tipping with her bare hands. "That's fair, Uncle."

Rai turned to her sharply. "You don't have to agree with every difficult sentence in this flat."

The words came out more clipped than he intended.

His mother looked at him. "Rai."

Nadia's eyes flicked to his face, startled not by the irritation but by where it had landed.

He heard himself and knew at once he had turned the moment the wrong way. Again.

What he had meant was: you don't have to absorb this alone.

What it sounded like was: stop making this worse by being agreeable.

The old, maddening gap between intention and impact opened under the table like something dark.

"It's okay," Nadia said softly.

His mother's gaze moved between them with visible discomfort now. "No one is attacking anyone. We're just asking."

"Ma, I know."

"Then don't answer like that."

His father, still calm, said, "Your mother is not wrong to ask. We all remember what happened."

There it was.

Not louder than before. Just stripped of cushioning.

Remember.

The word passed through the room and made every earlier kindness rearrange itself around its centre.

Nadia lowered her chopsticks.

"I understand," she said.

Rai looked at her and almost could not bear the carefulness of her face.

He knew this expression now. The one she used when feeling too much but deciding that the room, or the people in it, did not belong to her pain. It was the same expression she had worn outside the therapy centre right before apologising for hurting him in new ways. The same expression from the park when she had said she did not know what she was allowed to do wrong.

He should do something useful.

Instead he said, "Can we not do this over dinner?"

His mother sighed. "Then when? We are not gossiping about strangers. We are asking because this concerns you."

"And me," Nadia said quietly.

Everyone looked at her.

She kept her voice respectful, but this time there was something steadier in it. "I know you have every reason to be careful. Really, I do. I'm not asking you not to be."

Rai felt something twist inside him.

Not because her answer was wrong.

Because it should not have been hers to give alone.

His mother's face softened a little. "Nadia, I'm not trying to make you uncomfortable."

"I know, Aunty."

His father picked up his spoon again. "Then no need to be so tense."

Rai turned to him. "That's not helping."

His father met his gaze without heat. "Then help."

The sentence landed with the brutal efficiency of something true enough not to need emphasis.

The room went quiet again.

A motorcycle roared briefly along the road outside and faded.

In the kitchen, a pot lid clicked as steam adjusted itself.

Rai looked at Nadia.

She was not looking at him. She was looking at the jasmine in the middle of the table, expression composed, back straight, hands folded lightly beside her bowl as if she were attending someone else's difficult conversation out of courtesy.

That hurt more than if she had looked angry.

He had wanted to protect the evening by keeping it from escalating.

Instead he had left her doing the emotional work of surviving it gracefully.

His mother rose first, perhaps sensing the dinner had reached the point where movement could serve as mercy.

"I'll cut the fruit," she said, though the fruit was already cut.

Nadia stood immediately. "I can help."

"No, no, you sit."

"It's okay, Aunty, really."

Rai almost said, Let her sit. She doesn't have to help every time the room gets uncomfortable.

But he stopped himself. He was beginning to understand that not every protective impulse helped simply because it came wrapped in anger.

So he stayed seated while Nadia followed his mother into the kitchen.

The absence beside him arrived like a reprimand.

His father drank water.

Rai stared at his plate.

After a while, his father said, "You are angry at the wrong people."

Rai did not look up. "I'm not angry at them."

"Then stop sounding like we're your enemies."

The truth of that scraped against him.

He had always known his father disliked emotional theatre. To him, feelings were legitimate but only if handled cleanly. No slammed doors. No raised voices. No mess that could not be explained once everyone sat back down.

Tonight, though, there was something almost weary in his tone.

"We asked because we remember what you were like after," his father said. "That is not an insult to her. It is a fact about you."

Rai's jaw tightened.

He remembered too.

The strange deadness of the months after. The way invitations had begun to feel like threats. The humiliating tenderness of hearing his mother ask once, too casually, whether he wanted extra rice because he looked thin. The quietness with which his father had started leaving the sports channel on in the living room at night because it gave them something neutral to look at while existing near each other.

He remembered enough.

"That still doesn't mean she should be the one answering for everything," Rai said.

His father glanced toward the kitchen, then back at him. "Then why did you let her?"

There were questions that sounded rhetorical and questions that sounded surgical.

This was the second kind.

Rai had no answer he respected.

By the time Nadia and his mother returned with cut fruit and tea, the evening had changed shape permanently. Nothing was broken beyond repair. No voices had risen. No one had said anything unforgivable.

And yet the room no longer pretended to be easy.

Dessert happened with the strained civility of people who had all agreed, for different reasons, not to worsen what had already become difficult.

His mother praised the pastries Nadia had brought. His father asked whether Nadia's office was still near Tanjong Pagar. Nadia answered gently, carefully, never once allowing the line of her voice to sharpen. Rai spoke when required and hated how much that phrase described him tonight.

When it was finally late enough to leave without seeming abrupt, Nadia stood and thanked his parents for dinner with the same sincerity she had brought to the start of the evening.

His mother walked them to the door.

"Come again," she said, because she was too decent not to.

Nadia smiled. "Thank you for having me."

His mother's gaze lingered on her for a second longer than politeness required. "Drive safe. Message when you get home."

The old affection in the instruction almost undid something in Rai.

Nadia nodded. "I will."

They stepped into the corridor.

The flat door closed behind them with the soft finality of an evening no one quite knew how to evaluate.

For a moment they walked in silence toward the lift.

The corridor smelled faintly of detergent and somebody's dinner from three units away--fried shallots, maybe, or curry leaves. Down below, in the carpark, fluorescent lights threw thin shadows under the parked cars and made every puddle on the concrete glow a little sickly white. The lift came slowly, its cables grumbling somewhere deep in the building.

Nadia stood with both hands on the strap of her bag, shoulders squared in that way that told him the cost of the evening had not finished arriving in her yet.

He should say something now.

He knew that.

But shame made him stupid. Or maybe it made him late. The effect was often similar.

The lift doors opened. They stepped inside. The mirrored panel reflected two people standing side by side and somehow still managing to look far apart.

Neither spoke on the way down.

The carpark was humid and smelled faintly of rain-warmed concrete and engine oil. Somewhere a cat darted beneath a parked van and vanished into shadow. A ceiling fan turned lazily near the void deck entrance, doing almost nothing except moving warm air from one place to another.

Nadia stopped near the pickup point where cars could pull in under partial shelter.

Her ride had not arrived yet.

Rai stood beside her, hearing the distant churn of traffic from the main road beyond the estate, the metallic ding of the lift doors opening again behind them, a child laughing somewhere out of sight.

"I understand," Nadia said at last.

He turned. "Understand what?"

She kept her eyes ahead. "Your family."

The sentence, soft as it was, pulled something defensive out of him before he could stop it.

"They weren't wrong to be worried," he said.

Nadia looked at him then, and he heard at once how wrong that answer had been.

Not because the content was false.

Because it had treated her comment like an argument instead of what it was: an attempt to spare him the burden of choosing sides.

"That's not what I meant," she said.

Rai dragged a hand through his hair. "I know. I just--"

"No, you don't."

The quietness of the interruption made it sharper.

He stared at her.

Nadia's face was composed again, but thinner now around the edges, as though composure had become too expensive and she was paying for it anyway.

"I'm not upset that they asked," she said. "I'm upset because I felt alone while they were asking."

The words entered him cleanly.

No room to mishear them.

No room to soften them without lying.

Rai looked away first.

Fluorescent light hummed overhead. In the distance, a car alarm chirped twice and then stopped.

"I know," he said.

Nadia let out a breath that sounded almost like disbelief. "Do you?"

He turned back to her.

There was no accusation in her face, which somehow made the question harder to bear.

Because if she had looked angry, he could have defended himself against the heat. But she only looked tired. Hurt in that particular restrained way that made the hurt seem older than the evening itself.

Rai swallowed.

"I froze," he said.

The honesty of it felt embarrassingly small beside what had happened, but it was the truest sentence he had.

Nadia's eyes flickered.

"I know," she said quietly.

He took a step closer, not enough to crowd her, only enough to make the conversation less likely to drift apart under the open carpark air.

"I should've said something sooner," he continued. "Not after. Not with my face while you were answering. Out loud. I know that."

She watched him.

He could see her deciding whether to make this easier for him. Whether to say it's okay and let the evening leave them with its wrong lessons neatly preserved.

For once, she didn't.

"I needed you beside me in there," she said.

No tremor. No dramatics.

Just truth.

It landed harder than his father's question had. Harder than his mother's careful concern. Harder even than his own shame.

Because it named the failure exactly.

Not that he had loved her less.

Not that he had chosen his family over her.

Only that when the room became difficult, he had not arrived beside her quickly enough for it to matter.

Rai looked at the painted line on the concrete between parking bays. White, slightly chipped, worn thin where tyres had crossed it too many times.

"I kept thinking if I jumped in too fast, I'd make it worse," he said.

Nadia's mouth softened sadly. "I know."

He looked up.

"That's the stupid part, isn't it?" he said. "I was trying to avoid a bigger scene, and instead I left you there looking like you had to be grateful for basic suspicion."

Nadia flinched almost imperceptibly. Not because the words were cruel. Because they were close enough to what it had felt like.

"I don't need you to fight with your parents for me," she said.

"I know."

"I don't need speeches."

"I know that too."

Her fingers tightened briefly around her bag strap. "Then what do you think I needed?"

The question might have been impossible an hour earlier. Here, now, under strip lights and damp air and the tired aftertaste of family tension, it felt painfully answerable.

"You needed me to make it clear you weren't sitting at that table by yourself," he said.

Nadia held his gaze for a long second.

Then she nodded.

The movement was small, but it broke something open in him anyway.

A car turned into the pickup point, headlights sweeping briefly across the concrete. Not hers. It paused, collected someone from another block, and moved on.

Nadia looked after it, then back at him. "Your mum wasn't cruel."

"I know."

"Your dad wasn't either."

"I know."

"And I really do understand why they'd be careful."

He exhaled slowly. "I'm not upset because they were careful."

She waited.

"I'm upset because I knew you were trying so hard all evening," he said, "and somehow I still let the room make you look like the only person responsible for carrying the discomfort."

Nadia looked at him with an expression he couldn't quite bear to interpret. Too much tenderness in it. Too much fatigue. Too much old knowledge.

"That isn't all on you," she said.

"No," he agreed. "But my part matters."

For a moment neither of them spoke.

The estate around them continued with its ordinary life. Footsteps on the stairs nearby. The rattle of a gate closing in the next block. A television laugh track rising briefly through an open window and vanishing again.

Then Nadia said, more softly, "I was scared you were embarrassed."

The confession hit him hard enough that he almost took another step forward.

Instead he made himself stay where he was.

"Of you?" he asked.

She did not answer immediately.

That was answer enough.

Rai felt something dark and protective move through him--not anger at her for thinking it, but anger at the evening for giving that thought any place to live.

"No," he said. "Never that."

Her eyes searched his face, as though checking whether this was one of those kind sentences people gave because the night had gone badly and everyone wanted to get home cleaner than they deserved.

He let her look.

"I was embarrassed by myself," he said. "There's a difference."

Something in her expression eased then. Not fully. But enough.

The sound of an approaching car rolled into the pickup area. This time the number plate matched hers. The driver slowed near the curb.

Nadia glanced toward it, then back at Rai.

The night seemed to narrow around that brief final space.

He wanted to say more.

Wanted to explain all the things he had understood too late--the way his mother's question had landed, the way Nadia's carefulness had looked less like grace and more like strain, the exact second he had realised his father was right that asking him to help and watching him fail were not the same thing. He wanted to say that family dinners were not neutral battlegrounds and maybe never would be. He wanted to promise that next time would be better.

But promises made in carparks had a way of sounding like compensation.

So he chose something smaller. More precise. A sentence that could be tested.

He stepped to the passenger door before the driver could get out to open the boot for her.

When he reached for the handle, Nadia stopped behind him.

He opened the door and turned.

For a second she only looked at him. The fluorescent lights flattened the shadows under her eyes and made her look more tired than she had upstairs. More honest, too.

Rai rested one hand on the top edge of the car door.

"Next time," he said, and this time there was no hesitation in his voice, only the shame of clarity, "I'll sit beside you faster."

The words settled between them.

Not grand.

Not pretty.

But true in the only way that mattered.

Nadia's expression changed in stages.

Surprise first.

Then hurt remembering itself.

Then, beneath it, the faintest softening--as if some part of her had been waiting not for an apology alone, but for evidence that he understood the exact shape of the absence.

She nodded once.

"Okay," she said.

Not forgiving everything.

Not dismissing it.

Only accepting the sentence for what it was: not a defence, not a performance, but a promise measured in timing.

She got into the car.

Rai closed the door gently after her.

As the vehicle pulled away, he stood in the pickup lane a moment longer than necessary, watching the red taillights thin into the night beyond the block.

Then he turned back toward the lift lobby, the fluorescent lights still humming overhead, the smell of rain and concrete rising around him, and understood with a kind of tired precision that love did not only ask whether you would stay.

Sometimes it asked whether you would be visible while staying.

And tonight, he had learned the difference too slowly.