“…not Shashidhar’s biological son.”
For a moment, I thought Bhaskar had made a mistake.
Then I laughed.
“What?”Avinash covered his face.
The stranger outside the bank was walking toward us with Mrinalini.
Bhaskar placed the DNA report in front of me.
Two names.
**Shashidhar Vyas.**
**Avinash Vyas.**
Probability of biological paternity:
**0.00%.**
My hands went numb.
“No.”
Vaidehi whispered, “Maa…”
“No.”
I looked at Avinash.
“You are my son.”
“Yes.”
“Shashidhar was your father.”
Avinash’s eyes filled.
“He raised me.”
“That is not what I asked.”
Silence.
The bank door opened.
Mrinalini entered with the man from the car.
Up close, the resemblance to my dead husband was unbearable.
Same eyes.
Same slightly crooked nose.
Even the same irritating habit of pressing his lips together before speaking.
Mrinalini stopped several feet away.
“Sulochana.”
“You know my name.”
“I have known it for thirty-five years.”
I stood.
“Then perhaps you can explain why my dead husband’s secrets are arriving in installments.”
The man beside her lowered his eyes.
Mrinalini said, “This is Pradyumna.”
My husband’s first son.
The child in the photograph.
The biological son Shashidhar had abandoned before marrying me.
I looked at Pradyumna.
“Are you here for my house?”
“No.”
“Your mother filed a claim.”
“I asked her not to.”
Mrinalini’s expression hardened.
“I filed because Shashidhar promised that property would secure my son’s future.”
“After using my marriage to secure his own?”
She flinched.
Good.
I was not interested in being gracious yet.
Then I pointed at the DNA report.
“And what does Avinash have to do with this?”
Mrinalini looked at my son.
Not with hatred.
With pity.
That frightened me.
Thirty-six years earlier, Shashidhar had promised to marry Mrinalini.
Her family gave him money toward the Pune property believing the two would build a home together.
Then Shashidhar’s parents discovered she was pregnant.
They rejected her because of caste differences and threatened to cut him off from the family business.
Shashidhar chose them.
He married me the following year.
I felt sick.
“So I was the acceptable wife.”
Mrinalini answered softly.
“Yes.”
I hated her for saying it.
I respected her for not lying.
“But Avinash?”
Bhaskar turned to me.
“That secret came later.”
I was already pregnant when I married Shashidhar.
I knew that.
What I had never known was that, three months into the pregnancy, I suffered heavy bleeding.
I remembered the hospital.
The fear.
Shashidhar sitting beside me all night.
What I did not remember—because nobody told me—was that the pregnancy ended.
My baby died.
I sat down.
“No.”
Vaidehi began crying.
“That’s impossible.”
But Bhaskar had hospital records.
My son whispered, “Maa, I’m sorry.”
I stared at him.
“Then whose baby did I bring home?”
Nobody answered quickly enough.
I screamed.
“WHOSE?”
Mrinalini closed her eyes.
“My sister’s.”
Her younger sister, Charulata, had given birth at the same nursing home.
Unmarried.
Terrified.
The father had disappeared.
Charulata wanted the baby adopted.
Shashidhar saw an opportunity so monstrous that for several seconds I could not understand it.
I had been heavily sedated after losing my child.
My family was told there had been complications but the baby survived.
Records were altered.
Charulata signed an adoption surrender she believed would place her son with an unknown couple.
Instead, Shashidhar brought him to me.
Avinash.
My son.
My knees shook.
“You stole a baby?”
Mrinalini shook her head.
“Not exactly. Charulata consented to adoption. She did not consent to you specifically.”
“That is supposed to make this better?”
“No.”
“Did you know?”
“Years later.”
I looked at Avinash.
“When did you find out?”
“Five years ago.”
Before Shashidhar’s final surgery.
That steel tiffin box.
The locker key.
The promise.
Everything.
“You knew I had lost my biological child?”
“Yes.”
“You knew you were adopted?”
“Yes.”
“And you let me believe—”
His voice broke.
“You are my mother.”
“Don’t use that to avoid answering me.”
He cried openly.
“I was afraid if I told you, you would look at me differently.”
That sentence broke what anger had not.
I went to him.
I held his face.
“Idiot.”
He closed his eyes.
“You think thirty-five years disappear because of a laboratory report?”
“I didn’t know.”
“You think sitting beside you through typhoid was biological?”
He laughed through tears.
“You think your Class 12 failure came from my DNA?”
Vaidehi actually snorted.
I pulled Avinash against me.
“My anger is not because you aren’t my son.”
I held him tighter.
“My anger is because everyone decided I was too fragile to know how you became my son.”
Pradyumna turned away.
That was when I noticed he was crying too.
He had grown up knowing Shashidhar was his father.
But Shashidhar never publicly acknowledged him.
One woman had raised Shashidhar’s non-biological son as her own without knowing.
