“That’s what I thought.”
“No.”
He struggled upright.
“You became my choice.”
“Became.”
He flinched.
“I hated your father when he forced me into that marriage.”
The words hurt even though I already knew.
“But then I knew you. You sold your jewellery for my business. You cared for my father. You stayed when I had nothing.”
“And while I was doing all that, were you thinking about Yamini?”
“For years, yes.”
I turned away.
“Then eventually I stopped.”
I looked back.
“I loved you, Vaidehi. I still do.”
“And seven years ago?”
His eyes dropped.
“I found her.”
“You found her?”
“Yes.”
Yamini had believed she had found him.
Another lie.
“I only wanted to see if she was all right.”
“And six years later you had a daughter.”
His face crumpled.
“I never planned any of it.”
“That sentence is the anthem of cowards.”
He began crying.
I felt nothing.
“Did you know she was my sister?”
He hesitated.
“Yes.”
The answer destroyed the last fragile piece of sympathy I had left.
“You married my sister knowing exactly who she was.”
“She didn’t know.”
“But you did.”
“Yes.”
“And you let her believe I was dead.”
“I panicked.”
“You let me believe I couldn’t give you a family while you were raising a daughter somewhere else.”
He covered his face.
“I’m sorry.”
I took off my mangalsutra.
For twenty-one years, I had worn it almost every day.
I placed it on the bedside table beside his watch.
“You have spent your entire life allowing fear to make decisions for you.”
He stared at the necklace.
“My father threatened you, so you married me.”
“Vaidehi—”
“You found Yamini, so you lied to her.”
“I loved—”
“You wanted both families, so you lied to everyone.”
I moved closer.
“And when the property was threatened, you pretended to be Yamini to get my father’s declaration.”
His face changed.
That was confirmation.
“You were going to destroy it.”
He said nothing.
I laughed softly.
“You weren’t driving to meet Deshmukh.”
His silence deepened.
“You were driving there to steal the original.”
Finally, he whispered, “I was trying to protect Anika.”
“No. You were protecting yourself.”
I walked out.
For the first time in twenty-one years, I left my husband without looking back.
The divorce took fourteen months.
The property dispute took longer.
Avinash challenged my father’s declaration, but the signatures, witnesses and registration records were valid.
The commercial property returned to the estate.
I inherited it.
I sold it.
Everyone expected me to keep the money.
I didn’t.
Half went into a trust for Anika.
The other half I divided between myself and Yamini.
When I told her, she refused.
“I don’t want his money.”
“It was our father’s.”
“I don’t want his either.”
I understood.
So I told her the truth.
“This money already stole enough from both of us. Let it do something useful now.”
She eventually accepted.
Not for herself.
For Anika.
My relationship with Yamini took longer.
How do you become sisters after spending hours believing you were rival wives?
There is no ritual for that.
No ceremony.
No instruction manual.
At first, we met only because of lawyers.
Then because of Anika.
One afternoon, Anika asked why I looked like her mother.
Yamini and I stared at each other.
Finally I said, “Because your mother and I had the same father.”
Anika’s eyes widened.
“So you’re Maasi?”
That single word broke something open inside me.
Maasi.
I had spent fourteen years mourning the child I never had.
I had never imagined that somewhere inside the wreckage of my marriage, a little girl was waiting to give me another name.
Two years later, Yamini and I went together to our father’s grave.
It was the first time she had ever visited.
She carried no flowers.
Neither did I.
We stood silently.
Then Yamini said, “I used to imagine meeting him.”
“What would you have said?”
She thought for a moment.
“I would have asked why I wasn’t worth claiming.”
I swallowed.
“And you?”
I looked at the stone.
“I would ask why loving me made him think he had the right to control everyone around me.”
We stood there as daughters of the same complicated man.
Neither forgiving him.
Neither needing to.
Before leaving, Yamini placed the old photograph on the grave.
The one from Avinash’s accident envelope.
Our father.
Avinash.
Eighteen-year-old Yamini.
Then she turned away.
I left my wedding photograph beside it.
Two photographs.
Two lies.
One grave.
As we walked toward the gate, Anika ran toward us carrying three melting ice creams.
“Mama! Maasi!”
Yamini laughed.
I did too.
For years I believed the worst thing that could happen to a woman was discovering that her husband loved someone else.
I was wrong.
