From the 30th floor where she sat, the area looked pristine, yet a closer look would reveal crime, grime and other horrors – just like her family. Picture perfect until you looked deeper.
‘Kaavi.’
She turned her head. She hadn’t even heard her mother approach. Her mother didn’t ask if she could join her. She simply pulled out the chair opposite her and sat.
‘Sen still has that tracker app linked to your phone. He helped me find you when Neel said you were in the hotel. You’re lucky to have Sen, you know. He’s always looking out for you.’
Kaavi nodded.
She took in her mother’s features. She could easily pass as Kaavi’s older sister. She was strikingly beautiful, with dark eyes, high cheekbones and thick hair, which she kept shorter than Kaavi’s.
‘I told Neel everything.’
‘You should have told him when you got married. But who am I to talk? I’m no expert on marriage,’ her mother said wryly.
The waitress approached and her mother ordered a pot of teaand a scone.
‘Are you missing him?’ Kaavi heard herself ask.
‘I don’t know. He was part of my life for more than half of it. Kaavi, he wasn’t always like that. When I met him that weekend in Rally, he was charming, handsome and, dare I say, kind. Or maybe I was blinded by my attraction to him. I had just graduated from college, still unsure what I really wanted to do, and I wanted to get out of Rally as quickly as I could.’
Her mother shook her head and sighed.
‘You’re probably asking yourself why a young woman with a good family and all the money in the world would want to escape. I was Rally’s sweetheart; no one took me seriously. I couldn’t be smart because smart and beautiful didn’t go together. In their eyes I had the beauty but not the brains. My parents and brother were the only people who took me seriously. Even my friends used me for my family’s status.’
Her mother stopped to allow the waitress to deliver her order. She poured her tea and reached for the sugar.
‘Why did you go back after we escaped when I was 11?’
Her mother stirred her tea thoughtfully.
‘By then I knew the type of power he wielded and what he was capable of. He threatened to take you away from me. He knew that you were my whole world and that he could use my love for you against me. He said he would get the judge to give him sole custody. I knew he could.’
She sipped her tea.
‘We could have stood up to him together as I got older. But you just obeyed. You didn’t fight for me!’ Kaavi challenged.
Her mother’s eyes filled with tears.
‘Kaavi, do you think we would have won? Even the courts were on his side. You saw what his power could do. Do you know I was locked up in that room for five days after your arrest before my brother found out and broke down that door and took me to thehotel.
‘He threatened to have my brother arrested if I didn’t come back home. I knew he could. After all, my child… my child was behind bars because of him.’
Her mother took another sip of her tea.
‘On that morning …’ her mother blinked away tears.
‘Sen arrived at the house. He said you’d been stabbed. He said it was time to go to the newspapers. We could fight this using the press. I told him to first give me time to try something and asked him to drop me off at the police station.
‘Your father wasn’t there when we arrived. He was home looking for me. I asked Sen to take me home but not accompany me inside. Sen was reluctant, but I begged him not to come in with me. When I entered the house, your father was frantic. The CCTV showed that I’d left with Sen. He thought I had left him. It set my plan in motion.’
Her mother held Kaavi’s gaze for a moment before continuing: ‘I told him that he’d already taken you away so I didn’t have to stay with him and I was leaving. He thought I was calling his bluff. He laughed at me. He actually laughed at me. He grabbed my arm to drag me to the bedroom so he could lock me in there, but Sen barged in. He hadn’t left as I’d asked him to. Sen pulled out his cellphone and started recording. Your father immediately dropped my arm. I left with Sen.
‘I stayed at the hotel for two days. I was sure my plan had failed until he showed up there. He said he would drop the charges if I went back home. I agreed without hesitation. After your release, Sen tried to convince me to leave. We could use the cellphone recording as blackmail to get him to let me leave. But I knew him, Kaavi. He wouldn’t just accept it. He would need to get back at me and the only way he could do so was by harming you. And he would find a way.’
‘So you traded your freedom for mine?’ Kaavi asked,astonished.
‘Don’t make it sound heroic. You wouldn’t have been in that situation if I had been stronger … I could have tried to save us when you were younger …’
