Page 52 of Scars and Crowns

Anything I wanted.

A different colour.

A different name.

A completely different design.

He'd change all of it.

The shelves, too. He'd left those entirely to me. He hadn't filled them himself. Hadn't decided which books belonged where. Hadn't walked through the shop telling me how it should be run. Instead . . . He'd simply handed me the keys. "The rest is yours." Such a small sentence. Yet somehow . . . That gesture moves me more than the shop itself.

It would've been so easy for someone in his position to create the entire thing and present it to me as a finished gift.

Instead . . . He built the walls. Then stepped back. Leaving space for me to build everything inside them. That . . . More than anything . . . Feels like respect. I kneel beside the first unopened crate and begin lifting books out one by one. The cardboard still smells faintly of ink.

I stack them into rough piles across the floor.

Children's books.

Fiction.

History.

Cookbooks.

Poetry.

Every few minutes my thoughts wander back to something he'd said before leaving.

"I didn't do this for you." I smile to myself. What an absolutely terrible liar. "I wanted a bookshop in this market anyway."

"Hmm." I place another novel onto the growing pile. "No, you didn't." I laugh softly beneath my breath. I've known Yuvaan almost my entire life. He has never been a man who speaks his heart directly. Words have always embarrassed him. They feel too exposed. Too vulnerable. So instead . . . He builds. He remembers. He quietly changes the world around the people he loves until it becomes softer for them without ever announcing that he was the one doing it.

I think back to when we were teenagers. There'd been one particularly exhausting exam season. I'd been helping Maa before dawn every morning and arriving half asleep for lessons. For an entire week . . . Somehow . . . Entirely by coincidence . . . Yuvaan kept walking past the kitchen just as I finished sweeping. Always carrying two cups of chai. Always pretending he'd accidentally made extra. He never once said—"You look tired." He simply handed me tea. The message had always been hidden inside the gesture.

Just like now. Then there's Sara. Every single day . . . One flower. A different one each morning. Not because flowers matter. Because promises do. That's who he is. He says I see you without ever speaking the words. He says I'm here. I remembered. You're important. All without asking for credit. I look around the little bookshop again. This was never just a public project.

Not really.

The thought makes my smile softer. Even so . . . I carefully pull myself back. It would be foolish to read too much into any of this. Dangerous, too. My heart has only just begun trusting itself again. He married me because we both needed something. Perhaps . . . This is simply his way of thanking me. A thank you disguised as a business decision. A gift wrapped carefully enough that it wouldn't bruise my pride. That explanation feels safer. Safer than wondering whether this bookshop exists because one boy never forgot the dreams of the girl he loved.

I place another stack of books onto the floor.

Whatever his reasons . . . The gratitude inside me remains exactly the same. Because today . . . he handed me something I genuinely believed I'd lost forever. A piece of myself.

Not the mother.

Not the survivor.

Not the woman constantly calculating expenses.

Just . . . Me.

And I intend to do something worthy of that trust. Not because I owe him. Although a part of me quietly insists that I do. He's already paid Sara's school fees. Given us a home. Built this place. The list feels endless. No. I'll make this succeed because it deserves to. Because dreams should be allowed to earn their place in the world too. I roll up the sleeves of my kurti and continue unpacking. Soon the floor disappears beneath neat little mountains of books.

Without thinking, I settle cross-legged among them. Only after several minutes do I remember what Amma Saheba told me.

Your mother always sat exactly like that.