Chapter 13: Seventy Candles

The garden at Vasant Vihar was strung with marigolds, and forty chairs faced a cake with seventy candles.

Harish sat in the middle in a cream sherwani, looking pleased and a little afraid.

Rhea had organized every plate on the long table. She moved among the guests in a green silk kurta, touching shoulders.

The photographer in the grey shirt stood by the cake with his camera. When Dev walked past him, he looked at the grass.

Nandini sat near the gate with a folder on her knees.

Mira sat in the front row beside her husband, and neither of them said a word.

Harish blew out the candles, and everyone clapped.

Then Rhea tapped a spoon against a glass.

"One more gift for Papa," she said. Her voice shook. "It is the hardest one. I wish I didn't have to give it."

A white sheet had been hung on the garden wall. A cousin pressed a button, and a phone screen lit it up in letters a foot tall.

Mira read the first message from her own name.

Nobody suspects a thing. He signs whatever I put in front of him.

The cousin's wife gasped. Somebody's glass hit the ground.

"I found these on a laptop Mira left in the house," Rhea said. "And this was under her pillow."

She held up a pink slip of paper.

"A pawnshop in Karol Bagh. Maa's emerald necklace, four lakh rupees, and Mira's signature."

Forty faces turned to look at Mira.

"Bhaiya," Rhea said softly, holding out the phone. "You read for the family. You always have."

In the first life, Dev had taken that phone.

He looked at it now, and then at the wall.

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