She Returned to Expose His Sister, He Won Her Heart Again novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Thursday

Rhea stages photos of Mira's blue dupatta at the café, then shows them to the family at dinner; Mira says it was Rhea and holds out her video, and Dev will not look at it.

Rhea did not wait for Mira to arrive.

She draped the blue dupatta over her own hair and turned her back to the window.

A second man in a brown jacket sat down across from her and leaned in, smiling.

The man in grey went back to his own table, lifted a camera from his lap and clicked it three times.

Nandini was filming it all through the car window with her phone zoomed in.

"Well," she said quietly. "That is not a woman waiting for a friend."

Rhea took the dupatta off a minute later and folded it. She shook the hand of the man in grey, picked up her envelope and left.

She never looked at the street.

"Send me the video," Mira said.

"Already did." Nandini lowered the phone. "Mira, show it to your husband tonight."

"Not yet."

"Why not yet?"

"Because she'll have an answer ready," Mira said. "I need the part she can't answer."

She was still saying it to herself at nine o'clock, when the family sat down to dinner.

Harish was at the head of the table. Dev sat on his right.

Dev's aunt had come for the evening, and she was telling a long story about her neighbour's daughter-in-law.

Rhea carried in the last dish and sat across from Mira.

She ate almost nothing.

She kept touching her napkin and glancing at Dev, and each time he looked up she looked quickly away.

"Rhea, what is it?" Harish said at last. "You have not eaten a bite."

Rhea put down her spoon.

"I didn't want to say it tonight," she said. "I've been up half the night deciding."

Mira kept eating. She tasted nothing.

"Dev, I'm so sorry." Rhea's voice cracked. "I would never speak against Mira. But I can't carry this alone."

She took an envelope from the pocket of her kurta and slid it down the table.

Dev opened it.

Inside were three printed photographs.

In each one a woman in a blue dupatta sat at a café table with her back to the camera.

A man faced her, leaning in, smiling.

Dev's aunt took one look and covered her mouth.

"A friend of mine saw them there on Thursday," Rhea said. "She sent me these. I went to see for myself, and it was true."

"I didn't want you to hear it from strangers."

Nobody spoke.

Dev studied the pictures one at a time. He did not look at Mira.

"That is her dupatta," he said slowly. "I know that one."

"It's mine," said Mira.

She stood up.

The aunt's chair scraped. Harish put both hands flat on the table.

"It is my dupatta," Mira said, "and it isn't me. That is Rhea."

For a moment the room was perfectly still.

"At four o'clock on Thursday I was in a car across the road from Café Rustom," Mira went on. "I watched Rhea put that dupatta on her head."

"I watched a man in a brown jacket sit down in front of her. I watched another man take those photographs from the next table."

Rhea stared at her. The color left her face, and then her eyes filled.

"Mira," she whispered. "Why would I..."

"You tell me."

"Papa, she's following me," Rhea said. Tears ran straight down her cheeks. "She is following me, and now she's saying this, after everything I did for her."

Harish's palm hit the wood.

"What is this?" he said. "Is this how a daughter-in-law speaks in my house?"

"I have it on video," Mira said.

She was already holding out her phone, the clip ready, the screen bright.

She held it toward her husband, the nearest person who had the right to look.

"Dev. Watch it. It takes less than a minute."

He looked at the phone.

He looked at the three photographs in his hand, and at his sister, shaking and pale, with her hands over her mouth.

Mira saw him decide.

It was not a long decision. It was almost not a decision at all.

His eyes did not go to the screen. They went to the floor.

"Mira," Dev said quietly. "Enough."

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