Chapter 11: The Cupboard

Dev took the pink slip from her fingers and read it standing under the bedroom light.

He read the amount. He read the shop's name. He read the signature at the bottom.

"This is yours," he said.

"It looks like mine."

"I've seen you sign a hundred times. The loop on the M is a little wrong." He held the slip closer. "It's too even. Nobody signs this smoothly."

"Whoever practised my name did it on a better day than I ever had."

He looked up.

Whatever he had been carrying for six days seemed to go out of his face. What was left was plain and very tired.

"I believe you," Dev said.

Mira did not move.

"I should have said it at the dining table. I should have said it before you showed me one piece of proof."

His voice was steady. "I'm saying it now. I believe you, and I am sorry it took a necklace."

She had imagined this moment in two different lives.

In neither one had it sounded so ordinary.

"Thank you," she said. Her throat hurt, and she cleared it. "That is not forgiveness."

"I didn't ask for it."

"I know. I'm telling you anyway."

"Understood."

He still held the slip in his hand. He looked at the door, and she saw him measure the stairs and the front room and the people in it.

"I'll go down," he said. "Right now. I'll put this on the table in front of Chachi and the doctor and..."

"No."

"Mira."

"Dev, please. Sit." She waited until he sat on the edge of the bed. "If you carry this down there tonight, what does she say?"

His mouth tightened. "That you planted it yourself."

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