The kitchen smelled like turmeric, burnt tea, and old regrets.
Aanya stood there, staring at the kettle that hadn't been used in years but somehow looked as if it had boiled that morning. Everything was still where her mother had left it—spice boxes stacked like soldiers, a chipped mug with "#1 Ma" fading on the rim, and a note stuck to the fridge that read: "Buy milk. And stop forgetting to breathe." The second line was a joke. Or maybe not.
This was the kind of house where people stopped breathing quietly, slowly, over years. The kind of house where grief was never spoken out loud.
She opened the kitchen window, and the wind rushed in like it had been waiting for her. Outside, schoolgirls walked past in uniforms, gossiping and giggling. Just like she and Naina had once done. The name slipped into her mind like a thorn.
Naina.
She hadn't thought of her in so long. Or maybe she had and just shoved it down where the pain couldn't follow.
She left the kitchen and walked to the farthest room in the house—the one no one ever entered. Her mother had called it the Silence Room. As a child, she'd been told it was a storage space. But Aanya had always known better. Something in her mother's voice made it sound like a punishment.
Now, the door creaked open with a sigh. Dust spiraled in the fading light.
Inside, it wasn't empty.
There were boxes. Journals. A locked wooden chest. And a photograph taped to the wall—wrinkled and slightly torn. It was a class picture. St. Mary's Girls School, Class of 2008.
There she was. Aanya in the third row, awkward and unsmiling.
And there—standing just to her left—was Naina.
Hair braided tight, eyes sharp and unreadable. Frozen forever at seventeen.
Aanya took a step back. Her mother had kept this? Why? Why here, in the room she never opened?
Her hands shook as she picked up one of the journals stacked near the chest. The cover was cracked leather, initials carved into the corner: R.R.
Her mother's diary.
She opened it to the first page.
> "Some truths must be buried. But even graves don't stay untouched forever."