The bhangra beat thumped through the floor, through Meera’s bones, a mocking counter-rhythm to the frantic hammering of her heart. Her world had narrowed to two points: the empty space by the exit where the silhouette had stood, and the shattered phone in Rohan’s hand.
“Meera.” Rohan’s voice cut through the din, sharp with concern. He held the phone gingerly, the cracked screen webbing over the glowing message. “What is this? Who is ‘A’?”
The simple question was a lifeline to reality. To this reality—the marigold garlands, the sequined saris, the scent of her wedding feast being prepared. This was real. The ghost in the corner was a trick of the light. A hallucination born of stress and that damned, impossible text.
“Wrong number,” she heard herself say, the words tinny and distant. She forced a laugh, a brittle, hollow sound. “Some… some prank. It startled me.” She reached for the phone, her hand steadying only through sheer force of will. “Look at the mess I’ve made. I’m so sorry, Rohan. Pre-wedding nerves, I think.”
Her performance was flawless. The apologetic smile, the slight, embarrassed shake of the head. She saw the tension drain from Rohan’s shoulders. His logical, engineer’s mind accepted the explanation readily. A prank. Nerves. It made sense.
“You gave me a scare,” he said, pulling her gently into a hug. His embrace was warm, solid, real. “My strong, brilliant Meera, scared by a wrong number.” He kissed her temple. “Let’s get you some water. And I’ll have my assistant get you a new phone by tomorrow.”
He led her through the crowd, a protective arm around her. Meera smiled and nodded at well-wishers, her body moving on autopilot. Inside, a storm raged.
A. The letter. I never forgot.
The words were etched in fire behind her eyes. It was him. It could be no one else. But why? Why now, after a decade of silence? And how had he known about her sister’s wedding? She had worn a blue anarkali. He’d been there. Watching. A ghost in the back of the church.
The thought made her skin crawl. And yet, beneath the shock and anger, a treacherous, shameful current of something else stirred. A flicker of the old, desperate hope she’d buried years ago. He’s alive. He remembers.
“Drink this,” Rohan said, handing her a glass of ice water in a quiet alcove. They were near the venue’s garden, the glass doors open to let in the cool Mumbai night air. “Better?”
She nodded, gulping the water. The cold was a shock, grounding her. “Yes. Much better. I’m sorry for the drama.”
“No drama,” he said, his eyes soft. “Only love.” He looked out at the garden, lit with fairy lights. “In a few hours, you’ll be my wife. That’s the only thing that matters.”
Guilt, sharp and acidic, rose in her throat. She was lying to him. By omission, but lying nonetheless. She opened her mouth, the confession perched on her tongue. Rohan, it was him. Arjun. He’s here.
But the words wouldn’t come. They would hurt him. They would unleash chaos on this perfectly planned day. They would make this phantom real.
“Come,” Rohan said, taking her empty glass. “They’re about to start our first dance. Our song.”
Their song. A beautiful, soulful Hindi love song. They had chosen it together. It spoke of a love built on understanding, on partnership. It was nothing like the frantic, passionate songs she and Arjun had once secretly loved.
As Rohan led her back to the dance floor, her eyes swept the perimeter of the room again, a frantic, involuntary search. Nothing. No tall, still figure. Of course not. She had imagined it. The text had triggered a memory, that was all.
The crowd parted for them. The band began the familiar, gentle melody. Rohan took her in his arms, his hold confident and sure. She placed a hand on his shoulder, the other in his, and they began to sway.
“See?” he murmured, his breath warm against her ear. “Perfect.”
She closed her eyes, trying to lose herself in the music, in the safety of his embrace. She focused on the feel of his linen suit under her fingers, the scent of his sandalwood cologne. This is your life. This is your choice.
But her mind was a traitor. It replayed the text. The silhouette. The way he had stood, with a soldier’s discipline, amid the celebration. Arjun had moved like that even at twenty-two. A contained energy, a readiness. She used to tease him that he couldn’t just stand, he had to stand at attention.
A small, choked sound escaped her.
“Meera?” Rohan leaned back to look at her face.
“Just… overwhelmed,” she whispered, her eyes still shut tight.
The song played on. Other couples joined them on the floor. The world became a gentle sway. For a few minutes, she almost convinced herself.
Then the song ended. The band segued into a livelier tune. The spell broke. Rohan was claimed by a group of his college friends for a photograph.
Meera stood alone at the edge of the dance floor, adrift. She needed air. Real air, not this perfumed, crowded atmosphere. She needed to be somewhere the ghost couldn’t follow.
She moved quickly, slipping past a waiter with a tray of jaljeera, and stepped out through the open glass doors into the private hotel garden. The noise of the sangeet faded to a muffled pulse. Here, it was quieter. The fairy lights twinkled in the mango trees, and the scent of night-blooming jasmine was heavy and sweet. It was a different world. A sane world.
She walked down a gravel path, away from the light, towards a small, ornate fountain that gurgled peacefully. She leaned against its cool marble edge, pressing her palms to her eyes.
“Breathe, Meera,” she told herself aloud. “It was nothing. A mistake. A coincidence.”
“Coincidences are for people who don’t believe in fate,” a voice said behind her.
The voice.
It was deeper than she remembered. Roughened by time and, she imagined, by things she didn’t want to imagine. But the timbre was the same. The quiet, certain cadence. It was a voice that had whispered promises in the tea gardens and read poetry to her under the stars.
She didn’t turn. She couldn’t. If she turned, the ghost would solidify. The past would become the present. And the present—her wedding, her future with Rohan—would crumble to dust.
She heard his footsteps on the gravel. Slow. Measured. He came to stand beside her, not too close, but close enough that she could feel the heat of him, could smell the faint, clean scent of soap and something else—outdoors, and cold, like wind over high mountains.
Her eyes remained closed. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“I know.”
“Then why?” The question was a whisper, torn from her.
“I got your invitation.” His tone was flat, factual. “The digital one on the family WhatsApp group. Your cousin posted it. I saw your face. And his.”
So it was that simple. Technology. A digital ghost slipping through a cyber crack. Not fate. Just carelessness.
Finally, she forced herself to look.
And time collapsed.
It was him, but it wasn’t. The boyish softness was gone, carved away by the years, leaving angles and planes. His skin was weathered, a shade darker than she remembered. A thin, pale scar bisected his left eyebrow. His hair was still thick, but cut short, precise. He wore a formal black bandhgala suit, and it fit him with a military neatness that made every other man in the ballroom look slightly disheveled.
But his eyes. His eyes were the same. Deep, dark pools that had once looked at her with a love so fierce it felt like a physical force. Now they held a universe of regret, of a sorrow so profound it seemed to have settled into his bones.
He was looking at her as if she were a miracle. As if she were water and he had crossed a desert.
“You look…” he began, his voice catching. “You look like a dream I used to have.”
The words were a dagger, twisting in the old wound. “Stop it,” she said, her own voice hardening. She straightened, crossing her arms over her chest, a barrier of sequins and silk. “You lost the right to say things like that to me ten years ago. You lost the right to be here. To text me. To… to watch me from corners.”
He didn’t flinch. He absorbed her anger like a soldier takes fire. “I know.”
“You know? That’s all you can say? ‘I know’?” The anger, dammed up for a decade, surged hot and sudden. “You vanished, Arjun! One day your letters were coming, full of plans, and then… nothing. Radio silence. For months. For years. I wrote to you until my hope ran out. I waited until my pride ran out. I grieved for you until I had nothing left to feel!”
“Meera—”
“No! You don’t get to explain now. Not today. Do you have any idea what today is?” Her gesture towards the glowing ballroom was violent, desperate.
“It’s the day you marry Rohan Malhotra,” he said, the name spoken with a careful, neutral tone. “He’s a good man. Successful. From a good family. He will keep you safe.”
The clinical assessment enraged her further. “You researched him?”
“I had to know who you were choosing.”
The audacity stole her breath. “I wasn’t choosing! You left me no choice! You set me free by default, by disappearing!” She stepped closer, her lehenga rustling. “That last letter… I begged you for an answer. Any answer. You gave me silence. That was your answer.”
For the first time, his composure cracked. A muscle jumped in his jaw. He looked away, towards the fountain, his profile stark in the twinkling lights. “Silence was the only answer I could give.”
“What does that even mean?” she cried, tears of fury and pain finally spilling over. “Were you married? Was there someone else? Was it all just a… a game to you?”
He turned his head back to her, and the raw pain in his eyes was so immediate, so brutal, it silenced her. “There has never been anyone else. Before you or after you. There was only ever you, Meera. You have to believe that.”
“I don’t have to believe anything you say!” But her voice broke on the words.
They stood there, frozen in the garden, the gurgling fountain the only sound. The past was a living, breathing thing between them, mangled and bleeding.
“I made a promise,” he said, his voice low, each word weighed. “A promise that meant I could not be the man you needed. Could not be the man who wrote you love letters. I had to let you think I didn’t care, so you would move on. So you would live.”
A promise. The word was so foreign, so inadequate to explain the cataclysm he’d wrought in her life. “What promise could possibly be more important than this?” she demanded, gesturing between them.
He didn’t answer. He just looked at her, his eyes holding a story he refused to tell.
From the ballroom, the music changed again. A familiar, joyous pheron song began, the one that would play during their wedding ceremony later. Reality came crashing back.
Rohan. The mangalsutra. The seven vows.
“I have to go,” she said, wiping her cheeks hastily. “My fiancé is waiting. My life is waiting.”
She turned to leave, her heart a pounding, shattered mess.
“Meera.” His voice stopped her again, but it was different now. It held a note of finality. “I didn’t come to ruin your happiness. I came… to see it for myself. To close the chapter.”
She didn’t turn around. “It’s been closed.”
“I know. But I needed to give you this.” She heard the rustle of paper.
Against every instinct of self-preservation, she glanced over her shoulder. He was holding out a small, cream-colored envelope. It was worn at the edges, as if it had been carried for a very, very long time.
“What is it?”
“The answer I couldn’t send. The one I wrote the night I got your last letter.” He took a step forward, placed the envelope gently on the fountain’s edge between them, and stepped back. “You don’t have to read it. You can burn it. But it’s yours. It always was.”
He looked at her one last time, a look that seemed to drink her in, to memorize her in crimson and gold, a bride for another man.
“Be happy, Meera Rai,” he whispered. And then he was gone, melting into the shadows of the garden path as silently as he had appeared.
Meera stood, trembling, staring at the envelope. It sat there, innocent and devastating. The answer to a question she had stopped asking a lifetime ago.
From the doorway, she heard Rohan’s voice, laced with concern. “Meera? Are you out here? They want us for the cake-cutting.”
She snatched the envelope, her fingers fumbling. She couldn’t leave it here. She couldn’t let anyone find it. She shoved it deep into the hidden pocket of her lehenga, the paper crinkling against the silk.
She pasted on a smile, turned, and walked towards the light, towards the sound of the music and her fiancé’s voice.
“I’m here,” she called out, stepping into the light from the doors.
Rohan smiled, relieved. “There you are. Everything okay?”
“Yes,” she said, taking his proffered arm. The envelope burned a hole against her hip, a secret hotter than any flame. “Everything’s fine.”
But as she walked back into her wedding celebration, the ghost’s final words echoed in her mind, drowning out the music.
You asked me to set you free. But first, you need to know why I couldn’t.
End of Chapter 2.
