PART II : FUNERAL OF TRUTH.
504 Words
"I buried my father in fire… but it was the questions that kept burning."
The sky was gray.
Not dramatic, not poetic — just… gray.
The kind of color that feels like a bruise stretched across the horizon.
Aarya stood still among the mourners, clad in white, but the cotton fabric stuck to her skin, soaked from the drizzle that had never really stopped since that night.
Her eyes were dry, though. Bone dry. As if all her tears had drained with his last breath.
The priest chanted quietly. The air smelled of sandalwood and smoke. The pyre crackled.
People came. People she’d never seen before.
Men in crisp suits. Women with expensive silence. All of them with measured expressions — grief too practiced.
Some didn’t even try to hide the way they looked at her. Like they knew something she didn’t. Like she was the outsider.
A hand touched her shoulder gently. “Be strong, beta.”
It was her father’s friend — or at least, that’s what he always claimed to be.
Mr. Mathur. Clean-shaven, formal, eyes like slate.
“Your father was a good man,” he said. “He helped a lot of people. He had… many lives.”
She tilted her head. “Many lives?”
He froze. For a second. Just a second.
But she caught it — that flicker of something behind his eyes. Regret? Caution?
“I just meant… he was complex,” he said finally.
Complex.
Her father — the man who used to hide toffees in the back of the fridge for her.
Who corrected her homework in pencil so she wouldn’t feel bad.
Who never raised his voice — but always made her feel safe.
Complex?
Why were they all talking like he was a myth? Like he was a legend being folded into fire?
She turned away. The flames were higher now. Her stomach twisted at the smell. At the finalityThey were all watching her. Whispering when they thought she couldn’t hear.
She caught slivers of sentences—
“...he was careful... too careful.”
“...left too much undone.”
“...the girl doesn’t know, does she?”
Know what?
Her fists clenched. Her breath came sharp. She wanted to scream. She wanted to tear the white shawl off her shoulders and demand answers — demand the truth about who the hell her father really was.
But all she could do was stand there.
Still. Quiet. Drowning in confusion.
She looked at the fire again. At the body being swallowed by it.
Was it even real?
Because the man in that fire — he didn’t match the one she thought she knew.
And for the first time since that night…a new thought slipped into her mind.
A dangerous one.
What if he wasn’t just a victim?
What if he wasn’t who he said he was at all?
And with that thought came fear.
Not of the man who pulled the trigger…
…but of the father whose ashes she would carry home.
- Writer
