The Memory House - II
995 Words
V. The Collapse
They didn’t get far.
Two turns out of the colony, at a dimly lit crossing where an old peepal tree leaned toward the road, Aanya made a small, broken sound in the backseat. A soft gasp that carried years of suffocated breath.
It didn’t resemble crying.
It was more primal.
Sharda pulled over immediately.
Before the car had even stopped, Zoya had unbuckled her seat belt and climbed into the back, gathering Aanya into an embrace....not tight or restraining, but present like a human perimeter.
Aanya shook violently, her face buried against her knees.
“I didn’t want to see him,” she whispered.
“I didn’t want to see him.”
Zoya choked on air. “Oh god… Aanya… was that..........was it really?”
Aanya nodded, a tiny, terrified movement.
Zoya’s voice rose with panic. “Then we need to go back. We need to call someone. We need to—”
“No!” Aanya screamed, so suddenly and loudly that both women froze.
Her voice cracked. “Please. Please don’t bring him into my life again.”
Sharda leaned in from the front, her voice a fragile whisper.
“Aanya… who was he? Was it your father?”
Aanya flinched.
“No.”
Zoya swallowed. “Your brother?”
“No.”
Sharda’s voice broke. “Your uncle?”
Aanya closed her eyes.
Her body folded in on itself.
And in a voice barely audible, barely human:
“Yes.”
Zoya covered her mouth.
Sharda stared at Aanya with a grief so deep it didn’t look like sadness..........it looked like fury.
Not hot fury.
Cold fury.
Surgical.
Lethal.
The kind that only someone trained to save lives could feel when faced with someone who destroyed one.
VI. The Aftershock
Aanya curled sideways on the seat, clutching the fabric of her sweater as if trying to anchor herself to something tangible.
Zoya stroked her hair gently, uncharacteristically quiet.
“I didn’t think he’d still be there,” Aanya whispered.
Her voice was distant, like she was speaking from underwater.
“I thought… people like him had disappeared. Or die. Or get punished. Or… or something.”
“People like him should disappear,” Zoya muttered.
Her eyes were full of fire. “He should be in jail. He should be in hell.”
Aanya squeezed her eyes shut. “Don’t say his name.”
“We don’t even know his name,” Zoya shot back.
Aanya hugged her knees. “Good. Then leave it that way.”
Sharda inhaled sharply.
“Aanya,” she said softly, “not naming something gives it more power.”
Aanya flinched again. “If I say it, then it becomes real.”
“It was already real,” Sharda whispered.
Aanya’s breath came fast and shallow.
Zoya leaned closer. “Hey. Hey. Look at me.”
Aanya didn’t.
“Aanya, please look at me.”
Slowly, painfully, Aanya lifted her face.
And Zoya saw a child’s fear in a grown woman’s eyes.
“Do you think he’ll come here?” Aanya asked, voice trembling.
The question sliced through Zoya with a violence she’d never felt.
Sharda answered before Zoya could.
“No,” she said firmly. “He won’t. You’re safe in our home.”
Aanya shook her head helplessly. “That house… it swallowed me whole. I left it, but the house never left me.”
Sharda’s breath caught.
Zoya’s hands balled into fists.
They both knew this wasn’t just a metaphor.
It was a deep, viscous truth.
VII. Argument They Needed to Have
Sharda got out of the car abruptly and paced in front of the headlights, her hands on her hips, her jaw clenched.
Zoya stepped outside too, closing the door softly so Aanya wouldn’t hear.
“She’s not safe,” Sharda whispered urgently.
“She’s not safe. He saw her. He knows she’s back in Delhi.”
Zoya’s voice rose. “Then let’s call the police.”
Sharda shook her head fiercely. “Do you think the Delhi police care about twenty-year-old abuse with no evidence? They barely care about current abuse.”
“Then what do we do?”
Sharda turned, eyes blazing. “We should protect her.”
“How?” Zoya shot back.
“We’re not bodyguards. We’re not superheroes. We can’t fight her uncle if he shows up.”
Sharda leaned in, her voice trembling with anger and helplessness.
“We can do what no one did for her when she was a child. We don’t leave her alone.”
Zoya swallowed hard.
They both stood there; two women who were strong in entirely different ways, held together by their shared love for someone breaking into the backseat.
“We can’t force her to report him,” Sharda said, softer now.
“And we can’t force her to heal.”
“So what can we do?” Zoya whispered.
Sharda looked at the sky, at the Delhi winter night that felt far too cold.
“We can be the walls that house her until she’s ready to stand.”
Zoya nodded slowly.
And for the first time, she understood Sharda fully; not as a doctor or a caretaker, but as a woman who carried her own ledger of ghosts.
VIII. The Return Home
They drove back to Nizamuddin in silence.
Aanya fell asleep out of exhaustion; not peaceful sleep, but collapse-sleep, it came after panic, fear, and old wounds torn open.
Sharda kept glancing in the mirror at her small, curled form.
Her voice trembled when she finally spoke.
“Zoya.”
“Hmm?”
“When she wakes up,” Sharda whispered, “we need to ask her one question.”
Zoya stiffened. “What?”
Sharda exhaled, slow and heavy.
“Does he know where she lives now?”
Zoya’s breath hitched.
Because if the answer was yes....
It was real danger that they were fighting and not just memory anymore.
Immediate and Approaching.
- Writer
