matched by destiny

Chapter 4: The Quiet Years

The road to her parents’ house winds like a thought you don’t want to finish—out of the city, through neighborhoods that stop pretending to be busy, into stretches of fields where time folds over itself.

Meera sits in the back seat of the taxi, her bag beside her, the plastic hospital packet buried under her coat. She hasn’t opened it since the nurse placed it in her hands. The driver talks about the weather; she doesn’t answer.

By the time the cab stops at the familiar iron gate, she feels wrung out and hollow.

Her mother meets her on the front porch, apron dusted with flour, eyes already swollen from knowing. Her father stands behind her, hands jammed into his cardigan pockets like he’s bracing for a wind.

There are no grand speeches. Her mother folds her into her arms, and the scent of soap and cumin clings to her. Her father touches her hair briefly, the way he did when she was small, and steps aside to let her in.

Inside, everything is the same. The same polished wood furniture. The same faded rug her mother refuses to replace because “it’s lived with us too long.” The same ticking wall clock above the sideboard. Only Meera is different—she can feel it in her bones, like gravity has shifted just for her.

Her old bedroom is waiting. The walls are still pale yellow, the shelves still lined with the books she never took to the city. On the desk, a jar of pencils stands at attention, their tips sharpened and waiting for a hand that may never pick them up again.

She sets her bag on the bed and sits. The mattress gives under her like it remembers her weight. She stares at the window. Beyond it, the garden hums with late-spring bees. The air smells faintly of wet earth.

From somewhere downstairs, her mother calls that lunch is ready. Meera doesn’t move.

Days blur.

Morning becomes the sound of her father in the kitchen, radio tuned to the same Hindi station he’s listened to for decades. Afternoon is her mother kneading dough, the rhythmic push and fold like a slow heartbeat. Evening is the sky pressing against the windows until the house closes in on itself.

Meera eats when food is placed in front of her. She sleeps when exhaustion forces her. Sometimes she wanders to the garden and sits by the marigold patch, watching ants climb stems.

Her sketchbook lies untouched on the desk.

She tells herself it’s temporary—that she just needs to catch her breath, that she’ll pick up a pencil soon. But the days stack into weeks, the weeks into months, and still her hands stay idle. The idea of making something cheerful feels like an insult to the silence she’s keeping.

People come by at first—neighbors with bowls of kheer, family friends who speak softly in the living room and leave with clasped hands and sad eyes. Meera smiles faintly, nods in the right places, but hears none of it. The moment the door closes, she slips back upstairs.

Her phone is often on silent. Messages from colleagues go unread. Her publisher stops calling after the third month. The city becomes another planet she has no reason to visit.

Her only consistent company is the box Jatin’s parents gave her—his shirt folded neatly, the engagement ring in its velvet case, and the letter. She keeps it in the drawer of her bedside table, unopened more often than not. Some nights she takes out the shirt, presses it to her face, and breathes until the scent fades into something else.

The ring she never wears. It feels too loud, too certain for a life that has gone so quiet.

Seasons turn without ceremony.

In autumn, she walks along the edge of the fields, kicking through leaves until her shoes are stained with earth. In winter, frost clings to the windows and her mother insists on lighting the stove early so the kitchen stays warm. Spring brings the sharp green of new shoots, but she watches them from the porch instead of joining her father in the garden.

She doesn’t keep a calendar. Time is counted in the slow drift of weather and the rhythm of household chores she only half participates in.

Her hair grows longer than she’s ever kept it. She stops wearing makeup. The mirror becomes less of a daily checkpoint and more of a rare, accidental encounter.

Once, about a year in, her mother leaves a sketchpad on the kitchen table beside her tea. No comment, no pressure. Just there. Meera stares at it for a long time, the white pages glaring back like an accusation. She closes the cover and leaves it there. By the next morning, it’s gone.

She dreams about trains sometimes. Not the actual destinations—just the motion, the hum of the tracks, the way Jatin used to read station names aloud in ridiculous voices. She wakes from these dreams with her chest tight and her hands clenched in the sheets.

There are days she convinces herself she’s fine. She goes with her mother to the market, chats with the vendors, even buys a new scarf because the color makes her think of a sunrise. She comes home and folds it into her drawer, never to wear it.

And then there are days when she can’t get out of bed at all, when the air feels too heavy to breathe and the world outside her window moves on without her.

By the second year, the edges of grief have dulled, but they haven’t gone anywhere. They sit beneath the surface, like stones in a river—smoothed by time but still unmovable.

She has learned to carry them without dropping everything else, but the weight hasn’t changed.

She avoids mirrors still. She avoids the city even more.

One evening, she’s sitting on the porch as the sun dips behind the trees. The air is thick with the smell of wet grass. Her father is reading the paper beside her, glasses slipping down his nose. Her mother calls from inside that dinner’s ready.

Meera doesn’t move right away. She’s watching a bird hop along the fence post, tilting its head like it’s listening for something.

She wonders—briefly, fleetingly—what her life would look like if she stepped back into the noise of the city. The thought startles her enough to shake it off. She follows her father inside.

A week later, her phone rings. She almost doesn’t answer—it’s a city number, and those usually mean spam or sales pitches. But something makes her pick it up.

“Meera!” Suzy’s voice bursts through, bright and urgent, as if no time has passed at all. “Finally. I’ve been trying to reach you.”

Meera’s grip on the phone tightens. “Hi.”

“I’m not doing this over the phone,” Suzy says. “You need to come back. I’m serious.”

The line crackles in the silence that follows. Meera stares out the window at the darkening sky, the first stars pricking through. Somewhere in her chest, a long-closed door shifts on its hinges.