GUILTY
YUVAAN
I hold her against me on the steps outside the ballroom and don't let go.
Her entire body is shaking. Not the kind of trembling that disappears after a few deep breaths, but something deeper, something that seems to have taken hold of every muscle at once.
Her fingers are twisted into the front of my jacket, her forehead pressed against my chest, and every breath she manages comes out broken.
"Breathe with me, Daisy." I keep my voice low.
I don't know what else to do. So I breathe. Slowly. Deliberately. In. Out. Again.
My hand moves in circles over her back, the same motion over and over, because I need to give her something steady to hold on to while everything inside her is clearly coming apart.
"That's it. Just follow me."
She doesn't answer. That's all right. I don't need her to.
The gala continues behind us. I can hear the faint music through the closed doors, the occasional burst of laughter, the movement of people who have no idea that my entire world has just changed on the steps outside their carefully planned evening.
I don't care. I could leave the entire room behind without looking back.
Eventually, her breathing begins to slow. The gasps become uneven sobs instead, and somehow that feels like progress. Her shoulders still tremble beneath my hand, but she's no longer fighting for every breath.
I stay exactly where I am. I let her cry.
I don't tell her that she's all right when I don't know whether she believes it yet. I don't tell her to calm down. I don't ask questions she isn't ready to answer.
I just hold her.
After a long time, she whispers, "I need to tell you something." My hand stills against her back.
She doesn't lift her head. "I should have told you before." Her voice is scraped raw. "I think . . . " She swallows. "I think if I don't tell you now, I'm never going to."
I pull back just enough to see her face. Her mascara has smudged beneath her eyes. Her cheeks are wet. A loose strand of hair is stuck to one of them, and she looks so frightened of what I'm going to think that something inside me aches before she has even said the words.
I brush the strand away. "Tell me."
She looks at me. Really looks at me. And I watch her gather whatever courage has survived the last few minutes. "That man." Her voice catches. I wait. "He's Sara's father."
For a second, I don't understand. I hear the words. I know what they mean. But my mind refuses to put them together. "Sara's . . . " My voice dies. "Biological father."
Something cold moves through my chest. I look past her for half a second, toward the ballroom doors. The man is still in there. Then I look back at her.
She is already crying again. "Because I conceived her when he . . . " Her lips tremble. "When he raped me . . . when I was twenty one."
The world goes completely silent. Not the ballroom. Not the cars beyond the gates. Everything inside me.
I stare at her.
Twenty-one.
The number comes to me before I can stop it.
She was Twenty-one.
The same girl who used to sit beside me on the ramparts with her knees tucked beneath her chin.
The girl who would steal jalebis from the kitchen and then deny it with the worst poker face I'd ever seen.
The girl who left this palace carrying a silver chain around her neck and more hurt than I ever knew how to imagine.
Twenty-one. And alone.
My hands tighten around her without meaning to.
She keeps speaking. Her voice is so small that I almost miss it. "I wanted to terminate the pregnancy." My throat closes. She looks down at her hands. "I need you to know that too."
"Daisy . . . "
"I wanted to." There is no shame in the way she says it now.
Only exhaustion. "I knew what being raised by a single mother looked like.
I knew exactly what it cost. I watched my mother take every job she could get here, watched her come home exhausted, watched her hands crack and her back hurt and still get up the next morning because there wasn't anyone else. "
She takes a shaky breath. "And I was terrified." Her eyes lifts to mine. "I was terrified that I would spend my entire life struggling the way she had. That I would look at my child and see him. That she would grow up with his face. That every time I looked at her, I'd remember that night."
I don't know how she managed to carry all of that and still smile at Sara the way she does.
I don't know how she got up every morning.
I don't know how she went to work. How she learned to laugh again.
How she made a home. How she became the mother I have watched these past months with a kind of awe I never quite knew how to put into words.
"I had just lost my mother," she whispers. "I had nobody. No one in Mumbai. No one I could call and say, I'm scared. No one who would have come and sat beside me." Her fingers twist together. "And somehow, somewhere in all of that . . . I decided to keep her."
I close my eyes for a second. Not because I don't want to hear her. Because I am trying to keep myself together enough to hear all of it.
"I don't even know if I can explain why." Her voice cracks. "Maybe I couldn't bear losing another person."
I open my eyes.
She is crying quietly now. "When she was born, I thought I'd feel . . . " She searches for the word. "Relief, maybe. Like I'd survived the worst part and could finally put it behind me."
A sad little laugh escapes her. "But then they put her in my arms." She stops.
I see the memory cross her face.
"I looked at her and she was just . . . mine.
" Her lips tremble. "She was this tiny little person, and she needed me, and I loved her.
God, I loved her so much." The tears come faster.
"But sometimes . . . " She can't finish.
I wait as I draw small circles on her back, in an attempt to soothe her, but can I really soothe her . . . after all she has gone through?
"Sometimes I'd look at her and remember." Her eyes squeeze shut. “And I'd hate myself for it."
"Daisy."
"I never hated her." She says it immediately, fiercely. "Never her. Never."
"I know."
"I need you to know that."
"I do."
"But sometimes I hated what had happened to me.
I hated where she came from. I hated that something so horrible was the beginning of something I loved so much.
" Her voice breaks completely. "And then I'd feel guilty for even thinking that.
" She covers her face. "I'd think, what kind of mother feels that way about her own child? "
My heart breaks. It breaks quietly, somewhere deep inside me, because I can suddenly see the shape of the years I missed.
The nights she must have sat beside a sleeping child and wondered whether she was allowed to feel anything other than gratitude.
The mornings she got up anyway. The days she smiled anyway.
The moments she must have swallowed her own grief because Sara needed breakfast, or clean clothes, or a story before bed.
She didn't need to be perfect. She needed someone. And there wasn't anyone.
"I'm such a fucked-up person," she whispers. "I loved her more than anything, and sometimes I still wished the circumstances were different. I don't know how both things can be true." Her shoulders shake. "I'm scared you think I'm horrible."
That finally breaks whatever distance I've been holding between us. I take her face in both hands. "Look at me." She tries not to.
I wait.
"Daisy." Her eyes meet mine. "You are not a bad mother."
She shakes her head immediately, tears spilling down her cheeks. "No."
"Yes."
"You don't understand."
"I understand enough."
"No, you don't."
"I understand that you were twenty one years old." My voice breaks slightly. "Alone in a city far from home. You had just lost your mother. You had been hurt in a way nobody should ever have to experience. You were terrified, and somehow you still got up every morning and took care of a child."
I wipe one tear away with my thumb. "That doesn't make you a bad mother.
" She stares at me. "It makes you human .
. . and so brave." Her lower lip trembles.
"You think loving Sara means you were never allowed to grieve what happened to you.
" She goes completely still. "You were." I hold her face more gently.
"You were allowed to hate what happened.
You were allowed to wish it had never happened.
You were allowed to look at your baby and feel love while also feeling grief for the reason she was in your arms."
Her eyes close. "Those feelings don't cancel each other out." I swallow hard. "And none of them make you responsible for what he did to you."
A sob escapes her. I pull her against me.
She comes willingly this time, collapsing into my chest as though she has finally run out of strength to hold herself upright.
I wrap both arms around her. "Look at Sara," I whisper into her hair.
"Really look at her." She sniffles against my shirt.
"That little girl has never once doubted that she is loved. "
I close my eyes. "I've watched her run to you when she's scared.
I've watched her climb into your lap when she's tired.
I've watched her look for you across a room just to make sure you're there.
" My voice thickens. "That child knows exactly how loved she is.
" I press my lips against her hair. "And she knows it because of you. "
She cries harder. I hold her tighter. "Whatever thoughts you had when you were hurting don't erase the five years that came after them. They don't erase every meal you made, every fever you sat through, every night you stayed awake when she was sick, every time you put her needs before your own."
I pull back enough to look at her. "You built her life.
" Her eyes search mine. "You did that." For a moment, neither of us speaks.
Then I think about the man inside. The man I watched laughing ten minutes ago.
The man who apparently walked into this room tonight wearing an expensive suit as though he had never destroyed a girl's sense of safety.
Something vicious moves through me. I want to go back inside. I want to find him. I want to put my hands around his throat and make him understand exactly what he did.
But I don't. Because Anamika is still shaking in my arms. Because tonight isn't about him.
It's about her.
And if I let my anger take over now, I will make her confession about my rage instead of her pain. So I stay. I hold her. And I listen. "I'm sorry," I whisper. "I should have known."
Her head lifts. "You couldn't."
"I should have looked for you."
Her eyes soften with something almost like disbelief. "You didn't know where I was."
"I could have found you."
"You were respecting my choice."
"I told myself I was." My voice catches. "Maybe I was." I look down at our hands. "But I think part of me was afraid."
"Afraid of what?"
"That I'd find you and you'd tell me you didn't need me." Her expression crumples. "And I was too proud to risk hearing it." A tear slips down my cheek before I can stop it. "I hate that."
She reaches up and wipes it away. "You didn't know."
"I know." I turn my face into her palm for a moment. "But knowing doesn't make me wish I had done things differently."
Her fingers tremble against my cheek. "I should have come looking." I close my eyes. "I should have found you."
She shakes her head. "You can't change it."
"No."
I open my eyes again. "But I can change what happens from now on." Something shifts in her face. I pull her back against my chest. "You don't have to carry this by yourself anymore."
Her arms slowly come around me. "I don't know how not to."
"Then we'll learn." I kiss the top of her head. "Together."
She cries quietly against me. I let her.
The gala is still happening behind those doors. The music is still playing. People are still laughing beneath chandeliers that cost more than most families earn in a lifetime. None of it matters.
For seven years, she has carried this alone. For seven years, she has woken up every morning and lived around a wound no one else could see.
Tonight, she finally put some of its weight into my hands.
And I don't know whether I can ever forgive myself for how long she had to wait before someone helped her carry it. But I know one thing. I will not give it back.